The Hidden Secret to Simple Space

My Entire Writing Experience Changed and Everything Else Did Too

By Linda Prejean

It was an ordinary Monday as I made the 45-minute commute through heavily wooded backroads of Connecticut. I agreed to the three-day assignment from a temporary secretarial service popular in the 1980s, but the drive was too far from home. Even so, I would honor my agreement for the days I had promised.

I didn’t realize until I was met by iron gates slowly opening upon my arrival that I was entering a 7-acre estate with a mansion and carriage house, and that my host would be a famous writer with an Oscar sitting on his desk.

My brief assignment turned into four years as I became his administrative assistant. I would be summoned from the carriage house to the main house where my host sat in front of a large window in the kitchen overlooking the manicured grounds. I took my spot on a large wooden chair centered in front of the fireplace. Years later the memory of the elegance and simplicity of his writing space and the warmth of the fire would lead me to back to the desire to write, something I had done throughout childhood and later abandoned when I started a family.

His gaze rarely left his view from the window except to get up on occasion and stick a fork in a boiling pot of seasoned water on the stove…