After reading Mason Curry’s book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Sarah Green relates how famous creators designed their workspaces to minimize distractions:
Jane Austen asked that a certain squeaky hinge never be oiled, so that she always had a warning when someone was approaching the room where she wrote. William Faulkner, lacking a lock on his study door, just detached the doorknob and brought it into the room with him — something of which today’s cubicle worker can only dream. Mark Twain’s family knew better than to breach his study door — if they needed him, they’d blow a horn to draw him out. Graham Greene went even further, renting a secret office; only his wife knew the address or telephone number. Distracted more by the view out his window than interruptions, if N.C. Wyeth was having trouble focusing, he’d tape a piece of cardboard to his glasses as a sort of blinder.
Update from a reader:
Curry misinterprets the reason for Jane Austen’s squeaky door. She certainly didn’t preserve herself from distraction, writing in the family’s common gathering place, with all the annoyance of visitors and a hypochondriac mother. The door hinge in question was on the door that the servants used: she was a secret author whose works were unsigned. She didn’t want it known beyond her family members that she wrote books.
The Dish 