Mullis: Willard Library provides a haven for the working writer

I was working on a massive project. My collaborator and I had spent the morning in a cafe by the highway, consuming caffeine, hoarding the wall’s only outlet, and competing to hear each other over the din of holiday shoppers. We had a couple of hours before our next meeting and decided to take a break.

He went to lunch, but I wasn’t hungry. I was making headway into a piece of the project. I wanted to keep working.

My home office was too far away, and it was too cold to work in my car. I didn’t have any cash on me, which meant I’d have to charge a meal I didn’t want just to justify hanging out in another Internet-bearing business.

I got in my car and started driving toward my next meeting, looking for someplace warm and quiet, someplace with an outlet and Internet.

Then, it dawned on me – the library.

The Willard Library parking lot was full, so I parked on Van Buren and walked. The wind-driven snow pecked pink into my cheeks and slipped into the gaps of my coat.

I walked faster.

A patron held the library door, and I entered, heat enveloping me like a hug. The main floor was busy, but quiet. The snow was beautiful instead of brutal outside the long windows.

Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

The library is the refuge of the book-lovers, the periodical-readers, the researchers, the students, the curious. Libraries accommodate those without Internet, those without resources, those who need a rest.

Basically, they are the nicest places on earth.

No library card required to sit here, to read here, to think here. They even have desks with – Thank, Edison! – outlets. There are tables for spreading out projects. There are databases waiting to be accessed. And quiet. Oh, the wonderful quiet. It’s not a church quiet. You can hear voices, but they are low and pleasant and quick to hush.

Our world doesn’t have enough hush.

I grew up a library disciple. It was my haven as a shy child, an awkward teenager, a displaced American living in Canada, a writing mother trying to make deadline while waiting for her kid’s basketball practice to end.

Librarians are better search engines than Google, because they’re human. They can read between the lines of a question, which is helpful when you’re new in town or lost in thought. I heard these librarian/patron exchanges as I worked. It was reassuring – the soft urgency of a question, the sincere offer to help.

Basically, they are the nicest people on earth.

There’s something powerful about working among books, particularly library books, which bear the marks of being read and reread. A library’s collection belongs to everyone and attempts to contain everything. It’s different in stores. Those books are for purchase, the pages crisp and untouched. The new and the popular determine the inventory. Titles that don’t sell are removed or piled in bargain bins. 

Not so in a library. Shelf space for all and all on a shelf – fiction, last name; nonfiction, dewy decimal number. When I first saw my novel on these shelves (Fiction MUL), it salved much of the self-doubt that goes into the publishing process. If my book is good enough to be in the library, it’s good enough.

I got to work, chewing through my project with time to spare. Then I stayed to write some more, creating for creation’s sake in this special space.

Nicole L.V. Mullis is the author of “A Teacher Named Faith.” Contact her at nlvm.columns@gmail.com.