#75 What is a Scriptorium?

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Your faithful writer,
Dr. Daniel Smith

Imagine it’s the year 1180.

You’re a young person who has just been sent to join the local monastery.

When you think of life in medieval monasteries (as we all do from time to time), what comes to mind?

I imagine monks gathered in prayer or drinking beer together. Sounds like a decent life to be honest.

But monks also spent a lot of time doing something that almost nobody else was doing during the Middle Ages: writing.

Many medieval monasteries had a room called a ‘scriptorium’, where monks would spend hours painstakingly producing books.

These books, which were almost always copies of the Bible, would have beautifully detailed illustrations and borders.

They are generally referred to as illuminated manuscripts, and producing these valuable books was one of the main functions of monasteries.

Almost nobody outside of monasteries could read or write, and it was the sacred duty of monks to produce these illuminated manuscripts and spread the word of God.

So, why should we care about these medieval scriptoriums? 

As someone who is a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about the practice and process of writing. It’s fun to learn about what the great authors did (and didn’t do), and learning about how other people write is one of the best ways to procrastinate from actually writing.

For many writers, ritual is important. Many great novelists would sit down at the same desk, at the same time, with the same coffee or tea - every single day.

They would also go to extreme lengths to prevent themselves from getting distracted and avoiding the hard work of actually starting to write.

When I came across the idea of the scriptorium, it made me think about the way I approach my writing.

Being able to write on a computer makes it much easier to write (and publish) work.

I can write and send out this newsletter to the roughly 1,800 people around the world who are subscribed to the Daily Concept in just a few hours.

At the same time, I am easily distracted by the siren song of social media when I’m using my computer.

I would say that this makes it harder to focus on longer-term projects (like the book I would like to publish based on my Ph.D.) while making it easier to produce and distribute short-form content for email or social media.

Compare this to the world of the scriptorium. Monks spent years of their lives in these rooms, slowly transcribing & illustrating copies of the Bible.

Some monasteries even made their best scribes exempt from prayer duties so they could spend more time in the scriptorium. In the writing room, it’s all about writing.

Spending some time learning about the scriptorium makes me want to create my own scriptorium.

I will report back to you all next week with a photo of my new writing lab. And I will also see whether creating a place like this (and trying to work in there without internet access) helps me to write more consistently.

Please let me know if this email has made you think at all about the rituals of writing — I’d be happy to share any reader reflections (anonymously if you prefer) alongside the photo of my scriptorium next week.

Have a great weekend, folks!

ART OF THE DAY

Thank you for reading. Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts or feedback.

Yours,
Dan