When I was looking for new blog topics, someone suggested I talk about the importance of a writing space. This is a fairly timely and important topic for me right now.
As I may have mentioned roughly 637,000 times on Twitter, my husband and I moved into a new house at the end of November. To make the move easier, we ended up locking the kitties in the spare bedroom – which meant that the space destined to become my office became a sea of spare bedding, bed parts, night tables, and boxes. So many boxes. No space to write.
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| My office, ladies and gentlemen (and those of you who are neither). |
Not even a desk, in fact – when DH and I moved in together, my old, rickety, build-it-yourself desk just couldn’t make the trip. Since our apartment had two dining room tables and one kitchen (no dining room), we parked my printer on one of the tables, added a pencil holder, and called it a desk. That table has now been repurposed as my playing board games table, and it’s in the basement. It’s also still in pieces, because it didn’t fit through the door as a table. For now, I’ve commandeered a corner of the dining room table until we can clear out my office and find a desk I like.
What I’ve found is that, as long as I have my laptop, I can write anywhere. Much of my writing is done sitting on the couch while my husband plays video games or watches movies that don’t interest me. I wrote three chapters sitting on a bed in a hotel room. I’ve written chapters in a moving car. I write on airline tray tables, in coffee shops, or on my phone hidden under the table at family functions. When I need to write, I write. Some people need dedicated space or a block of time – all I need is my imagination and a way to get the words down.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I can’t wait to have my office back, so I can close the door when I need to work in peace. But the words will flow wherever I happen to be.
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| I found this picture somewhere. I like it. Not mine. |
What about you? Do you need a dedicated writing space?
I can edit under lots of conditions, but for drafting, I need some peace and quiet. For years, we had one computer in the house and it was in the living room, so "peace and quiet" usually meant headphones and music without words. Now that I have a laptop, I do most of my work sitting on my bed. Actually, my bed is basically my office. I read, write, surf, tweet, and do school work with the kids. My two necessary props are a cheap lap desk I bought at Ikea and a triangular foam pillow for back support. With those, I can put in a full day's work without getting out of bed :).