31 May 2022

Where I Write


Even after a half-day spent
cleaning, my desk is still
a mess.

Over the years, I’ve written in many places, most often a room in my home that is (or was) a dedicated office, though when I was single and living in a one-bedroom apartment, the dedicated writing space took up a significant part of the living room and, for a few years when my children were small and my home didn’t have enough rooms, my writing space occupied half of the master bedroom.

Back in the early days of personal computers, I kept a few works-in-progress on a floppy disk that I kept in my briefcase. During my lunch hour, I would slip the floppy into my work computer and bang out a page or two. I still sometimes write away from home (or thumb-type notes into my cell phone), but home has always been, and remains, my primary writing location. Part of the reason is that I’ve been tethered to desktop computers. My first portable computer was far too heavy to tote around. My first laptop computer had a flakey battery life and would never stay connected to my desktop when I tried to work from other rooms in the house.

A month ago, the entire
table was filled with
works-in-progress.

When Temple and I married almost seven years ago, I sold my home and moved into hers, and my office moved, too, from a bedroom in my home to a bedroom in hers, and that room has been my writing center ever since. Unfortunately, try as I might, I can never keep my desk as neat and organized as I would like. Every so often, I clean everything off, filing what’s important, discarding what isn’t, and doing my best to maintain a welcoming writing environment.

This past December I purchased a new laptop computer, hoping to break free of my desktop, and it may have worked too well. During the first few months of this year, I was working on five book-length projects at the same time. I needed space to spread out all my research materials, notes, and so on, and I took over the dining room table. By the end of April, I had delivered all five projects, but my laptop computer and various projects still occupy half the table.

My new outdoor office, easier
to keep neat because a
stiff breeze will blow
everything away.

Earlier this week, Temple purchased a chaise lounge for the back porch, and for a few hours each day since its arrival, I’ve parked myself and my laptop in it. (It’s where I sit right now, Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, drafting this SleuthSayers post.) While sitting out here, I’ve read submissions to current editing projects, and I’ve written part of a novella. The sunlight, fresh air, and minimal distractions are a nice change from the underlit bedroom office with distractions everywhere I turn.

This morning, Temple decided that my outdoor workspace needing sprucing up, so we cleaned off the porch, rearranged the outdoor furniture, and turned this into an inviting environment.

I think she’s hoping I’ll get all my stuff off the dining room table.

Maybe I will, or maybe I now have three writing spaces to choose from.

16 comments:

  1. I try not to think of a cluttered desk as mess but as literary compost.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As long as I'm growing productive crops and not literary weeds, I'm OK with that.

      Delete
  2. Michael, I'm surprised to hear your attempt to wean yourself off the desktop is working. The most compelling reason I can't let go of mine is that when I'm editing, I can put two word docs in a readable font size side by side on my 27 inch screen.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't often need to see two files at once, but when I do I have a ginormous screen on my desktop computer. When I'm writing, all I need to see is the page I'm working on, and the laptop is good for that.

      Delete
  3. I only wish my home office looked as neat and uncluttered as yours, Michael.

    Like Liz, I can't let go of my desktop computer, for writing. Besides the reason she gave, I like my big comfortable chair in my home office. Most of the preliminary work that I do on my stories, though, happens outside, on walks or in my backyard swing. That kind of planning and plotting is, to me, more fun than anything else in the process. To each his own . . .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When the projects I was working on required me to spread out several books, all my notes, and all manner of other stuff, there was no space in my office to do so. So I spread everything across the dining room table, and it was a pain in the backside to have to walk back and forth between the dining room and my office. That's when the laptop first proved particularly valuable. I could sit at the dining room table and work on files that resided on my desktop computer's hard drive. Only later did I actually start using it to draft new material.

      Delete
  4. I'm with Liz and John. I do lots of planning (and large-scale revision) away from the desk, usually on a cardio machine at the health club, but my desktop computer is my main writing instrument. We have a laptop, but with my increasing arthritis, I need an ergonomic keyboard, and the laptop doesn't work for that. I can do minor tasks on it, but major writing, not really. My workspace looks messy, with papers and notes all over, but I know where everything is. My wife, who is a better writer than I am, understands this and doesn't rearrange things. Thankfully.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I understand having keyboarding concerns, though not because of arthritis. Umpteen years ago, after open heart surgery when I couldn't sit at my desk for more than fifteen minutes at a time, I tried dictating so that I wouldn't need to fuss with a keyboard. It was actually worse, because I spent more time cleaning up the resulting files than it would have taken to just type what was in my head.

      Delete
  5. Took three days for the blog to accept a comment from me. Uh, Michael. Nice office and cool outdoor office.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. The day after I photographed my new outdoor office, Temple spruced it up even more by adding several potted plants.

      Delete
  6. I write with Bluetooth keyboard and tablet. I have a spanking new Linux-powered laptop, but I only use it intermittently. I perch myself on the corner of my couch in the living room where the cats allow me to reign. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've tried writing while sitting on the couch. Unfortunately, the television is q

      Delete
    2. I've tried writing while sitting on the couch. Unfortunately, the television is quite distracting.

      Delete
  7. In college I had a desk and used it; then I got married and used the small dining table. Then, somehow, I ended up in graduate school drafting short stories sitting on the floor staring at a wall. That actually worked for a while. But I wanted a real office. My desk and the room are never without stacks of books, papers, notes, envelopes full of more notes. Now I wonder if I'll ever have a clean, simple space again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The system won't allow me to use my name--Susan Oleksiw

      Delete
    2. Move your office outside. A nice breeze will clear away the clutter.

      Delete

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