WFMAD 4: Writing Space
August 4, 2009
Since I left my job at NCTE to come back to Virginia and take up family obligations, I have learned to write in what used to be a family bedroom. It’s a nice, standard-sized room. Every one of my siblings have called this room home at one point over the years. My niece was also an occupant for a few years while their home was being remodeled.
Now it’s my space. The moving process is ongoing, so this one room has to serve as my writing space, my bedroom, and my entertainment area. It’s like a large dorm room. Everything has been arranged to accomodate my desk, a light-colored wooden desk that I purchased as a birthday present two years ago. Too expensive, I’m sure. Now that I spend more than half of my time sitting here, I realize it was one of my wiser investments.
The desk is my control center. Everything I need to write is within reach. Two laptops sit on top of the desk, one Windows and one Mac. They share a keyboard and mouse, via Synergy (a great piece of software). Ball-point ens in every color, paper, Sharpies, file folders—all the tools a writer needs are spread around the laptops, spilling over onto a second table that sits perpendicular to the desk.
The chair has rubbed deep dents into the floor protector. The mismatched pieces of furniture look more like an awkward LEGO construction than a planned workspace. Oh, and did I mention the bed? Directly in front of the desk, beckoning me to nap many days, sits my inflatible bed. It was the only place that it would fit, but it’s such a dangerous location. The television across the room can distract me, but the bed tries to lure me off course in evil ways.
No crisp sheet of white paper, this writing space is a crumbled, aged scrap, repurposed for scribbled notes. There a computer and an Internet connection though, and with that, I can write anything, absolutely anything.
WFMAD stands for “Writing for Fifteen Minutes a Day.” Author Laurie Halse Anderson