Compared to the old house, my new writing space isn’t much of a cave. I’m currently set up in one end of the living room. At the old house, we’d converted the formal dining room into my office space. Here, the formal dining room is set up as a library. Go figure.
One of the best things about my new location is that I have light. But more importantly, I also have WINDOWS! I’m able to refocus my eyes on something in the distance now. That was the worst thing about the old writing cave — no windows, no real light.
So as you can see, I’m not the organized type. At all. My desk is the default dumping station for anything paper related. My chair often has a stack of mail waiting for me to sort the recycling from the bills from the stuff that needs shredded. Oh yeah, I wonder which box has my shredder in it. Hrrm. The scary thing is, and this used to drive my mom nuts, I can usually find that piece of paper that I need in a relatively short amount of time. It may look like chaos, but it’s a highly developed and fine-tuned archeological filing system. The older the paper, the deeper it’ll be.
Here’s a close up shot of the hutch that sits on my right. It usually holds important papers, my writing craft reference books and you can see there in the middle, my TBR stack is taking over again and blocking a second set of craft and research books in the back. There are probably a couple of the newer or more frequently used ones sitting on the desk somewhere as well.
“Do you find you can only write in one area or can you move about?”
I usually spend my days in this space, but evenings often find me in the TV room with my laptop, IF I can pry it out of my son’s hands. I also find I work on paper copy better if I’m sitting in the recliner at the other end of the living room from my desk. It helps relieve the temptation of the internet and also gives me some room to spread out on the coffee table.
Ok, you’re right. How can I work with all this visual clutter? I need to clean it off. Every so often it gets too overwhelming and I do actually find the surface of the desk. I should have done it before I took these pictures, but I ran out of time with all the back-to-school excitement this week. Besides, isn’t writing about honesty and digging down deep to the truth? Does your creative cave work for you? How would you improve it?
To see some other writing caves a few of my friends are sharing this week, you can visit their websites, below:
* Alexia Reed * Angeleque Ford * Danie Ford *
* Emma G. Delaney * Kimberly Farris *
In the past three years (Gosh, it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long!), I’ve come to realize that my writing process is quite cyclic in nature. This isn’t so much tied to the time of year when I may or may not have more free time, but feels more like one of those buckets on a waterwheel. First, it dips into the river and scoops until it’s overflowing, along the trip up out of the river, some may splash out, but really it empties in one big dump to contine back around again for another refill.