Where Do You Write?

Where do you do your writing? It's a question most writers ask of one another. We're all hoping to hear the magic answer that will improve our own writing and make our dreams of fame and wealth come true. You laugh, but I guarantee if Stephen King said he never wrote anywhere but in the bathtub, legions of wanna-be published writers would figure, what the hell, pour in some Mr. Bubble and give it a shot.

As for me, I'm experimenting with writing spaces. I've all but given up trying to do creative writing at my desk. I can brainstorm there, and I can edit, but when I sit there I think "work" and all creative juices fling themselves out the window to go splat on the ground below.

For the moment, I'm cozily ensconced in our downstairs bedroom. I've set up a card table in the corner, although most mornings I prop myself up with a pillow and stretch out on the bed, laptop on my thighs. The idea with the card table was to "test" the space. If I liked it, then we'd look into prettying it up into an office.

The thing is, the space is working so well, I'm afraid to fool with it. I think I feel free to write here because the space is not fixed up. The futon is folded against the wall, waiting to find a home. Plastic bins of magazines I collect for my workshops are shoved in a corner. A folding chair is pulled up to the laminate card table and stacks of projects are piled unceremoniously on the floor. I brought a CD player in and it sits on the floor next to the rocking chair, CD's stacked next to it.

In short, the room is far away from the normal sticky tab order of my daily life. And I'm worried if I bring in a "real" desk and shelving, the space will just turn into another "office" where I can't work. So while it looks crummy, I'm lovin' the "things just stay where they fall" lifestyle.

Reinforcing my instinct to not fool with the room is this story, shared by a friend in my writer's group. He and his wife used to live in a small apartment. He wrote most of his first novel late at night, in a tiny room with a desk shoved in the corner. Then they moved to a new, larger home. He has a good sized office, but found he wasn't writing a word. So last week we recreated his old office. He painted the room the same dingy color of the old space, brought back his old desk,  old chair, and shoved them both in a corner. Said he's been writing up a storm ever since.

Space writing mojo... honor it.

Reflections of the Heart, Foster Care Art & Essay Contest

It's amazing how the world has a way of circling back around. About 5 or 6 years ago, when I had my first itchings toward being a writer, I became friendly with a woman who was a volunteer at the Women's Resource Center. She wrote for a newspaper and when I told her I wanted to write but was nervous about the interview process, she let me shadow her on an interview and showed me how to structure an article. She edited the very first newspaper article I ever wrote (about the Women's Resource Center) and we've stayed in touch on and off through the years, more off than on recently.

Still, I was delighted when she tracked me down a few weeks ago and asked if I would be a facilitator for the Foster Friends of North Carolina's first ever art and essay contest. On a weekend in February, I'll meet for two hours with kids ages 10-18 and lead them through some creative writing exercises and hopefully help them mold an essay for the contest.  Volunteers from the Greensboro Jr. Women's League will be on hand to sit one-on-one with the kids and assist them, if needed.

They also want me to talk about being a writer and what it's like to write a book and the opportunities that can present when you learn to express yourself on the page. I think the day will be a lot of fun but I must admit I'm a little nervous. I'm going to work to find some fast, fun exercises that I hope will get the kids engaged and thinking/laughing.  I just don't want them to be bored or feel overwhelmed. I'd love for them to keep trying the writing exercises even outside of the workshop.

I'm hitting up my writer friends for ideas, but if any of you reading this have any ideas on what might work with the kids, please don't hesitate to post here or e-mail me at ddharris@triad.rr.com.  I've got about a week and a half to figure out what I'll be using in my workshop.

If anyone wants to read more about the contest, log onto www.FFNC.org.

Computer Cleaning

As if it weren't enough to keep up with the house, yard, pets, body, and inner spiritual state, now we must add "purging old computer documents" to our never ending to-do lists.

I spent almost two hours yesterday going through my Favorites folder on the Internet. You know, that folder that you save a website to because you think that you will someday return to it. Not so much. I couldn't remember what half the sites were so I had to click on the link to go to the site so I could decided if it was worth saving or deleting. I ended up being pretty hard core , deleting  3/4ths of the sites I'd saved. I treated the sites like the clothes in the back of my closet. If I haven't worn them in over two years, I'm not going to miss them when they're gone.

Then since I had indulged it, my Type A personality really kicked in and I created little folders for the remaining links with titles such as "Grammar & Reference" and "Marketing Tips" and "Cool Writing Stuff! Metaphors, Idioms, Exercises." But I have to say, I swelled with pride this morning when I clicked on my Favorites icon and found such a tidy domestic scene in place.

Now my Word documents beckon to me and they will not be so easily tamed. You try being a writer and having 10 versions of what is essentially the same document saved on both your computer and laptop and figure out which versions are okay to dump and which you might want to keep because there happens to be a beautiful turn of phrase buried in there. I'm stringent on getting rid of most clutter in life but my writing leaves me flummoxed. What if I delete something I need later?

Which, btw, is turning into a huge problem as I'm spending the first months of this new year doing many many many writing exercises, both on my laptop and in handwritten journals. I'm stuck on what to do with my output. The writings aren't really part of anything like a novel or article; they're just exercises. But... sometimes unexpected ideas are birthed from the nothingness of such writings. Do I save them? If so, where? I picture some giant jumbled folder that I'll avoid looking at because it's such a mess of scraps of paper and hard-to-decipher scribbles. Right now my method is to leave the writing scattered on the guest bed (the cats like to sleep on them, so at least my work is serving a higher purpose) or saved in random folders on my computer.

However, now that the urge to purge has hit, there's no going back. I foresee long hours in front of a computer screen facing. me. Let me know if you have any organizational suggestions. I know several of my regular blog readers (and you know who you are) share my anal-retentive qualities. Let's put them to work.

Smart Writers & World Events

My writer friend Edmund and I had a conversation last month about writers and how the best writers are very, very smart. When you read interviews with them it says things like, "Mr. Smith reads five newspapers a day, including French and Italian papers which he has delivered daily." Or their bio will begin, "After completing a PhD in biophysics at MIT, Ms. Johnson decided to try her hand at novel writing..."

Make me puke.

I barely keep up with the news. I'll catch 10 minutes of the Today show every now and again, skim the Sunday paper, and maybe log onto MSNBC. I'm not proud to admit it, but there you have it. Which is why one of my semi-goals for the new year is to read a daily paper. I'm still debating whether I want the local paper, USA Today, or maybe even The Wall Street Journal (I enjoy the writing there).

I say semi-goal because I'm not convinced I'll keep up with it. Reading a paper takes time. That's over an hour each day that will disappear from an already busy schedule. BUT, a firm goal of the New Year is to drastically cut back on TV time.  For January, I'm allotting an hour a day during the week, and 2 hours/day on weekends, in case I want to watch a DVD.  The point being though, I should be able to switch an hour of wasted TV viewing over to keeping up with world events. Not a bad tradeoff.

Will it make me smarter? Probably not. But I'll take "better informed" and "able to participate in conversations with some degree of intelligence," as goals worthy of striving for.

I think I'll start with the local paper and if that goes well, move up the chain. Who knows? This time next year I may have French newspaper delivered to my door. Stay tuned...