Anywhere

I don’t have a picture, but my “official” writing space is a bedroom turned into an office. Imagine if you will, a ten-by-ten room, one wall occupied by floor to ceiling, side-by-side desks. One for the husband. One for me. On the second wall is a cabinet and work table for his hobbies. On the back wall the window is covered up by file cabinets that sit on top of a dresser. The last wall is taken up by a floor to ceiling bookshelf. Two shelves are mine, with the bottom one filled to overflowing with my to-be-read stacks.

Unofficially, my writing space includes the dining room, living room, and occasionally, if I’m desperate, Barnes and Noble in Clackamas. I wrote my first book during the morning commute to work, when I rode the bus from home to downtown Portland.

I’m a restless writer, and always start out brainstorming characters and the outline of my story in a spiral notebook. Everything goes in there. The notebook goes everywhere with me, hence the rotating office between the dining room and the living room, and wherever.

When I write the first draft, it too goes in the notebook. From there, I transfer what I’ve written onto into the computer, which is a laptop I can dock in the office if I feel inspired to do so...and so on with the second draft, which is a printed, hard copy revision. I do two final revisions on the computer. I often need a change of scenery, and the laptop lets me get away with that. So, when I say, I working in my office, well...