Where Do You Write?
Once again The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World blows my mind. This week they’ve linked us to writers’ sheds — featuring a picture of Roald Dahl’s.
When my daughters were 18 months old (to continue the thread from a previous post), my office was behind the couch in our living room. I had stacked some boards on bricks to make shelves behind the couch, and put a table top on two file cabinets against the wall. That’s where my computer sat — an IBM clone with an amber display screen and a daisy wheel printer.
When would I write? A friend from graduate school (Anita Johnson) told me that she stayed up late, after her middle-school age children went to bed. She graded papers and she worked on her dissertation until 1 or 2 in the morning.
My babies exhausted me. I taught early in the morning so that my husband could leave for school at 11:00 and teach his afternoon and evening courses. By 7 or 7:30 when (if I was lucky) the babies were ready for bed, I was ready for bed, too.
If I couldn’t stay up late, maybe I could get up early. I tried getting up at 5:00, and when that didn’t work, someone suggested that I try rising on the half-hour, “when the clock hands are on the upswing.” Four-thirty worked.
And so that’s where and when I wrote my doctoral dissertation, behind the living room couch, beginning at 4:30 in the morning. By 6 a.m. I was in the shower. By 7 I was on the Community Transit bus on my way to the University of Washington. True Story. Do I appreciate the Potting Shed — my writing cabin — now? Yes.
When I was single and lived in a one-bedroom apartment, my office was in a corner of my living room. Now, I have an entire room. Having been married and widowed, I live in a three-bedroom house, and one bedroom has been turned into an office where I write and do other household chores such as paying bills.
When I was single, I often worked a forty-hour-week as a registered music therapist in a nursing home. I wrote when I had time. I tried getting up early in the morning to write, but because my day job required a lot of energy, I felt it was better to sleep than write. When I got married, I quit my job so I could write full time. Now that I’m no longer employed, I have most of the day in which to write.
I love it that you wrote about your writing space, Abbie. Do you find yourself writing more, now that you have time and space to write? I sometimes wonder if retirement will help, or possibly hinder the process.
Yes, I have more time to write now that I’m no longer a full time caregiver for my husband who recently passed away. I’m working on a memoir about how I met, married, and cared for him for six years after he suffered two strokes.
You’re an inspiration, Abbie!
Abbie, are you at all interested in being tagged for the blog hop?
If so, can you email me at bethany.alchemy@gmail.com so we can talk?