Writing Space

I began writing regularly just over ten years ago. I made myself a little writing desk in the kids' room and blogged every day and wrote fiction. I would write at night after I put them to sleep and stay in the room quietly typing as they fell asleep. In my next house I usually wrote on the computer in the dining room. I was realizing that in this house, the one I have now lived for six years, that I don't have a space of my own. I do my best writing on a laptop in the kitchen, but that's not always available or practical and I tend to get distracted by dirty dishes or packing tomorrow's lunches, etc.

We moved bedrooms around last fall with Bill and I moving to the attic. I tried to set up a writing space up there, but the chaise is really better for reading. :-) Anna likewise wanted a chair for reading in her room and needed some space, so I moved Anna's desk out of her room last night and into the small room that Bill and I are using for a dressing room and made a writing space for myself. My notebooks and manuscripts have a home. I have space to leave my laptop and notes out. And there are no chores to catch my eye and distract me.

Above the desk I hung a Wyeth print that I have always loved. The lighting is dim and could be interpreted as soft and happy or shawdowy and dangerous. The basket is on the ground with apples around it. It is a painting that has sparked my imagination my whole life. It hung above the couch in the first house I can remember and I have distinct memories of laying on the couch studying the painting and trying to figure out what time of day it is or where it was or why the basket was on the ground by itself. It was the beginning of the mind of a story-writer.

I have written my whole life just for fun. I have rejected the idea that I need to publish my novels, for example. I run marathons but don't expect to be in Olympics. I cook, but I don't want to have a restaurant. Art should be a part of everyone's life no matter the extent. But the writing projects I am working on right now have made me rethink the audience and purpose of my writing. And all of it prompted me to create a space for myself to write.

The Illumination

This is written cleverly. It is a series of short stories, really, but they are all tied together by the journal of a woman who dies in the first ten pages. The book takes place in the near future when for some reason all pain - physical and emotional - radiates light from the body. You can locate the exact source of pain just by looking at someone. One of the characters, the one who loses his wife in the beginning of the book, gets into self harm, and his was the most interesting story to me - the creation and release of pain - physical pain distracting him from his emotional pain.

This book will be unsatisfying if you like everything to tie together at the end. It feels as if you drop in on the characters for a short period of time and get to know small bits of them - to understand them even - and then you're on to the next story. Kind of like reading a blog. :-)