The ground is hard and frozen, skies have gone gunmetal and you can make the case that we should have snow. But the upstairs, the largest and forever the coldest room in our house, is suddenly warm and feeling rather cozy. Beyond the crib and new baby dresser/changing station, I've moved my desk up here, placed it snugly in the northwest corner, and have claimed the area as my writing space.
This shift upstairs started last February, and was brought on by a desire to have a dedicated space for my typewriter -- a 50s-era Royal with an effigy of Henry David Thoreau taped to the top. I reorganized the attic's west-wing, set an antique table facing east, and typed mostly poetry upstairs for the next few months, through the better part of summer and the beginning of fall. Then everything stopped, not just upstairs but downstairs as well, in my main office out of which I'd been working and writing since early 2004.
Through the course of two desks, a number of stalled manuscripts, a few hundred poems, and a business, I'd been working against the west-facing wall with little variance, save for sliding the desk closer to the window, then closer to the door. Suddenly I couldn't work in that room anymore, and had been working most of the fall in the kitchen while the desk became populated with mounds of papers, books, stray pens, ash, candle wax, spare change -- loose bits of scrap that were weighing down the space and adding to what felt like a clogged mind.
At some point in early November I felt a little snap go off in my brain. I was tired of everything, tired of being a writer, of going to work, of giving a shit about words and turning them over to people to see if they gave a shit too. Around the same time, Courtney and I were exploring building an outside structure that would serve as . . . a writing space. There's some great irony there -- trying to get away from what I was doing while also looking into dropping $20K for an outside office that would be dedicated to what I was trying to get away from.
Fortunately I'd been through these dark passes before, recognized how I was feeling in my body, and, after whining and carrying on like a colicky infant, downshifted into taking it easy for the next few weeks, allowed my business to enter a little fallow time, enjoyed my last couple of workshops, and got as far away from writing as I could.
In that process of waiting, I took inventory of my downstairs office, not just my desk but everything -- the books as well as how and where I stacked them; the shelves and what they held; the filing cabinet and what files I kept around; my journals of old ideas and half-framed concepts. I discovered a few things. For starters, I had way too much shit. Secondly, I was underutilizing just about everything I had. I didn't need an outside writing space. Instead, I needed to make better use of what was in front of me, starting with the downstairs desk -- at the time, I was literally using 13-inches of nearly 15-square-feet of space.
That was the trigger. Now I needed to reshuffle the deck. First, at Courtney's request, my good friend Scotty and I shuttled the metal filing cabinet out of the attic and into the garage. Later, another good friend Dan and I hung shelves upstairs that allowed us to put a free-standing bookshelf in storage and open more floor space in the attic. Then came moving three desks -- the desk in my downstairs office went upstairs, Courtney's desk (which had been mine) bumped into my office, and the "poetry desk" (the antique table) went into Courtney's room.
One thing I wanted more than anything was to turn the upstairs into a dedicated writing space. To me, this meant no more writing at the kitchen table, but doing typing, computer work and journal/notebook in the same spot. Hence, the upstairs desk needed to stay clear, and anything on the desk needed to have a reason for being there.
Heading back into the downstairs office, I felt a dire need to "get away" from the wall at which I'd been working for six-plus years ("hitting the wall" perhaps?). I shifted the office structure around and moved the smaller desk (from Courtney's office) facing the closet, creating space along the western wall for a little chair (and eventually a rug, which came as a Christmas gift).
The idea downstairs is about production, and that office will be dedicated to work- and business-related concerns (emails, client correspondence, etc.). The energy there is very much "get in and get out," whereas the energy upstairs is "come and stay for a while, write as long as you wish."
What's going to come of this? That's anyone's guess. But I know it all feels like home right now, and all the tools I need are well within reach.
Happy new year everyone.
Dave
