Making a Work Space that Works For a Writer

"A Room of My Own: Re-creating Work Space"
Peace Garden Writer (January 27, 2010)

"Last week, I introduced my new venture, Beauclair Communications, to Peace Garden Writer. Though it may seem as though it's happened very quickly, most know that in reality, dreams can take a while to build. Now that I'm further along, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the more concrete steps I've taken to turn thoughts into reality.

"Step 1: Reaching Out. Over the course of the last six months or so, I began networking, building on existing relationships that had the potential to turn into something more. I knew this would take time, but it was an exciting part of the process. Since I love discussing ideas with people, this did not feel like a chore at all, and it's something I look forward to doing even more often in the coming months. Over time, those efforts have led to a firming-up of some ..."

She gets to the matter of reclaiming and reorganizing a work space in Step 3. Besides text, there are eight photos.

The post covers quite a range of topics, from marketing to office design and writing habits. The one thing I missed was a diagram or floor plan, showing spatial relationships and flow patterns - but the gist of that information is in the text, and can be guessed at from the photos.

This anecdote from the post stuck in my head:

"...Stephen King once used a closet for his writing space. When he became rich and famous, he moved into a comfortable office with a beautiful wooden desk. He quickly found, however, that the work he produced in that beautiful office was lacking, so he returned to a more modest corner once again. What a great lesson for all of us. Our working space need not be extravagent [sic} to be productive...."

That's an important point, I think. I'm working at a desk that belonged to my father, tucked between a china hutch and a window air conditioner. It's not the ideal arrangement - but it works for me, for now.

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A tip of the hat to Peacegardenmama, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this post.