On Writing – A Place to Write

Here is an early version of my work area.

Today I sit in a small library located on the second floor of our home with a window that looks out on our tiny rural community. The bell in the Catholic church, across on the corner of our shared intersection, is calling its congregation to worship.

If I move to the edge of the window, I can just see down the hill and across the valley.

A friend, who was not a neat freak, once asked, “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what’s an empty desk a sign of?”

Today, I’d be able to answer, “Potential.”

We’re about to move to a new home, that means a chance to set up my writing space anew.

J.K. Rowling said she wrote much of her work sitting in a coffee shop.

Look up the names of your favorite writers and artists, see if you can find pictures of where they practiced their craft.

If I had my druthers, I’d be writing on a sailboat, in a cottage overlooking a large body of water, or a view within mountains. Baring those, I’ll take a city apartment located up high and able to look out over the city and the streets immediately below.

The bulk of Unfolding: Awakening and Nexus were written alone in hotel rooms across North America, Trinidad, and a week in Bulgaria. I was not writing fiction when I visited Singapore, though it was a perfect setting to begin the adventure.

Walking into a new room and setting up shop is like putting a fresh piece of paper in a typewriter. In the early morning hours and in evenings, collected thoughts – which formed themselves while asleep and in quiet times during the day – flowed from mental caches through my fingers to be stored on a hard disk drive.

My work is an integral part of me and did not require a lot of planning. On rare days, I’d come back to the hotel with my shirt pocket stuffed (neatly) with special little notes that had specific details concerning continuity or plot development which would be transferred to Evernote^(tm) note files. I kept a few odd pieces of paper for posterity.

Sometimes I’d like to write in longhand. It’s inspiring to see notebooks and handwritten drafts of authors. Should I be allowed to have enough of a following, I’d like to leave something other than closely ordered arrangements of 1’s and 0’s that can’t be touched.

My world is moving too quickly at this point in life. I have to type it all in as fast as I can, so I’m able to complete the other tasks that keep me alive until I reach the moment when I am able claim writing as my day job.
– Jeffrey A. Limpert

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 Image Information:

Photo by Jeffrey A. Limpert, copyright 2001
You may use with attribution and link to: UnfoldingSeries.com
File name: My-Cave.jpg
Caption: Console station in the network room
A Place to work for a writer, network engineer and educational courseware developer.