Cuisine of Loneliness

My writing friend B.K. responded to my last post with a post of his own about his writing space. He called his the geekosphere and posted a picture of his desk with all its Disney paraphernalia. A commenter on his post, Marianne Knowles, referred to her own column on writing areas and included a before an after picture of her desk. In her post she referenced a third blogger, Wendy Van Camp, who has a running section in No Wasted Ink on writing spaces.

Before I cleaned up the desk.

The many clean and orderly rooms and desks featured in the No Wasted Ink blog were interesting, but few made me jealous. In some of them no desktop computer or a laptop was in evidence. Other of the spaces made my neck hurt just looking at them, because they looked so un-ergonomic. Although I have my keyboard in a less than ideal spot, I do have a shelf I can pull out that is at the correct height, or used to be when I had a larger keyboard and a different, less adjustable and comfortable chair.  This column is a good reminder for me to reevaluate my workstation and keyboard placement. (Please see the wiki article on proper workstation design.)

My husband made my desk out of  reclaimed Ponderosa pine beams from the 1800s Manitou Springs Hotel. I wanted a large desk so I could spread out research materials. There is a pullout shelf on one side that holds my laser printer with space under it. Currently that space holds  old copies of manuscripts I probably should go through and recycle. The right hand side of the desk is completely open and held the CPU back when I had a Gateway computer.  Now I have the boxes my computer components came in stored there.

After the clean up/

Since I also have an ink jet, I have a printer stand next to the main desk. There are cubby holes under it for various grades of paper and an old phone book.  (I have to admit that at this very moment, I can’t get either printer to print. Router problem?) The original purpose of the two-tiered catch-all was a place to keep scrap paper for printing, but I don’t generate much of that anymore. It has become the place to stash  papers I don’t know what to do with. My bookshelf holds reference books I might use in writing.

The small calendar on top of the bookshelf is from 2011, but it is so lovely I can’t bare to part with it. Also on the shelf is Blue Lloyd, a replacement Steiff bear a friend sent me a year or two ago and some other small figures. I don’t remember where the pigs came from, but I’ve always been partial to pigs. My best friend in high school gave me the pink rock. I also have a collection of post-it notes which I’d love to add to even though I don’t often use them. I plan to buy Scrivener and forget printing manuscripts and marking them up, especially in light of the fact that I CAN’T PRINT. I guess I’ll have to break down and call technical support one of these days, but really, who has the time?

Trinkets on shelf.

I painted my room a yellowy gold but the writing corner is raspberry. I like how the paint job sets the writing area off as a separate part of the room.  Some may object to the desk being situated so that I look at a wall instead of out a window. Other than the glare from the window behind me, I don’t mind this at all, especially since I have another desk that looks out said window. Unfortunately, its surface is so covered with junk I moved off this desk or piled on it from other tidying tasks, that it is unusable. Also in this room I have two small bookcases and two matching cupboards with drawers and shelves in which I store  scrap paper I no longer use, books that are too large for the shelves I have as well as books I plan to donate, and assorted other stuff, like letters decades and my spring clothes.

Really, this is a lovely writing space, or would be if it didn’t also become the room to store all the stuff no one knows where to put.

How does your writing space impact your ability to get work done?