Room to Write

I'm not one of those writers that can write just anywhere. I envy those types. They are the ones with laptops balanced on their thighs, riding the motions of subways or the ones that sit, tapping away with ear buds in, stopping to sip at a bit of coffee, while a cafe full up on humanity hums around them.

Put me in those chaotic situations and the last thing I want to do is write. What I do instead is take in the people, digest their features and words, catalog away the things that might do well in one of my stories. When life is too darn ripe, I absorb, not create.

So I need my own space. I've had it in the form of a tiny desk pushed into a closet, sans doors, for two years now. My hard Ikea chair, my too-high tabletop, these things have seen me through hundreds of thousands of words.

But there is that pesky urge for more. You know it as well as I. More lemon cake, more fireworks, more expansiveness.

So I'm about to move out. Move out to a room of my own, one constructed by my loved ones and myself. We started the room in August. It didn't matter that we'd never built a tiny house from the foundation up. All that mattered was that I needed room to write. So we made it happen.

Paint is going on the walls. Soon the floor will be put in, a desk built that's just the right height to keep the tendinitis in my wrists placated. I'll put in a light over the desk, something that puts out what they call "daylight" light. Something that will mimic the sun for me at 4am, when my muses are just waking up, poking me to stay with them, lifting up my eyelids with the tip of a Sharpie pen.

End of a year. End of writing in a space that's been kind to me; still kind even though I've outgrown it. A new year will see my room finished and me in it. I'll put characters through the motions of life in that space. I'll be a character through the motions of life in that space.

Until I feel the call to write somewhere new. I can't discount this. The craftiness of The Future can never be discounted. Maybe I will become one of those transient authors that carry their stories with them everywhere and steal minutes from the craziness around them, turning it into tranquility and then creativity. Maybe I'll get better at dissolving myself into my worlds instead of living in my own world. But the question is, what is the difference between my own world and the worlds I create? A fine line that one. Thick as one of my hairs.

It's a question I can't answer, no matter where I write my life or live my writing.

For now, it's enough that I just have the room to figure it all out.