Some perhaps misguided friends have suggested I should write about my writing space. So, here it is. This is similar to a picture I posted a couple of months ago, but now with all the lurid detail.
The table itself was made for me when we lived in Sri Lanka. For several years I used it in my play on Abraham Lincoln. Now it’s my nesting place when I write.
And what have we got lying around on it? Some favorite books in a little bookshelf my mom bought for me before I went off to college. They’re all ones I’ve read before, but their presence is comforting, like being with old friends. My tea pot sits on a warmer, crucial for writing in the morning – though if I make the tea too strong, by the time I get to the bottom of the pot, my handwriting starts looking pretty sketchy, like snail tracks or the EKG of a guy having a heart attack.
There’s my writing box, which brings things up a few inches and puts it at a good angle to keep me from slouching too much. I write in pen on yellow pads. (Pilot pens’ Dr. Grip Gel is my weapon of choice.) I used to think this was s-o-o 20th century of me, but I’ve discovered that a lot of writers younger than me do the same thing. I think your brain works differently, more freely, when you’re not on a computer. When it comes time to type up my scrawl – which I have to do fairly quickly or I can’t read my own handwriting – I’ll set my laptop on top of the box and bang away.
What else? A couple family pictures, the handle from an ancient Roman pot. (You can ask me how I got it.) Tea cup. The view through the window is very pleasant. It lets me look around the neighborhood in fall and winter, and it’s a curtain of green leaves in summer. When words are coming slowly I can watch the squirrels running around on the tree just a few feet away. They taught me where we get the word “squirrely.”
I love the lamp. It gives of a strong light, but warm and a little indirect. Various mementos sit on top of the lamp or hang from it.
When I’m in a funk, I look at the pictures on the mullion between the windows. From bottom to top: a Christmas card featuring a Japanese painting that I put in a small frame; Babe Ruth; Hemingway writing at a camp table in Africa; a postcard from la Closerie des Lilas, an old writers’ hangout in Paris; and, yeah, a picture of Winston Churchill with a machine gun.
I’ve been told I should write a couple more entries on the rest of the room, its maps and photos and paintings and souvenirs. Let me know if you’re interested.