The final frontier
1=Trusty laptop
2=Homonculus #1. He does my bidding.
3= Homonculus #2. He keeps Homonculus #1 in line.
4=Pinky and the Brain mega mug. Narf!
5=Voodoo doll. Given to me by a former employer who apparently harbored false beliefs that I would never use it against him.
6=View of the liquor warehouse and parking lot
7=Sync cable for iPod touch. VERY important
My muses, who sit to the left of my desk. Can YOU name them all? (Hint: Not all, such as the penguins, have names.)
This is a print called "Flight of the Red Pajamas" by Lori Bitwer-Stewart. It hangs to the right of my desk. I'd been admiring it for years and finally bought it to celebrate selling my middle grade trilogy. It is very pretty. I keep telling myself that, someday, I'm going to write the story that goes with this picture.
Another print by Lori Bitwer-Stewart. In my mind, THIS is what my workspace really looks like.
Now for the kicker: I rarely use this space to write. I've crafted a lovely work area, complete with muses, homonculi, and art. And I'm almost never here. Largely because, owing to space restrictions, I share the office with my wonderful husband. And when he's working on his computer, I have to be somewhere else. (Not his fault; it's just how my brain works.) Often, I find myself at the dining room table. (Actually, I wrote 90% of THE VENGEKEEP PROPHECIES at the dining room table.)
Sometimes I find myself at this desk. Right now, for instance. But, honestly, I take what space I can get. Wherever I am, I need room to pace. I pace a lot while writing, talking through scenes, speaking bits of dialogue. Give me that and an acceptable degree of solitude and I can be extremely productive.
Or not. Sometimes, the optimal conditions are met and I sit like a lump for eight hours, wondering why there are cars in the parking lot of the liquor warehouse at 6m on a Sunday. For me, having a space is nice. But having something to write is GLORIOUS.
Love this...I totally agree with you on the too-optimal conditions...(When things are too perfect, I seem to find MORE distractions...) I'm also an antique store / flea market junkie, which means my office is brimming with weird tchotchkes...one of my faves is the old guitar string display on my wall...
ReplyDeleteI have to share this with you, Brian. Been meaning to. This is a brief excerpt from an as-yet-unpublished novel. The main character is a US teen, and the secondary character is Rwandan. I wrote this a couple of years ago, before I knew there was any such thing as you.
ReplyDelete“Why do you name the little dog ‘Pinky’?” he asked. “He is not pink.”
“No,” I said. “I guess he’s not, huh? I named him after a character in a cartoon.”
“Cartoon?” he asked. It was hard to tell, by the way he asked it, if he knew the word or not.
“Yeah. There was this cartoon character named Pinky.”
“And he was a little dog?”
“No, he was a mouse. He was a laboratory mouse. And he shared a cage with this other mouse named Brain, who was really smart. And Brain was obsessed with taking over the world. And in this one episode, Brain disguised himself as a human and went on a game show to try to win money so he could take over the world. And the host kept calling him Brian. It was really funny.”
A long silence.
“So, this cartoon mouse, he was pink?”
“Um. No. Not really. He was white.”
“Okay, Steven. This is good to know. Now I know to never ask you any question like that, ever again, at any time.”
“I guess you had to be there,” I said.
I probably should have mentioned that one of his dogs was named Pinky and the other was named Brian. I did not know you yet, so you can't sue me (I think).
ReplyDeleteHolly: I used to have a much larger collection of muses. When I needed more space, I had to vanquish the ones who didn't speak to me as much any more. After the Purge, the other muses snapped to.
ReplyDeleteCatherine: Zort!