Where the Writer Is

Anyone with a cat will tell you that if you sit still long enough, you are a cat bed. Trying to write with a cat on your arms is -- challenging. So whenever I write on the boat, I have my choice of spots so long as the first rule is observed: I may sit wherever I like so long as a cat is not occupying the space. I must also observe rule two: if a cat wants the space after I have occupied it, I am obligated to move or suffer being yelled at (at best) and at worst, being occupied myself by a feline indifferent to my deadlines. So it often follows that I remove myself from the household in order to write. Not only for the ergonomic benefits, but also because the distractions at home are legion. Dishes to be done. Wildlife to observe. Cats' whims to be catered to. So while I do write aboard the boat, my very favorite place to write is Miro Tea. It's in Old Ballard - which is (for the west coast) the historic district. Some of the buildings date from the late 1800s. This is an older building. If you look in the middle row of windows, you'll see an I beam running diagonally. Earthquake reinforcing to bring the structure up to code. All of the old buildings in this section of town have them. You get this semi-Victorian exterior and a post-modern industrial thing on the interior. See the two wooden chairs just outside? There's a table tucked right up against that window behind them. That's my spot. I can see the street and the passersby from there. If the sun is out at all, I catch the rays as the sun rises. All lovely reasons to camp that spot for hours at a time while getting words, unimpeded by feline 'helpers'. But the real reason to go there is that the staff are some of the greatest people I know. They've figured out how much I love tea and have started letting me in on the secrets of which teas I ought to be trying. This year's oolong crop has had a stunning array of really excellent teas, for example, and it seems like every time I go in, they have a new recommendation to make for a tea I just have to try. Once I've decided, I can sit down, start the word count, and sip a lovely tea in a warm, friendly environment that doesn't reek of stale coffee oil. Yeah. I know. I live in Seattle and hate coffee. There's probably a law. This is the tea shop that shows up in Damned If He Does and in Nightmare Ink and Bound By Ink (though in the Ink books, the tea shop is Isa's tattoo shop.) If you read Damned If He Does, there's a brief scene in the tea shop - the young woman behind the counter is real and she will make you the same tea latte she makes the hero in the book - a Fireside Hot Chocolate. Dark chocolate, steamed milk, vanilla syrup and Lapsang Souchong. It's velvety heaven. So the next time you're in Seattle, you know where to find me. And maybe what to order when you drop in at Miro.

Where I Work

Here's my challenge: I don't have a singular place I work.  At any given time, I'm working at one of the tables downstairs, or on one of the couches, or at the walking desk.  But I don't have a singular permanent "THIS IS WHERE I WORK".    Partly that's because our home is also our business, and so parts of our house have to be ready for classes, and then different parts for other classes.  And while I love the walking desk, I can't use it all the time.  For one, my feet can't take it.  For another, sometimes it becomes hard to walk and concentrate on the task at hand.  But also because my wife wants to use the walking desk at times, so we share it.  

This means I've become quite adept at keeping my work mobile.  I have a rolling case for the computer, folders, pens, headphones, cables, and so forth.  So I can mobile-office pretty much anywhere.  Which is handy, because I need to. 

Though I wouldn't mind having a permanent desk and office.  I'll need to sell more books for that, though.  Until then... I keep moving.

And I need to keep moving, of course, as I need to stay down in the word mines until this draft of Lady Henterman's Wardrobe is done.  In the meantime, you can start to get excited for the first Streets of Maradaine novel, The Holver Alley Crew.  You can even pre-order it.  But we'll be talking more about that one soon.  

Where I Do My Best Writing

Where do I write best? The short answer is…Ohio!

Seriously, though, I am not one to work from the local coffee shop or bookstore. I’m no good at write-in’s at friend’s houses. I like a comfy chair or couch with a laptop, and I have done some work in hotels at conventions, but the most work - and best work - is done in the solitude of my own office space when everyone else is off at school or work. I put my music on (movie scores, mostly), fire up incense or candles to infuse the air with some nice aroma, and I’m ready to make word count.

That said, I’m the kind of person who will rearrange the living room without warning and for no reason at all…but once my office is set, it needs to stay. The stability of the environment, as well as the routine, is necessary and conducive to my overall performance. 

In the last ten years I have moved three times.

House #1:

For five years, I had a desk in a living room near sliding doors to a covered deck. I wrote Seph books 1-4 either at the desk or at the table on the deck. I think it is worth noting that I spent a very minimal amount of time working outside the home during these years. Able to focus on the writing, I produced very solid work.  

  

House #2  

For the next five years, I had a desk in my bedroom, then a small office all by itself. I wrote Seph books 5-6 in these spots. I was working full-time, being a single parent, and spent a significant amount of time ‘adulting’ i.e. yardwork, housework, errands/shopping, etc. though my boys helped a lot. My productivity tanked. There was simply no time. 

I do not think books 5 & 6 reflect my best work because of this.

now for the good stuff...

House #3

yes, 3 screens...1 desktop, 2 laptops. new mac book

I’ve been in the new house with my new husband for only a few months now. I started with a desk in a small bedroom, but for the last two weeks I’ve been moving into the medium sized bedroom, which now has a lovely new laminant floor that looks like lovely aged barn-siding, fresh gray paint, new white cabinets and all my geekery on display… 

Yup. I have a shit-load of Star Trek and Star Wars stuff. The kids are giving me back all the cool toys as they find/unpack them, but there are some yet to find a spot. Like the landspeeder, the TIE fighter will need hung, etc. My NCC-1701-D is missing the nacells, and I hope they show up, but the NCC-1701 is my favorite, of which I haven't been able to find one big enough to be worthy of display? I mean, the one-man X-Wing can't be bigger than the Enterprise, yanno? It's bad enough the Millennium Falcon is small...

whiteboards are awesome but not revealing my secrets...

—sigh—

I want to say I’m never leaving this office…but you know what they say about saying never. The bottom line is, I’m writing full time again, delighted to be finding my rhythm amid the routine again. 

my favorite view...needs phasers and a bat'leth, yes?

And who wouldn’t be inspired here? 

I Do My Best Writing In The Dark

I'm a sensitive gal. Sensitive to light, that is. I don't do well in "properly lit" rooms for long stretches. Over bright and too white? I'm out of there. Lighting in my home is best described as "soft" or "moody." During the day, the shades are raised to dog-height. At night, it's bright enough to see the dog before I trip over him, but no so bright that one could see the cracks in my plaster ceilings.

All that is to say, I do my best writing in the dark (and often after dark, but that's a different post).

This is my den, where I do most of my writing. Yes, I sit with my back to the wall of windows with the black-out curtains drawn in the center to eliminate glare on my screen. The side windows filter the harsh morning sunlight to a tolerable level. The lamp on my side table has a 25-watt amber bulb for a gentle glow during the night sessions.

Yes, my writing chair is a twenty-year-old futon. When the dog was younger, he used to sit beside me. Now he only does it when it storms. (That's his pillow at the end there.)

What's my view from the futon? Motivations: my bookcases (aspirations), my Master's degree (determination), and a painting from the 1890s done by my great-grandmother (legacy). It's an unchanging view because I'm easily distracted. It's an unchanging view because my goals haven't changed.

Unbridled chaos

I do the vast majority of my writing in my office. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.

Mostly I write surrounded by a shelf full of skulls, busts of some of my favorite heroes and villains form comic books, copies of my book covers, and stacks of books in my To Be Read list.  That would be the short TBR list. The larger collection is in another room, or I wouldn't be able to move around it.

The thing is, my office is not pretty. It is a chaotic mess. I like it that way. I leave it that way. I have easy access to what I need and I am surrounded by the sorts of distractions that actually inspire me to work harder.

Where I Do My Best Writing

Our topic this week, as the post title implies, is where we do our best writing.

Mine is, as always, at my treadmill desk.

Sometimes I mix it up, especially now that I write full time. If I'm tired of being at home, I'll go to The Teahouse, where they give me amazing tea and let me sit for hours in peace. Sometimes I sit outside.

But, when all is said and done, I write best as I'm walking, in my lovely office with the great view. this is what it looks like when I'm standing at my desk, as I type this.

Those are the Ortiz Mountains at the front, with rounded Sandia Peak to the right and behind, and the sweep of Galisteo Basin between.

In 2015, I walked 1,235 miles on my treadmill and wrote 564,847 words. That's about 458 words/mile, which seems pretty cool to me. I set the goal of 1,500 miles this year and have (as of today) already hit 1,785.

Some answers to Frequently Asked Questions:

Yes, I really can type while I walk. I'm walking at 1.0 mph as I type this.

I walk anywhere from 0.5 mph to 2.2 mph.

I average 6.5 miles/day, figured over the year.

I got my hydraulic desk from Geek Desk and the treadmill from TreadDesk. Both have been great on my very rare service issues. Considering I've had this set up coming on four years, that's pretty great!

Love it! Best investment I ever made.

Who Would I Be? Torene of Pern!

First of all, I have to say that I never want to be someone else, not even fictionally. Sure I'd like to have some attributes of the person - Lessa of Pern's ability to talk to all the dragons or Anna's Omega qualities or Ripley's sheer determination or Jepp's fighting skills - but I want to be ME, maybe in their world on my terms.

I am a character in my own Sectors scifi romance universe, one that's been mentioned but never actually met - yet. It amuses me to 'be there' myself, kind of behind the scenes. Of course the person isn't me...but it's who I'd choose to be if I woke up tomorrow in the Sectors.

Yes, SFF7 Saturday person is rebellious. But okay, after having considered this long and hard, and for this exercise only, I would want to be Torene, in Anne McCaffrey's short story 'The Second Weyr,' in The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall.

Sorka and Sean, the first ever dragonriders, still remembered Earth, and they were a bit constrained by the rules and traditions they'd set up in dealing with the discovery of Thread, and learning to fight it using the dragons. Torene was the first Millennial, to use a current analogy, born on Pern and ready to break out, set up her own Weyr, enhance and enlarge on what Sean had created...and do her own thing, based on what the elders had tried and settled on. She too could hear all the dragons and she was READY to try out her own ideas, plus those of her contemporaries.

I liked her energy, her enthusiasm and the time she lived in - still close to the beginnings of human life on Pern but not hemmed in by a lot of "shoulds" and "must do" based on life and traditions of the Earth her forebears had come from. Which was not Pern...

I think Torene had exciting times. The stress and strain and ennui of the centuries of fighting Thread had yet to set in, and although you could see some things being forgotten already, much was still vividly remembered.

She had a lot of 'firsts' and adventures ahead of her....(too bad she isn't on the cover :) )

Elementary, My Dear

It always fascinates me when people talk about which fictional characters they'd want to be - I notice no one mentions Game of Thrones much. Not too many people opting for zombie books, either. Usually. I guess I'd always assumed that other readers were like me. I wanted to be the main character in whichever book I was reading at the time. Frankly, I spent most of my angst-ridden, middle-school, junior high years wanting to be someone else. ANYONE else. So the list of characters I would have given you was a mile long.

I mean, Meg from A Wrinkle In Time was super high on the list. Any of Ursula K. Le Guin's heroines are, too. But really. After examining all the evidence, there was only one possible conclusion for someone who desperately wanted to be to step into the shoes of a character far clever than she is herself: Sherlock Holmes.

Yes. Yes. Let's forget the whole 'he's a dude, you're not' BS. This is fiction. We get to be any freaking thing we want, right? And that's the whole point. Gender. No gender. Stripes. Polka dots. Aliens with blue skin and green eyes. No less probable than a secret agent with a license to kill who manages to single handedly save the world, sleep with anything that moves and avoid the clap all at the same time. Why should I not be Sherlock?

Oh, yes. I am aware that character is fraught with baggage. But to be that clever, that sharp. Not to mention intrinsically immortal. For a character conceived and created in the Victorian Era, he's looking awfully well these days. Despite some tragic reboots and reimaginings of his adventures.

Maybe the real answer is that the geeky little girl who curled up reading everything she could get her hands on because real life was pretty lonely also wants to be as popular and well-liked as a cranky gum-shoe in a deerstalker hat. The very best thing about Sherlock Holmes is that he is a misfit who had managed to make his misfittedness work on his behalf and to win him influence and acceptance. And while I'm not crazy about the notion of stepping into the shoes of a cocaine addict . . . I - Yeah, I dunno. I think I'm stuck on the fact that this character can be so beloved and popular, even with (perhaps because of) his foibles. That's mighty attractive.

Would you swap places with him?