New house, new office. So it’s time for one of those periodic posts about work space, work flow, and how to get yourself to sit down and write consistently (if you ever find out, let me know).
The good news is, I again have an office with a door. In the last house, my ‘sewing room’ was in a glorified corridor, my writing desk was in the open-plan living room, and most of my books were in boxes. Not a very useful workflow, and the only reason it was tolerable was, we lived in that house for only a year. This office is big enough to combine all those types of work into one place. Horse-related and garden-related stuff lives in the garage until I get a barn (someday!).
The bad news is, this office faces north, and I’m very solar-powered. It’s not bad in the height of summer, but the sun’s only going to become more elusive from now until December. So I either need to invest in more lighting- I already have a happy lamp, and I like it- or move my writing desk to a corner of my bedroom, which faces south and will get the sun for more hours a day in more months of the year.
It’s not the first time I’ve had my desk in my bedroom, though all the smart people say that’s bad for your writing. Whatever. It was also one of my most productive years in terms of finishing and publishing, so I’ll reserve judgment on whether sleeping and working in the same space is right for me.
Whether I leave the desk as it is- I do like being able to glance out the window and see what’s going on outside- or not, I have plans to make the space as bright and airy as possible. Luckily, some of that work is done for me; the walls are a very pale blue, not the horrible depressing gray I had to put up with two houses ago. I understand why designers might choose gray as a ‘cool neutral’ color that looks clean under white lights, but good God, people, don’t paint your entire house that color; it’s, as I said, horribly depressing. As much as people (self included) rag on beige as a boring color, it’s better for a whole house than gray, especially in an already gray and overcast climate like this one.
Harrumph. Where’d that soapbox come from?
Anyway. Adding to my new work flow is my new (to me) office chair- six dollars at the local thrift store- which is in better shape and more usable than the Frankenchair I’ve been using. That one was old when I got it in 2008; it doesn’t owe me anything. Since it’s still in decent shape, it’ll go to the thrift store and hopefully find a new home there.
We’ve been doing a lot of exchanges with the local thrift stores lately. This house has slightly less storage space than the previous one, and the storage space it does have is less convenient, so we’re taking a good long look at some of the stuff we’ve been carrying around, and deciding whether it’s worth the trouble, along with replacing and adding to some of our furniture so we can display and use the items we do decide to keep.
That’s the silver lining to all this moving around- I lived the first twenty-eight years of my life in one house; now I’ve lived in four new states in seven years. Moving forces you to look at everything you own and decide, ‘do I really want to pack this? Do I want to unpack it? Do I want to find a place for it in my new home? Or would it be easier to let it go and find a substitute if necessary once I get where I’m going?’
I’ll never be a convert to minimalism. I like owning tools and materials- and books are both, for a writer- but there’s something appealing about looking at one’s life and deciding what’s really important, and what can be left, unregretted, by the wayside.
It’s difficult-to-impossible to completely start a life over from scratch, and I wouldn’t want to, anyway. But there’s been some tweaking, and there’ll be more to come. I can’t wait.
Have you rearranged your work space or work flow recently? Should you? On the other hand, what’s been working well for you? Share your ideas below.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “Setting up Another Work Space”
If you’re allowed to and yes the prep is just awful, paint every wall in ultra-high-gloss white enamel. Stick to Ceiling White for the ceilings. I did that in our house in South Carolina. Those rooms were never dark. Never. The prep work is extensive and the finished walls look wet; like they’ve gotten a high-end shellac finish. They shine. They glow. They look icy cool, a big plus in South Carolina heat.
My other suggestion — BUT NOT IN THE BEDROOM — is a solar tube. We’ve got four and they are amazing. Light POURS into our kitchen (two tubes), and both bathrooms. I could grow palm trees in those spaces, none of which have decent windows.
You can only install solar tubes (not a DIY job unless you’re a contractor in your spare time) in a home you own. A landlord would have kittens.
My current home was owned at one time by a couple of elderly chainsmoking widower men (autocucumber refuses to acknowledge the plural of widower). They or the heirs had painted the living room and master bedroom tobacco brown. I repainted those rooms (with help) back to the dominant color of the other rooms: a kind of faintly yellow cream white.
I’m surprised you were able to get the paint to stick! Some friends were faced with a similar situation with tobacco brown walls and ceilings. Bleach, steam, and Kilz were needed to strip off decades of nicotine and tar.
It took several coats iirc.
I do all of my writing in bed, just like Winston Churchill. (OK, he dictated from bed. Same thing IMO). Of course that’s because I have a broken foot and can’t walk. But I am getting a lot of work in the 12-14 hours I’m awake with noting better to do!
Before, I’d wake up early and write in my rocking chair, with a little background classical music and a giant mug of coffee by my side. Personally I run on caffeine, not light.
Well, that’s an easy fix. Just move your house south of the equator.
I did have my desk and computer in the bedroom at a previous residence, but it seems like whatever computer art hobby I had at the time (fractals, terragen…) benefitted a lot more from the setup than the writing did.
In virtual workflow news, I am experimenting with novelcrafter, having imported the space regency into it. I can’t bring myself to write in it (also a problem with Scrivener; scenes tend to get written first in txt or docx files files and then copied over to Scriv). But novelcrafter has some decent organizational options and the ai stuff is fun.
I say you have to be rich to be a minimalist, because you have to keep re-buying everything. And you can’t always get what you want, with items going out of production.
That said, it’s good to periodically go through everything, both to decide what you no longer need, and to revive memories with stuff you’re glad you kept.
I’ll have you know i just spent thirty minutes seeing if there was reflectors you could use to bounce light into a north-facing room…