Where I Write

My editor was asking me the other day about where I wrote, so I told her I would blog about it.

My writing spot is a rocking chair in a little corner in the living room. There is great mojo in this space, the exact spot where I read hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories to my kids. Not to mention held them, hugged them, rocked them to sleep.

Now I would fit more comfortably in my sons' laps than they in mine, but I can still feel the echoes of all the living that has gone on in that spot. All the joys and sorrows of our life have seeped into that one corner. Sometimes, when I'm deep in the throes of writing, I'm sure I can feel all those fully lived moments wafting up at me, the rich, heady essence of my life, captured in a chair in the corner of a rather unspectacular living room.

This corner of the living room has a panoramic view out over our property, down through the valley, out across the small town where we live to the wide ocean beyond. I can watch clouds scuttling back and forth across the horizon, much as my thoughts do with a plotting or character quandary. This vista is helpful in reminding me to take the long view as well as the short. To think of community as well as the immediateness of the personal. It reminds me of how vast life is, but how fleeting, too, as I watch a hawk swoop in for the kill, or a bold coyote slinking around at high noon.

Even the palm tree is ripe with symbolism, sprouting from a lone palm date dropped by some wandering bird the first year we moved in, a reminder that even the biggest things start small. All in all, it is a perfect embodiment of perspective, both for life and writing.

And on that note, I'm off to the conference today! I won't be blogging again til Tuesday, when I'll report back on all the gems of wisdom and buckets of inspiration I've acquired!