Where We Write

I still have my cold. Could be worse. At left, Flu wing of AEF Hospital in France, 1918.

Chuck Wendig - and his site is not for browsing at work - over at terribleminds is crowing today about his new writing shed. It's worth the crow. Chuck has a series of books Blackbirds and Mockingbird and The Cormorant. I'd guess that puts him in good crow country.

It's a good shed. He hasn't filled it with all the stuff we writer's accumulate, yet. As such, it looks like someplace that needs a good does of fear-pee in the corner and blended scotch dripping off the desk.. It is a writing shed.

I write in my library. Pictures are on this site. I have a teak table I use as a desk. I've got a couple huge sets of windows which don't help the writing at all. I've got a few thousand books around me that also don't help at all. Occasionally I  look at my The Complete Pelican Shakespeare but mostly I just make stuff up.

This is a pretty good link to some author workspaces. Hint: remember that writer's lie for a living (fiction, anyway). Never believe an author who says she gets on her bike and rides to the beach to spend the hours of 7 AM to 4:30 PM in blissful composition on the sand near her home.

Bullshit.

Now, I'm off to scratch out a few thousand words as I hack and cough.

I'll get a cup of coffee. I'll forget to drink it. I'll be annoyed when I look up and find out it is time to go to bed. I'll be annoyed when I get up in the morning, look at the crap I've written today, and wander off to work to earn a living that allows me the privilege of scratching out terrible prose in my library.

I've a case of tortured artist syndrome right now. That is, the art I'm making I believe is garbage. It's a draft. It's supposed to be garbage. It'll get fixed.

In the meantime there is the writing. The next sentence. The next paragraph. The next scene.

It's always so beautiful in my head and always so different on the page.

Make a mess. Clean it up.

The writing room?

Don't waste time cleaning it up. If you're doing your job, it'll just become fouled again by all those discarded dreams and emotions lying about in the corners.