One Foot: Writing Space

Back in March, I realized something fundamental was missing in my life. I wasn't writing on a regular basis and I missed it deeply. So I set a target of at least one blog post a week. To keep the goal attainable, I adopted Anne Lamott's square inch focus.

As of last week, I'd completed a foot. I'm ready to go ahead to the next 12 inches.

We turned our house upside down for Ramona and her parents' visit of the week just past. That meant completely emptying two rooms for fresh paint and carpet, which gave us a chance to ask what we really wanted in each room. What we both wanted, it turned out, was less clutter and fewer objects. And I wanted a space in which  to write.

I've had a space all along, mind you. For years, I'd used a small table as my desk, tucked into the corner of the downstairs study in this house. But in the last few years, my table became my catchall instead, gathering a steady blanket of papers, mail, files, receipts, my briefcase.

There was never any space in or even on which to write.

As we rearranged the rooms, I announced that I wanted a new space and did not want the table cluttering the study. Right now the table is in the overflow bedroom (where we moved everything we have not yet gotten around to sorting, tossing, hanging, or donating) leaning against a closet door. And I have moved my personal space to the north bedroom—my husband's bedroom in his youth and adolescence.

I am writing here now, in fact, getting used to the new space. I am writing in longhand as the computer I use is in the upstairs study, a room away. I have a window to the backyard. I am using an old desk that my brother-in-law used in his grade school years and that my stepson David used in his. David is the one who gave it the "distressed" finish (gouges, carvings, burn marks) it now sports. The room needs repainted from the pallid, institutional green it now is, and I want to change to artwork, but it is a good start.

And I am writing.