I faithfully listen to a podcast, Writer’s Routine, where Dan Simpson’s first question is “Could you tell us about the place where you sit down to write?”

I write in my pandemic closet. It’s a nook that’s 8ft wide and 5ft deep. That may sound horrific, but it does have a window! The window looks out over my back yard and pirate ship, and the window covering is a pirate flag from Pirates of the Caribbean. (For the record, other pirate-themed kitsch is in this space, and I love it all.)

I call it the pandemic closet, for in 2020 the curtain gained a layer of Grinch green fabric that has ever-since been my green screen for videoconferencing backgrounds. I spent hundreds of hours on Zoom in this space. It is quite literally a closet, too, with hockey jerseys hanging to my left and shelves of storage above and behind my monitor. The whole place needs Marie Kondo’d or a KonMari treatment as she calls it.

To my immediate left is a decoupaged cabinet that holds some office supplies, some books, and some debris. The images and art covering that cabinet are precious to me, for they serve as a time capsule for the mid-1990’s when Lora (later to be my wife) was loosening up. I feel decoupaged cabinets should be messy layers and layers of images like a busy collage, but she initially placed everything symmetrically, no sides touching. The illustrations are also of friends and family and interests of the time. When I need a distraction, I sometimes look at a few pictures on there.

To my right I have a side table with a draft of Lightning’s Hand, but it’s buried under whatever has settled there (a package of sunflower seeds, some memorabilia, a can of wasp spray). I have three items framed there on the wall around the window. One is of my parents fawning over baby Jax, taken in late 2002. Another is a framed T-shirt from the Museum of Masks in Zacatecas, Mexico—it deserves its own post to sum up its value to me. The third is a painting of Elvis in his prime, in his white leather jumpsuit. It’s painted on black velvet and framed in a coarse, hand-carved wooden frame. I call this my Velvet Elvis, and it is a treasure that again merits its own post some day.

I have artistic contributions from a couple of my kids, and one little watercolor that my daughter and I collaborated on together.

Otherwise, it seems I’m plagued with cords. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, zoom camera, two power supplies, several chargers, lights, printer…there are other ugly things here, too, but I will spare you.

In terms of craft of writing, I treasure this keyboard. It’s a noisy gaming keyboard, black with blue under lighting. Every keystroke feels intentional and clicks like an old-school typewriter. This matters to me for two reasons. One, it was a keyboard a very significant employee and friend suggested to me, so it has sentimental value. Two, it’s as close to manual typing as I can get, and that matters because…another sidebar…

In Spring 1983 I made my first visit to the office of a True Creative Writer, a poet, Jonathan Holden. He had an old manual typewriter. When I asked him if he would transition to a ‘desktop personal computer’ he said he would not likely, particularly not for creative work. He preferred the intention behind a manual typewriter keystroke, and he likened it to tattooing each letter to the page. That always stuck with me, and I think it’s a reason I so love this keyboard.

At this time, I do not have nearly enough inspiration in this space. I do have Snape (see other blog post) brow beating me. I do have some books on writing and such here and there. It makes me think I might need to revamp the place, even though my first 500,000 words were written right here.

One quote (Rory would be sorely displeased) is in my line of sight. It’s taped to the printer at eye level. This quote drives my editing. It’s consistent with my impatience with bad writing, too. It runs contrary to all the earliest novels of the late 1800’s (many contemporary authors would find it disagreeable, too, I am sure). I might break it down and process it with my blog readers (hat tip to you both) some day. Here it is:

The more minutely you describe, the more you will confuse the mind of the reader, and the more you will prevent him from a knowledge of the thing described.