I'd given you a sneak peek quite some time ago, but to refresh your memory, this is what you see from the doorway:
Here's a close-up of the "couch" aka the hospital-style bed. I chose the duvet cover because I wanted something abstract that would express creativity. This adds a note of fun, color, and youthfulness to the room, I think. (Either that or it looks as though I've put a well-splashed painter's drop-cloth on the bed.)
Turning slightly clockwise (using an analog clock. If there comes a day when there are no longer analog clocks, will we have to find another word to express the notion of turning "clockwise"?) ... I'm sorry, I digress. Turning slightly clockwise from the bed, you see the two abstract art prints that adorn the south wall of the Writing Room. These are the work of my online friend Robin, a very talented person -- I enjoy having her art on my walls!
My desk, with the laptop at the ready. You can't imagine what a relief it was to move the table/cart that had held all the old PC detritus out of the room -- I feel so much less hemmed in now that it's gone! We also moved the desk a little further into the room, giving me more room to maneuver behind the desk, which makes things more comfortable back here. I confess that the desk isn't always this tidy, but I do try.
The tiny art pieces to the left of the closet door are original canvases, "Tableaux", by Angela Cartwright, who does very intriguing "altered art". After I bought one, I couldn't resist buying more!
I did a LOT of work sorting out the books, getting rid of many, and transferring another many into the storage room (they're not as accessible there, but they're ones I don't use much, but was not willing to part with). What is left on the bookshelves in the Writing Room is the cream of the crop -- at least as far as the purpose of the room is concerned. On the bookcase on the left as I face them I have one shelf with picture books, one with middle grade and young adult novels, one with books about the craft of writing, one with music and reference books. On the bookcase to the right as I face them are biographies and autobiographies, a couple of special VHS videos (Julie Andrews' "Duet for One" and "That's Life" -- "Duet for One" has never been released on DVD, although in my opinion it was Julie's finest dramatic role; and "That's Life" is available on DVD but only if one is willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money, so I treasure my VHS copies.) There is a shelf of poetry books and self-help books, and a shelf of stacks of Dad's photograph albums.
What's that in between them, above the electronic keyboard, you ask? It is a poster of the cover art from Julie's and Emma's picture book The Very Fairy Princess. A friend discovered that the publisher was giving away posters such as this through a Twitter contest, and she entered and won one of the posters. They sent it to her in Ireland, she sent it to me in Canada for my birthday last year, and I, with great delight, got it framed and put it up on my wall where I see it every time I look up from my computer. Next to it is a "fairy princess wand" made by the friend of a friend.
As you can see from the lower of the next two pictures, I have various things on the door, as well. There's a bumper-style sticker that reads "Words, Wisdom, Wonder", the motto of the Julie Andrews Collection; a couple of baseball caps, one from the Julie Andrews Collection; and a map of Los Angeles, into which I've stuck pins to indicate the location of the homes of the various characters in my current adult novel project.
You can likely tell that this space gives me joy and inspiration daily. I'm finding it a great place to write -- and that makes all the work of the last several months very worthwhile.
I had to go see the before pictures of your office, I had allready forgotten what it looked like. And it's a huge transformation! Amazing work! Your storage shelves have clearly made all the difference.
ReplyDeleteI really like that you can have the desc in the middle of the room, I know you had it there before too, but it looks a proud worplace that's just not shoved to the corner. And now that it has so much space around it, it looks so good. And you have so much inspiration around you, no wonder you've been writing a lot.