Inkygirl: Daily Diversions For Writers

Last week I wrote about office spaces and asked if any of you were willing to share photos of your office space, as well as details on what you like and don’t like about your space.

I had several of you write to me and say that you’d love to share, but your space was way too messy. Let me clarify: I’d love to see your current office space in WHATEVER state. And well, here’s a photo of my own workspace (and the shelves are a lot more crowded now!).

Anyway, Bethanie was kind enough to share some photos as well as comments on her workspace. You can see one photo at the top of this entry, and another is posted below.

Bethanie’s comments:

“I found your post on cool office space really interesting, especially because I am getting ready to embark on a project that will, I hope, create a separate and more useable space devoted to my fiction writing projects. I’ve attached a couple of photos of my current writing/home office space, although I think it is probably too messy for what you’re looking to feature on Inkygirl (sorry about the way-too-bright windows, I should have closed the blinds). Some background: I currently work at home one day a week, so this space is partly set up for that, partly for my personal writing, partly for paying bills, partly for helping the 5-year-old with her homework, partly for entertaining the 18-month-old, and partly for whatever else is going on in our house. (Can you say ‘multi-purpose space’?? )

What I like about it:

I LOVE the work surfaces. When they’re not cluttered with the detritus of the day, they’re huge and quite pretty. My husband made them years ago of scrap hardwood (he worked in a cabinet shop at the time) and I’m rather proud of them. The taller one (that the laptop is on) is maple trimmed with walnut and the shorter one is hickory. They are both lovely when you can actually see them.

I also love the built-in bookcases, messy as they are (who doesn’t love built-ins??), and the window seat to the left of the bookcase.

The set-up itself is pretty handy for working while keeping an eye on two kids - it’s in the living room, so they can feel like they’re ‘with’ me even if I’m working. There’s space for the 5-year-old to sit at the shorter desk and do ‘her work’ while I do mine, and the baby can still squeeze in to have her books read to her. Sometimes they’ll even sit on the window seat and entertain each other!

The storage is pretty good. The bookcase holds a lot, and there are shelves in the cabinet underneath where I keep supplies like paper and folders, etc. The plastic storage units under the taller work surface a bit hard to get to (one is behind a chair and there are two in the back also), but offer enough room to keep art supplies separate from writing supplies and office supplies and computer accessories. One of the file cabinets under the shorter work surface is for our bills and other important documents, and the other is for my work stuff and writing projects. Neither is crammed full (yet anyway…).

What I don’t like about it:

It’s in the living room! Things can get really chaotic sometimes, and that’s a pain if I’m working on something that has a deadline, because I get interrupted contantly. The interruptions also make it hard to accomplish my goals when it comes to my fiction projects. For me, fiction requires a level of concentration that doesn’t tolerate interruptions well. They are certainly to be expected when you’re a mom, but oh boy!, there are days I wish I had a door I could close!

As you can see from the photos, my desk becomes a dumping ground for anything and everything. Snacks, books, toys, you name it, it ends up on my desk, which drives me mad some days and makes the space nearly unuseable if I don’t clean it up regularly.

I can’t QUITE see out the big windows to the right of the desk. That’s a bit of a bummer, because we have some really nice woods and a resident red-tailed hawk out there.

The biggest problem, though, is the support structure for the work surfaces. Both of them are just sitting on top of the file cabinets/storage drawers. Neither one is attached to its base, and both wobble when I type too enthusiastically. The lower one actually slides around and tilts if you lean on it (although I don’t think there’s any danger of it sliding completely off and landing on anyone’s toes… at least, I hope not).

OK, that’s probably way more information than you want, but feel free to help yourself, if any of it is useful to you.

Cheers,

-Bethanie
http://bethaniesbrain.blogspot.com/“

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