Where and How We Write

Fifteen people commented yesterday, which meant we had fifteen different regimens for writing. I noted that several mentioned writing from the comfort of a recliner. My agent uses a floating desk near his. For that, I’m jealous and may add one to my Wish List very soon — as soon as we restore the other downstairs lounge chair so that I’m not usurping my mama’s napping space. The one she uses had been mine, but then all this other furniture arrived…and she’d no place to put her own chair. We’re beginning to sort through that, beginning to look less like a furniture warehouse.

On board our boat, I write from a couch in the lower salon. It’s my space, often cluttered with notes I’ve taken at odd moments, lists I’ve created to remember the who, where, and how of my characters. A glance to the left, and I can see sky from our pilothouse windows. I finished two manuscripts from that place as we traveled the seas from anchorage to anchorage.

Now Sea Venture journeys without me, but soon she’ll be close enough to climb on board again, though this time we’ll have my mama as crew. Mama loves the sailing life. We’ll go south in the winter and north in the summer, and I will write and she will smile wistfully at the things she so enjoys: the flora and fauna of coastal life.

I chose to pursue the writing life many years ago. I set my armatures aside for a computer, though it was an early model with no hard drive. I can’t tell you how many chapters lost their way into the ether of space when I forgot to save keystrokes to that floppy disc. Children slipped underfoot, racketing around and begging for attention. I’m surprised that I managed to craft anything at all.

Computers evolved, but most were hefty desktop models that required a straight chair and a blank wall behind. My wrists began to experience pain: I supported them with braces and bought keyboards I could rest on my lap. The children grew, and I found a silent place, though seldom peace.

I’ve wondered often if angst creates a deeper well from which to draw. It certainly breeds a different form of writing: poems flow from that place and rarely evolve into a finished product when I’m carefree. I suppose they should be oozing from my pores during these uncertain days.

We who know the Lord find the gift of peace in the midst of our greatest strife. If we persevere and trust, His blessings rain down and fill our heart and mind, ousting the critical and the ugly. As a writer, I’m doubly grateful that He not only allows that peace to pervade the place, whatever place I’m occupying at any given moment, but He also gives me words that wash away the worry and the pain, words that I can choose to inhabit, words that call forth beauty and joy.

Choice is such a gift. We can choose to believe in grace and so receive it, letting it pour from our mouths and from our fingertips. Or we can choose to live in angst and anger, allowing bitter words to taint our days and nights.

If we choose life and grace, we can find it in a crowded space or in the silence of our mind.

Thank you all for contributing to this discussion. May your words bring forth life and fruit to all who read them…and to you as you listen to that still, small voice that whispers His story in your heart.