My Writing Space Keeps Shrinking

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Four years ago, my husband and I sold our old Victorian in Chicago’s western suburbs where we raised our four children. We left Illinois for northwest Indiana and moved into a home perched on a sand dune overlooking Lake Michigan. The downsize, geographical switch, and change of pace was liberating. It’s also been the perfect recipe for taking my writing to a different level–from a hobby to a later-in-life second career.

For a dedicated writing space in our new home, I claimed a small room at the top of the stairs. I painted it a bluish green reminiscent of a Tiffany shopping bag. Above a new, sleek glass desk, I hung a favorite acrylic showcasing an Impressionistic spring garden. From an ergonomically designed desk chair, I glean inspiration from the painting, feed an insatiable Epson a diet of clean white paper, and peruse files and resources from the adjacent stack of crammed bookshelves. 

The setup is efficient, intimate, and idyllic, but the best part of my office is the wall of windows. The bank of glass allows me to soak in the sun as it glides across the southern sky. When I write in this niche, it’s almost as if I’m working outdoors. And so, my struggles with theme, word choice, and grammar feel less like a battle and more like a stolen pleasure. From this loft in the clouds, I launched my author website, penned my first blogs, and pitched my local paper for a monthly byline.

Life can be lovely. It’s also dynamic.

On Christmas day in 2017, our married daughter living in Sarasota announced that she was expecting our first grandchild. The notion of escaping the dreary and cold, midwestern winters to spend more time with our growing family in the Sunshine State was a clear-cut decision. Like most snowbirds, we landed in a nice condo. A building with a gulf view with full amenities trumped space concerns.

For a long-time married couple used to spreading out in opposite ends of a single-family residence, the two-bedroom condominium layout begged compromise. My husband nabbed the desk area in the family room, and I ordered a small writing desk for a corner of the master bedroom. To the sounds of the ocean’s surf, I tinkered on my laptop while the southern sun warmed my shoulders. 

Whenever I needed a fresh idea or new perspective, I rode the elevator to the lobby and commandeered the cushy, common area room overlooking the entry gardens. Equipped with its own bathroom, I nicknamed this seldom used space: my other office. While the circumstances are not quite as ideal as my writing lair on the shores of Lake Michigan, it’s been beneficial. Over the course of the two plus years we lived in that apartment, I added weekly blogs to my website and began crafting my memoir about the search for my birth relatives.

Whenever life hits a keynote, expect a downbeat.

When the pandemic shut down the world last March, condo management deemed all the public spaces in our building off limits–the door to my other office would be locked for the foreseeable future. Thus confined, I roamed the limited square footage of our apartment armed with my laptop. When the sun came up, I was ensconced in a nook in the kitchen, editing my memoir. After a lengthy, masked-up morning walk, I shuffled between the bedroom’ small writing desk, a recliner in the den, and a lounge chair on the balcony. Fueled by the coastal sun as a constant and the peripheral ocean view, I scribbled in notebooks or tapped into my laptop. I blogged. I slogged through the final chapters of my memoir. And, I counted the days until spring was in full bloom up north, so that I could return to my perfect, little writing room on the Great Lakes.

The shutdown inserted more family into our household.

Six weeks before our planned return to Indiana, our son and his girlfriend learned that the remainder of their final term at Notre Dame would be entirely virtual. They abandoned the dense university environment for the safety of our home on Lake Michigan. Two weeks after that, my youngest daughter’s D.C. office shut down. Faced with working from home in a city high-rise apartment, elbow-to-elbow with a roommate, she chose to join her brother and ride out the lockdown at the lake house. 

When we arrived from Florida in early May, my son had spread out in my husband’s office and my daughter had made my office her own. In spite of my publishing deadlines, I didn’t have the heart to kick her out. So, I invoked the routine I’d established in Florida. At sunrise, I wrote at the kitchen counter, shifted with the morning light to a game table in the family room, and then at mid-day when the sun was high in the sky, I lifted the bedroom shades, and plopped into a comfy chair with my laptop. Before the heat and humidity of the midwestern summer set in, I submitted my completed memoir to my publisher. A full month before returning to Florida, I reclaimed my writing refuge on the second floor and started outlining my second book.

A year like no other, continues its barrage of inconveniences.

Three days before our annual return to the Sarasota condo, a circulating valve failed on the water heater in the apartment directly above ours. In the dead of night, water streamed into the walls and floors of every unit from the sixth floor down to the lobby. When we arrived to assess the damage, it was clear our home away from home would be uninhabitable for months. While water experts set up commercial fans and ripped out drywall, movers arrived to haul our furnishings and belongings off to storage. Amidst arguing with the insurance company over the timing and scope of the renovation, we hunted for long-term housing.  

With “the season” about to commence, the prospect of finding a place to live was daunting. The stress of the situation shut my writer’s brain down for two full weeks. By a strange stroke of luck, a roomy rental with beach access suddenly became available. Designed with furnishings for vacation living, the unit lacked desk areas and comfy chairs. But, the wall of windows opening out to a small balcony faced south. Natural light with outdoor space–we signed the lease! A week later, we wedged a desk from our condo into the back bedroom for my husband, and I spread out my computer and notebooks at one end of the knotty pine kitchen table. Within days, I was back to blogging and submitting essays on schedule.

I’ve gotten used to the stiff kitchen chair, the Hobby Lobby artwork, and skimpy storage in our temporary quarters. The setup is not ideal: I’m not connected to a printer; I’m not surrounded by my favorite books and resources; The room is not painted my favorite blue; The common areas are not accessible due to the pandemics resurgence. Yet, I’m still honing my authorial voice. In fact, I’m putting out the same amount of content as I did last spring while sheltering in place, and as I did when I returned to the cozy, lake house writing spaces. 

I’ve come to believe that productive writing is less about the quality of the workspace or the size of the writing desk. It’s more about the cultivation of a consistent writing habit regardless of circumstances. For me, a set routine, unobstructed daylight and access to the outdoors has been the key to staving off the dreaded writer’s block.

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