Snowed In, Again

I'm writing this inside of a house that, until recently, was buried under about 30+ inches of snow. My Corgi is outside, running through valleys and climbing mountains in my backyard. I'm off work; so is my wife, which is a minor miracle all by itself. She's upstairs playing The Sims 3, and more power to her.

And now the stinking dog is inside and barking at something at the front door that is invisible to human eyes, and my train of thought has just derailed into a canyon. So let's talk about writing space.

I have an office space I share with my wife, which we use mostly to store books. My computer, a decade-old Dell, sits on a venerable computer desk which I half expect to fall apart this year. But it's tall, which is important when you're 6'3" and coping with chronic neck strain. I keep the monitor on top of two of Stephen King's thicker hardbacks. I have a black office chair that came from Target - not quite tall enough to give me good neck support, but comfortable.

Call me picky, but when I get on a really good writing jag, I am inevitably sitting at that desk. It'll be late at night, the dog will be asleep (read: downstairs, not barking), and most likely the wife will be asleep as well (read: not in the office, most likely in bed). I'll have a nice set of behind-the-ear headphones on, feeding me rock or classical or whatever my mood dictates.

And when I'm not at my desk? Well, I've been snowed in all weekend, and I've tried to work from a laptop in my living room, but the demands of my dog and the (quite reasonable) demands of my wife and the crick in my neck I get from looking down at my monitor and the damned wrist strain have added up to the end result that the best writing I've gotten done has been upstairs, late at night, at my desk. Just like any other day, when I'm at work for twelve hours and burning sleep to get things written down.

I guess the point is that more "writing time" isn't necessarily going to translate to more writing, at least for me. My brain is wired to produce at X time of day, and hasn't taken kindly to my prodding it for words when it thinks it should be sleeping.

Then again, of course, it did just grant me this blog post. Which can be taken one way or the other, really.

--David

Author's Log

Scribbled down some story ideas while watching the Super Bowl, which was at least a tense game up until the last three minutes, but something of a failure when it came to commercials. Also got to work on a third synopsis revision - it is getting better each time, I promise...

Current Reading

Just finished reading Furies of Calderon, the first book in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera. A good fantasy story and a great way to kick off a finite series - it leaves the reader with plenty of questions, but resolves the story of the first book in a wholly satisfying way. Plan on picking up the next book in the series as soon as I get a chance, but for now I'm still working on the Inheritance trilogy.