A Writer's Office

Some people say “home is where the heart is.” With a writer, it can be said that your office is where you are.” Actually, a writer can work in several kinds of offices and many of us do that. In the “ideal” world, the writer might have one specified office in their home or in an office building where they do all of their work. They completely separate their writing life from any other aspects of their life. This is where everything related to their work is located. Items here might include their research materials, reference books, file cabinets, desk and chair, computer system and monitor(s), printer, assorted supplies, and back-up disks.

If a writer is lucky she may have a designated room in her home that she can call her own. More likely she shares that room with other members of her family. You can be creative about claiming part of such a space into “your” writing area. I have such a room in my house, at one end of our long living room. I’ve managed to separate my writing space off by adding a room divider to hide my desk and some of my bookcases. I chose a divider that has places for photographs on one side, which I’ve filled with family photos. It blends in nicely with the rest of the room and is really a conversation piece, too. Someday, when I have spare time, I plan to add a way to hang writing-related photos on the side facing the writing space. Such things as character photos, pictures or brochures of settings, maps of the ranch layout I’m using or of the general area, etc.

Some of us also have what I call “mobile” offices as well. My mobile office includes having several different bags to carry my laptop within, each for varying amounts of mobile need. When I want to sit for a while in a coffee shop, on a bench in the park, or in some other public place, I use a simple, slim bag to carry no more than my laptop, flash drive back-up, and maybe the electrical cord to work a little longer.

I have a medium-sized bag that carries a file of research material, a pad of paper and a couple of pens as well as my laptop, back-up drive, and cord. This is for a little longer stay in a coffee shop part of a bookstore or other such place to sit comfortably for a while.

When I’m travelling, I use a larger bag on wheels to hold the laptop, back-up disks, cords, files of reference materials for the project to be worked on, and anything else fairly small to take on the trip. Since I fly a lot I really like having the bag on wheels. Laptops, no matter how small, get heavy when you’re trying to race between terminals in an airport. But I also don’t want a bag that is more than twelve inches deep. I have long legs and seat space is limited in coach. I prefer to put my bag in the overhead and not where my feet need to go. Bags with more depth than twelve inches can be a real pain to cram into the overhead space, particularly on the smaller planes.

Several of my writing friends are now using those smaller, lightweight netbooks as another kind of mobile office. These are a good secondary computer for people on the go, or for a writer not needing to work for hours on a writing project. They were mainly designed for quick, easy connections to e-mail, for web browsing and for lightweight computing. They are small and easy to put in a bigger purse, have a long battery life of between 8 and 10.5 hours, and they have several USB ports for backing up work to download on a bigger computer later. Most netbooks come preloaded with Windows XP and some with a trial version of Microsoft Office Home.

The point is that a writer can have many choices of an office and may use more than one type. We are creative people, including with our work space.