I’ve been writing for decades. That sounds cool and all, but it really wasn’t. At least, it would have been cooler if I did it deliberately and methodically. But I would write everywhere. I’d write in fancy journals, little bits of stories I thought of but never completed. I would write in the margins of notebooks while I took notes in school, pieces of dialogue I would lose and eventually forget. I would write in Word Documents, and in drafts in my email, and sometimes on scrap paper. In short, I wrote in various places on various implements and I never had a dedicated writing space – either for myself or for my words. I eventually got sick of having to track down the various snippets of stories I left scattered about me, so I started investing in folders – physical folders for my handwritten pieces and digital folders for my computer-based writings. It was helpful. Very helpful. I liked having a dedicated space for my stories. But I still didn’t have a dedicate space for writing.
I’m not sure why it took me so long to set up a writing desk for myself. Maybe it was because writing was a hobby, and therefore not serious enough to deserve a dedicated space. Maybe it was because I told myself I could invest in a desk when I became a ‘real’ writer (aka, a published author). Maybe it was because I, like many other people who grew up without a whole lot of money, wasn’t used to treating myself to something that had no purpose except for my own pleasure.
Whatever the reasons, it took me twenty-one years of writing to finally give myself a writing space. Now look at it! It’s not fully finished yet, but it’s lovely and charming and so much fun to write at! And I hope, now that I have a dedicated space, I will also dedicate more time to writing… Or at the very least, be better at deadlines.
Naomi McQuown Writes... 