The Magical Writing Nook

I’m pretty sure my new writing nook-to-be has magical properties. Even without its spectacular view (right now the window holes are tarped over, it’s raining).

 

Matt’s off at a how-to-tile-workshop so he feels manly and learns how to install the slate bathroom floor. As soon as he left I changed the laundry to the dryer, crated the dogs (sorry puggles!), grabbed my writer’s notebook, a towel, my I-pod, chapstick, and water and made my way up to the addition. I’ve been dying to try out the writing energy in my nook-to-be.

And that’s when I discovered its magical properties. I was totally prepared to be covered in sawdust – after all, the whole addition is a sawdust factory and there’s a wood shavings trail a la Hansel and Gretel from the addition through the rest of the house to the door the contractors use. That’s why I brought the towel, to sit on. And that’s why I brought my notebook and left my laptop (Huey) safely in a sawdust-free spot. After all, I’m washable, Huey’s not.

But when I got up here, I discovered something – the writing nook is miraculously the only sawdust-free section of the floor! I still spread out my towel as butt padding and settled myself down to lean against the frame – which is conveniently spaced ideally as a shoulder rest. I knew I was going to love writing up here! (Okay, I’ll admit, I’m rather easy to please!)

Now I can’t wait until it features built in bookshelves and my customized writing desk and cushy window seat. I can’t quite picture it in this room yet (because of the lack of visual-spatialness in my brain), but I can picture it perfectly in my head.

This tends to be where I get in trouble – I picture things so vividly in my head and then get frustrated when they don’t come to be in exactly the same way in the world outside my brain.

But I can’t get too annoyed with these issues in translation or my ability to imagine, because these are things I rely on so much as a writer, creating people and settings so realistic in my head that I just have to write them down and make them real.

And isn’t that the best part of books, when you get so attached to a character that you’re absolutely depressed on the last page because you’ll miss them? Authors who create characters that realistic are my heroes – I fell in such a funk when I finished the last Harry Potter and the final Twilight book. I’m already anticipating the depression I’ll feel after I read Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock because I love all the Dairy Queen characters.

This is the feeling I strive to create in my own writing, a sense of I-wish-Tessa-was-real-and-my-best-friend, or Where’s-my-real-life-version-of-Cole?-ness.

The magical properties of the future-nook apparently even extend to my I-pod. It’s been selecting a wicked awesome shuffle mix since I’ve been up here. Can you imagine how much more magical it will be when it has actual walls and windows and is finished?

I can’t wait. I mean literally, I can’t wait. I woke up at 7 am this morning and my first conscious thought was I’ve got to go look at the addition again – you know, in case anything had magically changed overnight…

… It’s going to be a long five weeks.