I need a door

I’m still working my way through Stephen King’s On Writing and I’m picking up a lot of important tidbits as I go.

Two things that stuck out this morning: A writer needs a door – that closes – on their office/workspace in order to shut out the world and the distractions of life. Oh well. I don’t have a door. I want one, but that would mean building a new wall in my house in which to put said door. If I ever make enough money as a writer to afford a new wall to put my door in, I think I’ll probably just opt to move to a new house.

I realize not having a door on my home office [it’s literally in the center of the house, a pass through room between the kitchen/living room area and the bedrooms] makes it a lot harder for me to get work done. I’ve worked in this space for about seven years now, as a medical transcriptionist, business manager of my home, and a writer. It has not been easy. Not only do I not have a door, I do have a window that looks out on the street and I’m nosy, so I peak through the curtains every once in a while to eyeball someone pulling up outside, or track the progress of the mailman as he crosses my front yard on his rounds. I’m bad. But, I’ve managed to get this far so I guess I can continue for now. It’s not like I have much choice unless I evict one of the kids from their bedroom or move into the basement, which is chilly and often spidery and just too remote for me. I hope Mr. King will understand – though he’d probably LOVE my basement. I bet it might even give him an idea for a best-cellar.

The other thing Mr. King mentions in his memoir is that he writes by the seat of his pants. He doesn’t say this in so many words but the drift is there. He doesn’t plot. He comes up with ideas, snippets, sometimes half-remembered dreams that he turns into stories by sitting down and writing them and seeing where they take him. There’s no Bible of character sketches, no storyboard or stack of colored index cards detailing GMC. He just writes.

I have to say Whew! to that. I was beginning to wonder if being a pantser was going to be by downfall. My inability to plan a story step by step before I write it had me worried that I might be missing a vital skill for a novelist, but according to Stephen King, this is not so. I have the tools I need and I have a little more than basic understanding of how to use them. The only thing I still seem to lack is enough time to get everything down on paper – and a door.