Where I Write

I have been following a blog I recently found called Writing In Style that a writer named Melissa March puts out. She invited bloggers to submit a post about where they write.

I think that where you write is so important that I have used a photo of my desk to illustrate my blog. It took me a long time to get the kind of space I wanted, one that is private and has bookshelves to hold the literature, poetry, essay anthologies, and travel books from the library that is literally distributed throughout our house. (My husband is a retired psych and philosophy professor who was so traumatized by selling his set of Great Books back in the 70s that he hasn't let a book go since.)

My writing space reflects who I am at this point in my life. The desk area you see has a shelf of the books I need at hand, my MLA Handbook, Oxford Dictionary (still prefer both resources in book form), and collection of writing books and memoirs; selected images that inspire me and items that have become talismans over the years: the porcelain cat bookends a favorite cousin (now alive only in memory) gave me 30 years ago; an hourglass from my sister; two antique Japanese lacquer boxes for batteries and paper clips; mementos from a former life in Japan and Europe; photographs of those I love.



In the corner is a Japanese doll that has accompanied me from Japan to England to France and back to Arizona where I started out from in 1980. I named her Kaoru. Above Kaoru are prints in the style of Utamaro (one day I will have them appraised) given to me by the widow of a friend who picked them up in Tokyo in the 1960s.


Behind me near the window is my easy chair, an inheritance from my parents' house. The Egyptian throw makes it mine.


At my back are the shelves of poetry and novels I have loved over the years, and art works that have called out to me.

I live in Arizona and have resonated deeply with the Mexican culture here since I was a kid. The rugs thrown here and there are Zapotec rugs from the Yucatan Peninsula.

This is where I write. I will be checking back on Melissa's blog to see what other writers have done.