A Change in Setting Revealed

In November I experienced A Change in Setting. I packed up my writing space––my table and chair, fifty boxes of books (and their bookcases), a filing cabinet, lamps, framed photos, and writerly what-have-you. As I did so, I didn’t know where I would resume my work. Where I would unpack was a mystery. I loaded all but a couple boxes of books and a messenger bag into a storage unit for several weeks, and waited. 

It is now January and I sit at that same writing table, in that same chair, in a different room.

My new writing space is in an upstairs bedroom off a loft living room. It has a cedar-lined window seat overlooking a quiet residential street. There is a tree just outside the window and past it the roofs of houses. Just beyond the roofs lays the practice range of a local golf course. Opposite my study, also off the loft, is my wife’s craft room, her dedicated space for creative work.

This new writing space isn’t yet set up. In one corner, along one wall, is my standing desk, where I do my day job. The other walls are lined with empty bookshelves. My writing table has been assembled and stands empty in the center of the room. Much organizing and setting of the room lies ahead. The bones of a sense of place lack flesh just yet.

But, the greatest mystery of this new place is in what work will be produced here. What writing will leave this place and go out into the reading world? This is the great unknown. My last writing space saw seventeen years of productivity, including five years of grad school and one novel. I could have predicted none of that. I trust this new space holds as much potential and, Deo volente, as many years. Here’s to what awaits the making.