An (Unorganized) Room of My Own

Over the years, I’ve been told by well-meaning friends and business colleagues, "you're the most organized person I know.” Truly, I cringe when people say this. Though they are probably talking about being mentally organized, I always hear it as being physically organized. And that's the problem.
First, because it’s certainly not true. Second, because I don’t aspire to it. Third, and most important, because I don’t consider it a compliment.
Taking these three objections in reverse order:
(3) I have always equated extreme organization with negative characteristics -- being closed-minded, dull, lacking in curiosity, creatively stuck, and a lot of other not-so-great traits which of course intellectually I know cannot be so easily assigned to all organized persons. Still, you can understand how the “most organized person I know” comment would drive me a little crazy. And feel more like a judgment than high praise.
(2) I don’t particularly want to be that organized; I always wanted to be creatively quirky (see above), and I suppose to rebel against an upbringing during which I constantly heard, "put that away," "get this out of here," and "why is this here?" So I've sort of become someone for whom once physical objects are neatly and logically stored away from sight (a file folder, notebook, photos, book), they are forgotten. The notes on a potential new essay? Once inside a folder, tucked in a drawer, will easily slip from the part of my brain where urgency resides. (Funny how this does not seem to happen when I slip the secret stash of peanut butter fudge behind the seldom used condiments in the back of the basement refrigerator, but I digress.)
(1) It’s not true. I am NOT as (physically) organized as people seem to think based on other factors. See for yourself. These photos are of my a few areas of my office as it appears this morning. And yes, I do realize how extremely lucky I am to have this generous and private room of my own, and the guilt over how I've let it get overrun is huge.


Oh, I can find what I need; but often it goes like this: Let’s see, the last time I saw that proposal/clipping/notebook/magazine/business card was when we had that barbecue and I showed it to Mary along with the advance copy of such-and-so's book, so it’s probably on (or near) the shelf where I keep ARCs. Or not.
So you can see how my leave-it-all-out-where-I-can-see-it methodology can be a time-waster, and frankly, visually annoying. Which is why over the next week or so I am going to make a major organizational assault on my office. To keep myself accountable, I will post the “after” photos.
As for why so many think I deserve a medal from the Organization Olympics, maybe some folks mistake other characteristics for organization, such as being punctual and prepared, being well-researched and curious, having a good memory and keeping copious notes, planning ahead and anticipating problems, being resourceful and asking enough questions to amass a mass of both useful knowledge and useless information.
Not that I’m all those things. But toss a few of them together, along with a tendency to be rather intolerant of disorganization in others, and maybe that’s where the overly organized label derives.

So I'm asking – what are your best tips for organizing the office of a writer/editor/consultant/teacher? Obviously I need them.

Update: The after photos and post are here.

Writers' Houses, Cash Flow and the Geography of Creativity

And now, it's Mark Twain's house on the chopping block – maybe. Recently, it was Edith Wharton's house, also running out of funds. And so, I've been asking myself how much – and indeed whether – the houses of accomplished, revered writers matter. Is it important to keep them open for visitors, scholars, and tourists who have a vague recollection of having once read at least one of an author's great works or perhaps simply bored on a rainy vacation day and heeding the advice of a bed-and-breakfast owner?

I can recall being mesmerized, as a teenager, to be in Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon, but then I was equally awed standing over his grave marker. And had I known then how very little time The Bard actually spent in the Avon house, that he wrote mostly in boarding houses in dicey sections of London, I might have felt differently. Then again, I was awfully young.

When I travel, I do make an effort to stop in at any important writers' houses along the way, but usually only if they fall right in to my path; I can't say I make it an integral part of my trip, like a writer acquaintance of mine does. I don't keep track of which and how many I've seen and nor am I devoted to the pursuit, as others seem to be. But I've been wondering lately if either I've been remiss, if the place where a writer's most intriguing work happened is more important than I've yet to understand? Surely that must be partly true, or else those who are pouring selfless amounts of time and energy into raising funds to preserve writers' abodes are missing the point and I'm pretty sure they're not.

Does it matter – to history, to modern day writers, to literature in general – where a writer composed the best work of a career? And if it does, why? For inspiration? Motivation? To allow a deeper understanding of the writer's frames of reference? For the sheer good will toward literary arts generated by a well-preserved, revered site? These are all good and noble reasons, of course. I'm just not sure shrines are the right idea when it comes to promoting a healthy appreciation of literature among the general population.

Among writers, is place paramount? What do you think?

Some writers will tell you that where one works is incidental; that the place that matters, the one you need to be in, in order to write well, is the one you create in your own head. Others insist that one's writing space is all, that without their physical surroundings, the work of some of history's best writers would have gone nowhere.

There's a distinction I suppose between where one writes – an attic office, a corner of the basement, a shared studio away from home, on the 7:10 a.m.train, on the dining room table or edge of the bed – and the home a legendary writer has inhabited for a good chunk of their most productive writing years.

I saw Margaret Mitchell's tiny table and typewriter (always covered with a cloth when not in use) on a side wall of her extremely small apartment, when I visited Atlanta for a wedding a few years ago. It was at a time when I already had an unused bedroom in my house – a real room of my own -- to write in, but felt held back by the clutter, the proximity to my kids' antics, an older computer, a cranky radiator. Excuses, of course. Seeing Mitchell's "work space," I knew that what she was looking at when she wrote Gone With The Wind was hardly as important as the place she was at in her head.

A conversation with a noted memoirist not long after that convinced me that, while I could write anywhere, why not create inside my room (which hundreds of writers would no doubt be jealous of) a writing space that fed me? And so I did, tossing out boxes of detritus from my former work life as a public relations specialist, lining the walls with bookcases, upgrading my computer and -- closing the door. No writers will ever trek to my suburban colonial as they do to the homes of literary legends, but that's okay. It works for me. I even have a window with a nice view of my little neighborhood.

Which makes me think about where writers work as much more than a room; a writer's home is also about the rhythms of their household, the outside view, the milieu of their neighborhood, the social and cultural and historical nuances of their community and region, and the natural geography in which their particular house exists. Maybe for some, seeing where a writer sat while crafting a work you admire can translate – into inspiration, understanding, and a kinship. The creative process is still mysterious to me and the influence of place is something I don't quite understand myself. Why can I write most insightfully about my family when I am away from them? Why does being isolated for a writing retreat help coax essays with pages and pages of dialogue and a cache of characters?

I'm interested in seeing where writers lived, not so much because I think I'll learn some important insight that will make me a better writer, but simply because it's fascinating, often in a strangely ironic way, to see where anyone creates anything: The horror writer looked out on a placid farming vista. The author of romantic sagas had a cemetery out their back gate. The science fiction writer refused to move up from legal pads to an electric typewriter. The author of children's' books about animals barred pets from her writing nook.

But I'm equally entranced by visiting historic houses of the non-literary. The inventor of the telegraph machine which enabled Morse Code transmissions? His house revealed no more technological advances than any other house of the times, yet one has to wonder if perhaps the self-sufficient, closed world of his family's enclave, encompassing house, farm, and factory, fueled his desire to devise a way to move at least messages beyond the fences that bordered their hundreds of acres?



Do I think I'll be a better writer from walking the same floorboards as Twain or Wharton? No more than an amateur musician thinks they'll hit gold because they saw Graceland. But I still want to walk that floor, touch that desk, look out that window. And I can't precisely say why.

Still, it it hadn't landed in the pages of the New York Times, I probably wouldn't notice if the houses of some of America's most revered literary artists were, one by one, foreclosed, sold, turned into condos, or a pricey rehab center (all possibilities having been mentioned). Perhaps I should be embarrassed about that, but I also don't think I'm alone; unless one is a huge fan of a particular writer, the location, even the continued existence of their home, much less whether it's open for visitors, is probably unknown to you. And while I'd rather see these sites remain open, I'll probably be more likely, with my very limited funds earmarked for literary pursuits, to buy another book or book myself at another writing conference, rather than donate to the cause. Do I hope some deep-pocketed foundation or institution or individual more reverential or civic-minded than I saves these houses? You bet.

But I do wonder: Would all the time, energy, money and effort that would have to be poured into such a feat, do just slightly more good if it were targeted at getting people – not just writers – to read the works that were once written there?