Yes, it's true. For years my writing space has been a card table in the corner of my bedroom and I thought the only way to change that was to get a bigger apartment. But San Francisco has overtaken New York as the most expensive housing rental market, with one bedrooms averaging more than $3,000 a month. That means my family and I will stay in our tiny, rent-controlled space at two-thirds the market rate.
For months my writing partner and I have been meeting in cafes twice a week to write, which has worked well enough (it has kept us writing regularly), but it started to pall. I couldn't afford $8 sandwiches and $3 cups of tea, and often we were shoehorned around a tiny desk with our open laptops shoved back-to-back like two warriors surrounded by a ring of enemies. Then I got a $70 parking ticket for exceeding the two-hour limit, which really frosted my flakes.
So Writing Partner and I started talking about getting our own space, a place where we could commute to like a job. Away from the distractions of home or loud cell-phone talkers and coffee-grinders, we would be more productive. Unfortunately the co-working spaces in San Francisco cater to the tech entrepreneur crowd. These "disrupters" apparently require exposed brick, giant whiteboards, hardwood floors, wired conference rooms, micro-roasted coffee and investors on parade to execute their strategies. All that synergy doesn't come cheap, and at $500 a month for a single lousy desk, such places were way out of our price range.
But my Muse was looking out for me. Maybe she was sick of being squashed into a corner table at Starbucks, too. I found a place on Craigslist, a little painting/office space for $500 a month. It was a wretched little garrett with a single, ground-level window, but we saw the potential. We could paint over the black ceilings and walls, hide that nasty cinderblock corner, cover the pitted concrete floor. Which is exactly what we did, and now we have a tiny studio that I'm beginning to love dearly.
So, here I am: Saturday, February 21, 2015, at 4:15 p.m., typing this in my studio. I’ve had writing spaces before, occasionally whole rooms, but I never had a place outside my home that was just for writing. I feel like I’m starting a new job, which, in effect, was exactly what I was going for. Get in the car or on the bus, travel to the studio, work, then come home. I’ve never had such a clear delineation between writing and home life. I can hear the low, steady hum of the freeway, occasional chatter outside on the street, but I can’t see anything but a patch of blue sky through the white latticework.
It also helps that this place is way cute now. When picking the colors, we wanted bright and energetic rather than subdued and tasteful. This is a creative space, not a serious study. It has a purple door, blue-and-white-striped walls and a pale green panel. Writing Partner has added a gauzy white curtain with drawings of birds and three potted plants. We each have our individual corner.
My corner is pretty sparse for now, which is okay. Just a card table, a chair inherited from the studio’s previous inhabitants and some files in a plastic box. I'm a little underwater with the money right now and I don’t need to spend a bunch. Maybe in a few weeks I can buy a desk. This chair is surprisingly comfortable.
So, it feels like a new job, and in a way it is. I have hired myself to be writer. Here is my office. How do I begin?
We'll see.
Today I submitted a short story to a literary journal for the first time. You'd think I'd passed this particular milestone earlier, but I've always worked on book-length projects. This year I've returned to the short story, which I haven't written since college. I forgot how fun it is.
