Portable Career: The Life of a Writer

Where do you write? Where do you feel the most inspiration? Where does your muse do the most musing?

After the pandemic hit and most of us started working from home, I got into a habit of opting for the comfort of my living room recliner for writing, musing, creating, working, you name it. It’s easy to do because, as writers, most of us can pack the tools of our trade into a single comfy chair, snugged right alongside our rear ends.

Laptop + caffeine + human in chair = writing.

I have a portable career. Everything I need, I can carry in one armload, while toting a steaming latte in the other.

When I compare my favorite recliner to the desk/chair situation I have going on at home, there’s a major difference in comfort levels:

Option 1:

Recliner is placed comfortably in front of wall-sized television and conveniently appointed with uber-soft throw blanket and pillows for dozing.

Option 2:

Office chair rolls across tiled dining room floor like baby deer walking on ice. Have missed approximately 9.5 times and landed flat on my butt. Desk sits directly under AC vent, so day is spent either freezing cold or boiling-lava-hot with vent closed.

Is there a choice, REALLY? Of course I’m gonna aim for the recliner. Every single time!

Here’s the Big ‘But’

Sure, it’s more comfortable, but is it more productive? Depends how you handle your day. Personally, I’ve learned a couple of really big lessons from working in my recliner:

1. My recliner almost always demands live news. (It’s a very needy, yet well-informed, chair.) A working session there goes something like this: Plant butt, turn on CNN, open laptop, start to write, get distracted by incredibly compelling news story, Google information related to aforementioned news story, fall into Google rabbit hole and discover that male seahorses give birth to babies, realize it’s a little chilly in the house, get blanket (just for toes…definitely NOT for a nap), feel eyes grow heavy, accidentally hit ‘recline’ button, give myself permission to doze for 15 minutes…then, wake up to a blank screen and blinking cursor mocking me for my lack of word count.

2. When you choose to work from a centralized location, like the middle of the living room, there’s nowhere to hide. Not from dogs. Not from kids. And not from spouses. I may as well be wearing a sign that says, “Mom’s clinic is open.” or “Ask me where we keep the forks.” In all fairness, I could be looking at sale ads or checking up on the latest celebrity drama on my laptop. I’ve learned over time that no one in my family is clairvoyant, and if I don’t give some sort of indication that I’m working, no one actually picks up on that. Last Christmas, I was gifted an informational and refreshingly blunt pair of socks that tell people to bugger off because I’m writing. Those quickly became my favorite socks, but they were also a hint to me that the other humans in my house honestly have ZERO idea what’s going on when they hear the clickety-clack of my keyboard. My “Informative footwear” is very helpful in this regard.

Finding a Happy Medium

Let’s face it. We are creative creatures, and we can be stubborn. I’m a sit-on-my-desk, write-ideas-on-receipts, get-inspiration-at-midnight kind of girl, so it’s not weird to find me sitting just about anywhere writing. But I’ve learned that I can’t expect the people around me to know what I’m doing and how deeply I need to focus. And I’ve learned that when I really, really need to buckle down and get things done, I need to remove temptation so that I can concentrate on the task at hand.

A Few Solutions & A Much-Needed Power Nap

Here’s what I’m trying to do to change things up and feel more productive, less frustrated, and have fewer interrupty moments by unsuspecting family members who simply want to know what’s for dinner but end up being literary sacrifices instead. My son was recently thrown into a fiery middle-grade volcano (total fiction, I promise!) simply for asking if his new jeans were clean. Steps needed to be taken:

1. I’m changing it up. There’s no WRONG place to work, so do what works for you. I can do fairly low-key work in my comfy recliner. But when it’s time to zero in and focus, to the desk I must go. Unless my clients want to receive a quick write-up on what’s for dinner and why pasta is gross, I’ve learned I need to get in my own space for the serious down-and-dirty writing.

2. I’m jazzing up my desk space. I don’t know a writer who doesn’t love the smell of school supplies. I will do cartwheels for a new stapler and a happy dance for new pens, so you don’t need to tell me twice that a quick way to refresh the old office décor is to replenish old supplies with hip new ones. Erasable scented pens that record your notes? WHAT?! Of course we need that in our lives! Whatever your spruce-up plans are, aim for a comfy office space that makes you WANT to go there. Nobody wants to sit behind a hard-edged, cold desk with a matching (just as hard) chair. Channel your inner Joanna Gaines and give that space some major makeover magic.

3. I’m reminding myself to move. You know how after you’ve been sitting in a chair all day, you stand up and your posterior region has sort of conformed to the shape of the furniture you’ve been occupying? Yeah, that’s NOT our goal. There is no fashion magazine that’s recommending leggings with chair-shaped butt regions. Here’s some insider knowledge: if you’re in a recliner, you’ll want to stay there all day. I tend to stay put for longer periods of time when I’m writing, but your muse will thank you if you get up, move around, and clear your head. You’ll feel better, more energized, and more creative!

4. I’m trying not to do ALL the THINGS at my desk. When it’s lunchtime, get up and have lunch. Same with breaktime. Get up, have a snack, walk the dog for 10 minutes, do a few squats, jump on the trampoline, whatever gets your heartrate pumping, perks you up, and gets you back into the mindset of writing. Or you know what? If you’ve been hitting a wall, working too hard, or just not quite feeling things click, sneak in a guilt-free afternoon power nap. Guaranteed, you’ll have a fresh perspective when you’re rested and refreshed.

The Rules

The bottom line is that there are ZERO rules. If you have a secret list of writer rules written down somewhere, please throw that away right now. If you’ve been given the Holy Grail of Writing Prowess, also throw that away because it’s bullshit.

Every writer is different. Everything every writer writes is different. (Or at least a different version.) If you don’t want to write something different, then go back and finish the rest of that nap you were taking.

So What’s All This?

This is a compendium of challenges, learnings, tips & tricks the Tilted Writer peeps have discovered along the way. Writer, you were made to stand out! Go to your happy writing place — a recliner, a barn, a creekside clearing — and make some sentences. Turn them into stories — and do it all over again.