Writers' rooms: Does your reality match the fantasy?

Fixer-upper for a writer, originally uploaded by scrollwork.

I was never one for public blogging. It sounds too close to public flogging. Coffee shop composing? Shudder. I could never write with someone possibly looking over my shoulder. I tried bookstore blogging once—the books and mags were much more interesting than whatever I had going on inside my head. I fled my laptop without finishing a single post.

Still, the idea of a writer's enclave strikes me as romantic. I snapped the picture of the turret-shaped structure above with that in mind. For all I know it could be a guard house. Or a parking attendant's station. Who knows if it really would spark inspiration? I might be too self-reflective: "Look at me, sitting in this perfect little spot, doesn't it look like I'm a bona fide writer?" 


Apparently, the scene in which writers create their scenes holds much fascination for people. The Guardian, a U.K. publication, featured a few of them. What they said about their spaces was as revealing as the photos. I had a "me too!" moment over these ones. (You can click on the writers' names to see the full interview and pictures.)

Anyone who works at home needs a refuge from the rest of the household, as far from the house as possible, and definitely without a phone. Mine is in one corner of the garden, overlooking a vegetable patch and young orchard, and I feel great happiness in it. I am hassled only by the cat - a catflap would reduce the inconvenience.

Louis de Bernieres

It doesn't look very tidy, but from childhood I have loved provisionality in a room, something thrown together…

Sebastian Barry 

I have a fair assortment of pictures and cards, too. They help engender words.

Lisa Appignanesi 

I use Jstor and Google constantly, so that sitting here, surrounded by my knick-knacks and fetish objects, I am both at peace and fully connected to the world outside. I don't mind being on my own in this little world for hours on end.

Justin Cartwright

After glimpsing their spots, I was shamed into putting a token amount of effort into my own spot.

I noticed most of these writers had books nearby. My desk faced a blank wall in the dining room. I don't like stockpiling books or CDs. I borrow them from the library and promptly usher them out. I never re-read nor re-watch anything, so owning them would be pointless. But we are not without a bookworm in the house. The hubby's secret packrat tendencies are evident in the piles of books that sit at his desk and clutter the couch. We have a presentable enough bookcase in the living room, which has the added photogenic feature of being adjacent to a window. Voila! Instant blog photo opp and YouTube opp. 

Drool away...and then tell me in the comments section what your creative space looks like, if and how you want to change it.

An egg, a leg, and the wild swing of life online

For someone who avoided Facebook for years, I've taken a ride on the wild side of online networking lately. Some of my encounters have made me want to swing out as far as I can, let go of the hand grips, and drop off the face of cyberspace.


Quite unexpectedly, I've been recruited into a group that posts pictures of Females in Fishnets; "rewarded" for documenting a trauma-induced aversion to food blogging; lectured on copyright infringement; and reminded that I am quite possibly losing my spunk and spark as an older worker overshadowed by go-get-'em Gen Y'ers. All in the last week or so.


My real life seems idyllic and pastoral in comparison, phew. Thank God I have one!


Let me explain. I've been site-hopping like a tourist with hot Vegas winnings. I was a little drunk on the idea of being a bonafide though yet undiscovered online brand, what with the soft opening of my Swoosh by Scrollwork shop on etsy (shameless plug! but it's my blog) and the ensuing attention paid to my young blog (there I go again!)


There's real-time life, and there's the carefully crafted online realm. I spent a lot of time in the latter last week. Escapism always held sway over me, even as a child. I read each volume of the World Book Encyclopedia one summer— but only the fairy tale section. By the way, a moment of silence for the demise of hard copy encyclopedia...I miss the smell of our musty home library.


At the University of Santo Tomas (Manila) as a Lit major, I joined a debate about whether or not contemporary literature should function as a magnifying lens on society's ills. I pressed for greater accountability for the journalists, leaving us "art for art's sake" writers free to pursue our escapist concerns. I thought I was in my element, too, silencing the cavernous auditorium with my pithy opinion, until a commenter afterward noted that he stopped chitchatting just to hear my deep voice. He didn't remember a word I had said. I had been pleading for permission to escape the burden of excoriating martial law and the corrupt Marcos regime, and my audience had already escaped that humid afternoon via my voice. 


As an adult I am ever on the lookout for various avenues to transcend the right now. How could I resist the siren song of the three enchanting W's for very long? www-dot-anywhere-but-here took me places in guises of my choosing.


So last week I was on Flickr, a photo-sharing site; Darren Rowse Digital Photography School; etsy, a vintage and handmade global market; and Brazen Careerist, a Gen Y-pandering (oops! too harsh?) version of LinkedIn.


Does this girl not have a day job, you're wondering. Um, no. I work evenings, OK? And please, it's woman, not girl. Just sayin'.

• On Flickr I posted a picture of my leg right after I took off some really tight fishnet stockings that I'd worn while teaching dance for three hours. To me it was photojournalism. To others it was something else, apparently.

• On Rowse's DPS site I responded to the weekly assignment, "Still Life: Food" with an egg picture I had snapped for an earlier post, My first poached egg, and why I won't blog about food.

• On etsy I asked sellers how they'd react if I used a photo of one of their wares on my blog without asking for permission.

• On Brazen Careerist I responded to a thoughtful young man's query on how best to encourage older workers to regain their gusto for work.

If you went purely by the personas I concocted/seem to have been assigned by these various Internet communities, I am simultaneously:


A) A pupil-dilating exhibitionist with a predilection for racy hosiery;

B) A blundering idiot in the hallowed blogworld of foodies—and therefore a freak show; 
(with 1,574 gawkers to date)


C) A blogger with a pitiful following and possibly objectionable content;
(On the flip side, I might also be the blogger whom fellow etsy sellers would appreciate to death for featuring a picture of their work)


D) A wizened baby boomer with a cautionary tale for today's up-and-comers.
"Grandma's Table" tells the tale of an impatient adult son who banishes his feeble mother from the dining table because she shakes and spills things. She has to eat alone by the broom closet. The son has a come-to-Jesus moment when he asks his block-building daughter what she's making and she replies, "A table for you and Mommy for when you get old." Memo to the Gen Y'ers: What goes around comes around.


What did I learn from my forays into these villages? 

• Flickr viewers do not read blogs. At least not mine. If they did, I'd have seen a spike in my page views from the 1,500+ egg spectators.
• Etsy sellers are a feisty, candid, opinionated bunch. Kinda' like me.
• Some Gen Y'ers are mature leaders I would love to work with; some are full of themselves. Just like the generation I'm a part of, and generations to come.
• People who don't know me but read my online comments are more likely to sign up as followers of my blog than people who personally know me but secretly dismiss my blogging as a diversion from real life and the unsavory reality of unemployment. To the former, a cup of virtual tea; to the latter, to quote an etsy seller, "A fart in your general direction."

An autobiography told in clothes and pictures

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

— Mark Twain 

I was engulfed by men in uniform when I was growing up. For seven years, we lived in Nichols (now Villamor) Air Base in the Philippines, where Dad was a colonel. Every morning we were trundled off to school in a weapons carrier with an olive green canvas roof that leaked when it rained—which was six months of the year. The drivers were enlisted men of various rank. We called all of them "Sarge." I never did learn to distinguish the stripes on their sleeves.

I've lived 15 years in uniform, all while in school. In mid-life, it would become the itch I needed to scratch, the ditch I clambered to escape.

I went to three different elementary schools and wore three uniforms. I found a picture of myself with my two best friends in the first grade.

You are not having a pre-migraine aura. I tinkered with the picture to protect the identities of my chums. And anyway I've forgotten their identities so I can't very well ask them for permission.

My brother and I were in the choir during our nerdy childhood. I tried disguising his face with more digital tweaking, but his head looked like a giant peppermint lollipop when I was done. So I cropped him out except for his sleeve. I may have forgotten to put on pants that Sunday.

Two high schools, two more uniforms. Add to those the army fatigues required every Friday during compulsory military training my last two years of high school. We all cropped our hair to show the nape. This was in the '70s. No Farrah Fawcett hair for us. May she R.I.P.

All through high school, we wore boys' leather shoes with white socks. I see I've done a lousy job of cropping these photos to where you can't see them. We polished those puppies to a mirror shine, trust me.

Plus there was the Girl Scout uniform. I wore it for a day so I could go on a scouts-only field trip to the lake. Not my idea! Someone lent me her extra uniform. It's the only time I ever pretended to be someone I wasn't. That is, someone who knew how to swim. I didn't learn until I was 17.

Then a uniform through four years of college: That makes a total of nine.

My uniforms were either green, blue and white, or red and white gingham. To this day I will never buy anything with red and white gingham. The term, "back to school" induces nightmares. I dream I'm wandering the halls unable to find my classroom, unprepared for final exam, or unable to get home after dark. Why have I never mentioned this to my therapist?

Fashion was a remote concept to me then. What would've been the point? When would I have worn anything other than a uniform or a house dress and flip-flops? My parents would never have allowed me to go to parties. It never occurred to me to ask. I don't remember ever being asked to one, anyhow, so the situation never presented itself.

It dawns on me now how simple my life was. All those years spent with my nose between a book. I might've been a wallflower, but since I never partied only to sit dances out, who could tell? Who knew I'd end up a dance teacher in mid-life?