The start of 2017 has seen me ‘prepping’ for a whole lot of book writing, with plans (in concrete, and written in blood, I swear) to publish six books by December. I’ve organized, prepared, reorganized my whole approach to social media and cut back on how many ‘things’ I need to keep updated. (Hence why this blog page is now the home of me, my alter ego Leah Dempster, and my editing counterpart The Pedantic Punctuator – one blog is much easier to focus on than three.)
I got a weekly diary, planned out my writing/editing/publishing timetable, gave myself strict instructions on how many words a day would be written, and this week was set aside for ‘prepping’, before ‘writing’.
Hence why it started with a desk.
We have a little study in our new house, which I share with the Darling Husband. When I say the study is little, I mean tiny. Minuscule. And it is filled with computer equipment, bookshelves, printers and all my crafting supplies. (I used to do craft, until I started editing for a living, and writing books in between edits, so now I have a lot of craft supplies, which take up a lot of space, which require regular dusting, but otherwise don’t come out much.) And my Darling Husband, although he’s the love of my life, is the antithesis to my OCD Bipolar nuttiness in that he keeps all his stuff EVERYWHERE… He is a lover of flat surfaces and covers them all.
Which leads to that desk issue.
Part of the ‘getting ready for my big 2017 writing projects’ is that I wanted a little space to do my writing. I had it in our old house, because I had my little desk in our bedroom, with a potted plant, a cute little lantern, a candle and it was… my space. In the new house, we made the decision to share the study, because there wasn’t quite enough room in the bedroom. But the prospect of trying to write in the study, with all that… stuff…
I knew it would never work. I’d be more inclined to start tidying up than do any productive writing. So I woke up yesterday morning and decided to move the desk.
But first, I needed to rearrange some of the kitchen.
Why I hear you ask? Well, it began with a need to make some space in the linen cupboard, because I decided that to get the desk out of the study and into our bedroom, I needed to get some of the stuff out of the study. And while I was at it, I might as well begin organizing the study a little better because you know how it is when you move into a house, and you get to that point where you’re sick of unpacking and things just start getting shoved into the rooms willy-nilly? The study kind of ended up like that.
So I wanted to reorganize some stuff in the kitchen, to fit the extra kitchen stuff which had collected in half of the linen cupboard, so that I could move some stuff into the linen cupboard from the study, and then I could get the desk out and into our bedroom
Simple.
But then while I was at it, I had a brainwave. We recently inherited a wonderful display cabinet from BIL & SIL, and we were considering getting rid of our old cabinet, but then I had a thought. I could use the old cabinet in the study for better organization! And get the desk out of the room, and while I was at it, completely rearrange all the shelves!
Perfect.
So consequently, to get my little desk out of the study and seven feet down the hallway and into our bedroom, I moved kitchen stuff around, got kitchen stuff out of the linen cupboard and got it into kitchen cupboards, moved blankets and things out of the laundry cupboards and into the linen cupboard, moved crafty stuff out of the study and into the laundry cupboards… and got the desk out of the study and set up in our bedroom. Where it looks beautiful, and it’s my own little space and I’m going to be very happy writing in there with the morning sun streaming in through the window.
Which left me with a study which looks like a bomb had hit, shelves half-filled, other shelves empty, a filing cabinet which didn’t look right where it was, and numerous stuffed toys (I’m an addict) which needed to be organized.
So it turns out, moving my little ‘writing space’ into the other room constituted an all day marathon, ‘voluntolding’ the help of Son # 2 and Son #3 to help lift the really heavy stuff, and completely rearranging the kitchen, the linen cupboard, the laundry cupboards, the study and our bedroom to make it all ‘work’.
Mission accomplished! And now, I’m ready for Monday to roll around because I’m all ready to write!
D.S. Williams 