Where I Write

Where I Write

Where I Write

While I don’t actually write on the swanky old Royal typewriter you see here, I do usually write on the sofa, right in the spot now occupied by the gray kitten. This photograph was taken on a Saturday morning–thus the chaos of toys.

When the cat is sleeping, I sometimes write in the blue chair in the corner. My other writing spot is my bed–which is where I write when it’s really, really cold. I have a home office (pictured below), but I rarely use it. It is, instead, where books, papers, and old notebooks go to be neglected.

If you look closely, you’ll see a blue planter perched precariously on the deck railing outside the window. For many years now, I’ve been trying to grow tomatoes. This blue planter represents the latest attempt. As I’d never had any luck with heirlooms, or with the big, beefy red tomatoes that my uncle grows in Mississippi, I decided to try out some cherry tomoatoes. It worked! Now, if we make our salads very, very tiny, my husband and I can eat homegrown tomatoes. That is something.

About that Royal: It’s a prop, purchased at the goodwill. When I was in college, I did write my stories on a Brother selectric word processing typewriter with a window the size of half a dollar bill. I thought it was the fanciest thing on earth. But I never wrote on anything quite so manual as this beautiful Royal.

And here I am, totally pretending to write in my home office. Notice the pencil cup–a coffee can from one of my favorite spots on earth–the Cafe du Monde. We used to skip school to drive to New Orleans and eat beignets, otherwise known as French doughnuts, which made us feel very cosmopolitan. The coffee cup is from another favorite spot, Zabar’s on the Upper West Side, where my husband and I used to go for bagels on Saturday mornings when we were living in New York in the late nineties.

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