Unfortunately, that means that I have shut down my computer for the duration.
No, I’m not vacationing in Iowa, but years ago I visited there long enough to buy this snappy postcard. In all seriousness, Iowa is a really nice place. In fact, I would live in Iowa if it was only located near anything. Anything at all. Work on that, Iowa, won’t you? Just get near something and I’m all yours!
While I’m gone, please do check out some of my old posts. I’ve always kinda liked this one.
And – just because – please enjoy my drawing of a happy pig.
This sketch is brought to you courtesy of the long lines at the DMV.
Do feel free to leave me a comment, by the way. I do so love those. I will answer every one of them upon my return. And here’s a prompt: What is your favorite wild animal and why?
See you next week!
6/22: I’m back! And how nice it is to come home to so many likes and comments! It is truly a Sally Field moment. I’ll write up a new post soon.
This image courtesy of the fine fellow at merit badger.
During my tenure as a newspaper reporter I worked under three editors.
My third and last editor, Jerry, was an all-around great guy.
I was so devoted to my second editor, an old-timer named Jack, that I would’ve followed him almost to the gates of hell. (I would’ve driven him maybe seven eighths of the way there. That’s pretty much where my devotion to any boss ends, I think.) My point is Jack was the best boss I ever had.
My very first editor, on the other hand, was someone I wanted to shove into oncoming traffic.
Let’s say his name was Dan. He had many failings, but the worst, in my view, was his tone of voice. That voice, accompanied by a cocked eyebrow, made me feel as dumb as dirt. To be fair, I was dumb. I was a journalism greenhorn. But I already knew this without all of Dan’s nasty little reminders. What I needed from my editor was advice and guidance. That was not Dan’s strong suit.
My editor was a lot like this guy – only not as nice.
What really got my dander up, however, was the way Dan hacked away at my prose. One piece I wrote, about a nasty and tempestuous council meeting, was edited to make the proceedings look like an English garden party.
I stormed up to Dan’s desk. “What did you do to this?”
“I got rid of all your editorializing,” he said in that tone of his. “And you’re welcome.”
Ooh, I so wanted to knock those cocked eyebrows off his smug little face. “Editorializing? Where? Where was I editorializing?”
“The adverbs,” he replied. His tone suggested that I was more than welcome to add “stupid” to the end of his quote.
Then he waved me away. Dan had more important things to do now.
I sat at my desk and seethed. What a jerk. I wasn’t editorializing, I was reporting. I am a reporter, right? I was doing my job. That councilman said what he said and he said it “angrily.” I was there. I saw it. The guy was speaking through gritted teeth. His face was beet red. His hands were balled up into little fists. That’s “angrily!” What else could it be?
Then I had an epiphany.
Why, I wondered, didn’t I mention the gritted teeth and the red face and the balled fists in my story? That would’ve communicated angry much better than my “angrily.” And those little physical details really do paint a nice picture, don’t they? They sort of put you there in the room. You can almost see Mr. Councilman frothing at the mouth. My ambiguous, solitary “angrily” didn’t do that at all.
That “angrily” now felt like a pretty lazy way to get my point across.
A typical suburban New Jersey council meeting.
Then I arrived at another sudden realization, and it was a painful one: Dan was right. Adverbs are editorializing. When I wrote “angrily” I was asking the reader to trust my own interpretation of events without providing any evidence to back it up. I wrote that the guy was angry, but I never proved it.
Ugh. Dan, in his jerky, nasty way, mentored me.
My articles became a lot punchier after that. Dan edited less and I began to enjoy my job more. A few short weeks after beginning my self-imposed adverb purge, Dan accepted another job at another newspaper and I never saw him again.
I never did tell Dan how influential he was – but I don’t think I ever could. If I ever saw him again, I think my old urge to smack him upside the head would overcome me. And, just to upset Dan further, I would make sure to smack him happily.
I love my home office. Always did – and that’s saying something, because it began as a pretty ugly and impractical room. I was blind to its flaws, however. Right from the start I was smitten.
“Dibs!” I shouted when I first laid eyes on it. (Ellen and I were house hunting at the time.)
Ellen peered into the dirty, dark little room, raised an incredulous eyebrow, and replied, “All yours.”
Pfft. Ellen. No imagination whatsoever. How could she so easily dismiss that wonderful, dark wood panelling? And there’s a bathroom! Did Ellen even see the bathroom when she glanced in? I’ll have a private bath right off of my private office! I could practically write and pee at the same time!
I imagined the furniture I would buy. The desk would have to be dark wood to match those dark wood walls and the file cabinet and the bookcase would have to match the desk. The far corner looked like a good place for one of those chair glider things. I always wanted one of those chair glider things.
It was gonna be perfect.
Look, my very own bathroom! And you can’t use it.
We bought the house (apparently it contained other rooms that were also nice) and, after moving in, I immediately found the office furniture I was looking for. It was all dark wood. It was all dirt cheap. It was all from Target. This was quite a coup for me; usually it takes me forever to get things like this done – once I took six months to pick out a couch – but this time I was on a roll. I got the furniture and that chair glider thing and set up shop. My office was ready.
And, oh dearie my, did I hate it. About ten minutes after I put the desk together I was grumping.
“This desk is too small,” I shouted downstairs to Ellen who was busy wasting her time on the less important parts of the house like, for instance, our bedroom.
“Mm,” she replied.
“And it wobbles!” I added.
“Mm,” she replied.
“And the file cabinet doesn’t hold enough files! The adjustable shelves in my bookcase can’t adjust themselves enough to hold my animation books. This chair glider needs too much space around it to glide! I gotta give up half of my floor space just to glide!”
“Mm,” she said.
To be fair, Ellen was about as sympathetic as I could ever reasonably expect. After all, she was most likely thinking, “Huh. Who would’ve thought that cheap, hastily bought furniture from Target would be so crummy? Whatta shocker.”
Once I calmed down about the furniture, I got distracted by the room itself. Was it always this dark? It’s like I’m trying to write a picture book while spelunking. And man! That bathroom doorway really messed with the way I could’ve arranged this furniture. This furniture that I HATE.
The quantity and the quality of my writing suffered almost immediately. Never before had I realized how important my physical writing space was to my creative process.
So, with a defeated sigh, I started over. Whenever I found free time to write, I used it to turn my office into a place where writing could actually occur. I walled up the door to the bathroom and opened it up in another room. I painted those dark walls, got an area rug for the dark floor, and bought a brighter light fixture. Then I gave all my Target furniture to my dad who also, apparently, has a dark wood fetish. (I now blame heredity for all of my unfortunate furniture purchases.)
I then reverted back to my old, familiar practice of selecting new furniture: I said, “That desk or that desk?” over and over for the next six months.
The Toy Story poster is where my bathroom door used to be. Bathrooms in offices are overrated. Toy Story posters are essential.
It took me a good long while, but that’s the way a home office should be designed, I think. It has to cater to your practical and physical needs, but it also needs to be a comfortable, welcoming place to tease out your fragile, newborn ideas. That takes time.
I love my home office – and now I love it for all the right reasons. It’s perfect for me. The furniture is both practical and attractive. The room is filled with things that make me smile. Since the redo I have never been more happily productive.
My dad, on the other hand, has a wicked case of writers block. Not my problem.
Hey, Look! A Writer Fellow! 