<a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/office.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-356" title="office" src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/office.jpg" alt="" width="532" height="399" /></a>

Maeve and I just walked to my "office." This is my second week renting a desk at Urbana's new co-working space, <a href="http://collectiveturf.com/">Collective Turf</a>. I'm really excited about it, because <strong>the space encompasses so much of what I need and believe in: community, collaboration, the independent business spirit, old urban buildings, lots of natural light, and the rhythm of work.</strong>

After seven years of doing freelance work at my dining room table (and my porch, my sofa, the cafe, and even in the car while Jason drives us to Chicago), I really can't quite get to used to the reality of having a bonafide office space! I guess that's why I keep putting quote marks around "office"—a practice I plan to talk myself out of by the end of this post. :)
<h4>A writer needs more than words</h4>
I think I began to think of myself as a writer in about the third grade, but it wasn't until I got my first real desk that I was able to really take myself seriously.

The desk was a birthday gift from my parents the year I turned ten. It was a desk that I would now find rather tacky—white with gold gilt in the carved ornamentation and elaborate gold hardware—but I thought it was perfect. <strong>In every detail it fit my fantasy of the writer’s life.</strong>

It was the sort of desk with a hinged writing surface that could be lowered to provide a worksurface and closed to conceal the mess at the end of the day. When opened, it revealed a variety of cubbies for letters and stationery and journals. I was quick to organize and fill them—one for letters sent to me, another for stationery and envelopes, another filled with index cards for jotting random thoughts and ideas upon. <strong></strong>

<strong>This desk not only became a site for my early writing projects, it inspired and gave them shape. I felt legitimized at that desk,</strong> a real writer penning many letters to my grandmother and summer camp friends, and filling journals with stories and various commentaries on life.

Many desks have followed, none serving as a stage in quite the way that first desk did, but all allowing the playacting to diminish and the real writing to emerge.

<strong>I don't know if it's the romantic in me or the practical in me—the Jane Austen or the Virginia Woolf—but I've always clung to the idea of a special place where the magic happens.</strong> A writer's nook that puts me into character, a desk that helps me delve to deeper thoughts, a window that sheds light on the most descriptive images and words. I remember reading Virginia Woolf's <em>A Room of One's Own</em> in college, and dreaming of the writing room I would one day have as an adult.
<h4>Freelancing is a wonderful setup, however...</h4>
The last few years, since Jason and his daughter have come into my life and home, have clearly been an amazing blessing to me. With five of us, though, in a house bought for three, things often feel cramped and chaotic; <strong>carving out some space for work has been a challenge</strong>.

<strong>I just can't find a suitable spot for a desk, with a view out a window rather than toward the many household chores that await me,</strong> so I typically work at the dining room table. I can't seem to stay on top of the stacks of school papers and mail, so they clutter my work space. At the end of the work day, all my client notes and samples clutter our life space, needing to be cleared off the table so we can sit down together and enjoy a meal. Then the work sits there, in plain view, reminding me of the next day's deadlines as we enjoy family time, playing a game after dinner.

<strong>Working at a cafe always brings a welcome change of scene, along with the human activity and interaction my extroverted self craves, but it can be very unpredictable.</strong> Sometimes I can't get a table near an outlet, other times the music is really distracting or annoying. And it never fails—right when I have a deadline that can't be missed, half the people I know in this town seem to pass through the cafe, happy to run into me, eager to catch up.

I fear I'm beginning to sound like a very difficult person, who needs everything to be "just so" in order to get anything done! In my defense, <strong>I've actually learned to adapt to all kinds of work environments, and have done quite well being flexible about where and when I work.</strong> I've been making it work. <strong>It's just really nice to finally have this space, this freelance community—my office.</strong> (There, I did it! No quotation marks!)