The Unclutterer Workspaces pool on Flickr depicts many lovely spartan work areas. It’s not limited to writers, or even creative types in general, but I needed something to tide me over while I send out more requests for entries in our Where the Magic Happens series.

Although gazing out a window suggests distraction, it turns out that views of natural settings, such as a garden, field or forest, actually improve focus. A study published in 2000 by environmental psychologist Nancy Wells, now at Cornell University, and her colleagues followed seven- to 12-year-old children before and after a family move. Wells and her team evaluated the panoramas from windows in each old and new home. They found that kids who experienced the greatest increase in greenness as a result of the move also made the most gains on a standard test of attention.

Presented in support of my obsession with the places where writers work.

Since the picture cannot possibly do justice to the filth in which I write, I have attempted to draw this eyesore into some semblance of order with arrows and labels. Useful? I hope so. 

To begin: The “desk” is actually two end tables pushed together, which requires the low chair. I like to be hunched over my poems as I’m working. The reasoning behind this is unclear. 

The empty packs of cigarettes are a sure sign that things are going well. Although I’ve recently begun rolling my own cigarettes in an attempt to hurry my death by nicotine, the overflowing ashtray continues to be a signal of significant progress.  I like to think it means that I’ve been too busy writing to empty the ashtray or clean up.

On the other hand, I might just be lazy. It is impossible to tell. Assuming it is the latter, I’ll justify myself with Virginia Woolf: “It is in our idleness…that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” That’s it.

The excuse regarding the empty Coke can, many of which typically litter the desk I treat with such derision, falls into a similar line of thought. I am pleased to say, however, that my Coke addiction is fading fast: I’m on to sweet tea now. 

Perhaps surprisingly, I can’t write anything even remotely worthwhile when I’m drunk, which isn’t to say I can do so sober, but I think I edge a little closer without the whiskey. As my alcoholism becomes more fully developed, I’m hoping the liquor will become a regular part of my writing process, since writing drunk seems like a positive thing in theory. 

Books are stacked helter-skelter and set askew around the general vicinity. When I’m stuck, it occasionally helps to pick up someone else, to do a quick imitation. Also: this sometimes leads to a poem worth following up on, or reveals a structure that might be useful to my current pet project. Hardy is of great use when it comes to this, which is why he’s right next to the laptop. 

Also: Because I’m stuck more often than not, I’ll have up multiple versions of the same poem while I’m working. For me, a line from a previous failure can generate new ideas in the current take–even if it’s just a rhyme or a juxtaposition of words. 

I’ll leave the rest to you to justify, as I seem to be at a loss. While I would like my workspace to be clean and shiny, chaos is absolutely  necessary to my writing, in which I typically seek order–especially given my control issues. It seems I am a bundle of contradictions, right down to the lipstick prints on my rolled cigarettes. 

Where the Magic Happens: Karen Rigby

Where the Magic Happens: Deborah Ager

Where the Magic Happens: Sandra Beasley

First up is Sandra Beasley, whose poems appeared on Linebreak on June 10 and Aug. 19.

Here’s Sandra:

I don’t know if it’s truly where magic happens, but that’s how the Linebreak editors phrased it when they asked for a snapshot of my writing space. What does happen at my desk: drafting, cussing, sneezing, gesticulating, wikipedia-ing as an aid to drafting, wikipedia-ing as a distraction from drafting, reading lines aloud, tapping out ten syllable-lines out with my left hand, and drinking of scotch.

A rundown of some visible elements:

• A new-ish macbook (which replaced my beloved ibook). This laptop will sometimes move up with me to the balcony, or to a rocking chair in our bedroom.
• A hulk of a printer that bears a sticker proclaiming SCREW GUILT. I have gone through five printers since high school, and this sticker has been transferred to each and every one of them. I don’t particularly know why, but now it’s tradition.
• Two framed prints that are actually each half of the same image, a menagerie of animals depicted in styles ranging from the cartoonish to Audubon-exact. I clipped these from an issue of CABINET magazine, and find them a useful place to rest my eyes when I’m feeling stuck. Every time I look, there is an animal I hadn’t noticed before. This may have a role in the high frequency of giraffes, horses, turtles, capybaras, and platypi that appear in my recent poems.
• An exceptionally comfy chair that I bought at a second-hand store here in DC and then carried, balanced on top of my head, the eight blocks back to my old apartment building.

I really do keep my desk this clean. Don’t get me wrong, there are stacks of to-do paperwork elsewhere, but having a blank surface is key to giving myself permission to write. If I were trying to draft a sestina while also eyeing my incomplete 2008 tax return, the sestina would never happen. If the walls seem a little bare, I am trying to pace myself. We’ve only lived here since March, so I’m waiting until I have just the right things to hang up.

When we moved in, I worried that the lack of a window would keep this from working as my studio. But I get plenty of natural light (there’s a skylight above that staircase in the upper left of the photo). It never feels claustrophobic, and it is also the first space I see when I walk in the door–so naturally, the first place I sit. Much more organic than creeping off to an attic.

The books to the left of my desk are only a fraction of my poetry collection. I have far too many books, and since I can’t bear to get rid of anything signed to me, it is safe to say I will always have far too many books. They’re grouped according to the color of their spines. It is an indulgence, but as easily as I can remember the author’s last name, I’m able to picture how the book looks in my hands. You’d be surprised how quickly I find what I need. And when I can’t locate a title right away, the search causes me to stumble across three books I’d kind of forgotten about, but want to re-read. Who says any system having to do with poetry has to be efficient?

What I love best about this space is that it is, truly, a room of my own. It doesn’t double as a sewing room, or a guest bedroom; the boy has his own desk, on another floor entirely. It is a room for writing, and that is a rare and lucky thing.