Editor's note: Each month, the CCW blog features one of our
members. This month, Nancy Hoag reflects on having her very own place to write.
Nancy wrote this piece in her fifth-wheel RV, riding in the front seat of a pick-up truck, and emailed
it while waiting for the washer to finish.
Twenty-five years ago, I didn’t let not having a room of
my own in our home stop me from writing—I wrote anyway and everywhere. At a
Smith-Corona portable typewriter planted on my sewing machine cabinet, at the
kitchen table, on Pizza Hut place mats and scraps of paper created from junk
envelopes. Then I started noticing articles about "the setting” a writer
must have. I especially remember a photo of a well-known author reclining in
her Adirondack chair beside a sunny lake. I’d long dreamed of lake living and
mentioned this to an editor friend that since my sales had slowed, perhaps that
meant my setting wasn’t right? She suggested I create a space that would be the
prettiest room in our home. So I purchased wallpaper, country curtains, a
pretty chair, an antique desk, and a dozen fresh-cut tulips—and that worked!
Not
too long after, though, we found ourselves moving every several years because
of my husband, Scotty's, work. Still, the first thing we looked for was space
where I would write. In one home, that special place measured eight-feet
square, but my husband cut through layers of wall and added a window so I could
see the sun rise. In another home, we discovered a nook up under the eaves
where I could watch the sun rise and
set. In my very best place—in Northern Virginia—a cottage door opened onto a
balcony from my office—and I wrote and wrote and wrote.
However,
shortly after moving back to Montana (my husband’s best place), Scotty and I
felt called to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. We would build homes for
the working poor and single moms—and live in a trailer with not even a corner
to call my own. And I began to believe I would never write again.
To
my surprise, that was not the case. I still longed for a balcony, and a view,
but I discovered I could write behind chain-link fencing and concertina wire in
North Carolina Georgia Florida Louisiana
While I still believe a special writing space would be
the ideal, and I personally dream of one day having a hideaway again, today I
type in a fifth-wheel of an RV with my supplies in overhead cupboards, inside
my stiff-backed chair, and in tubs below the floor (with access from the
outside only)—and I finally understand that writing does take courage, but our
inspiration comes from God—and He is the “setting” I need.
