A friend told me recently, after she’d called and I couldn’t talk at that moment, “Since you don’t work, I always picture you living the life of luxury and just writing all day. I don’t ever think you have other things to do.” And then she laughed.
This is not a woman who believes in the Grocery Fairy, the Cleaning Fairy or the Yard Fairy – though I suspect she believes in Irish pixies. So aside from the idea I might actually shop for food – and then prepare meals with it, clean, and take care of a yard, was the idea that writing was ‘not working.’ Then I laughed.
Granted, I get to work from home, keep my own schedule and be my own boss. And I spend much of my time doing what I absolutely love. But it’s still work. I imagine other writers and poets would say the same thing – no matter how successful they are, how easy they make it look, how natural writing comes to them.
One of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry, published a collection titled, Window Poems. He wrote the poems over several years from watching through a forty-four paned window, observing nature around him and the changes in his world.
Window: an opening in the wall of a building to let in light and air; the framework with fittings that closes such an opening; an opening resembling or suggesting that of a window in a building; an interval of time during which certain conditions or opportunities exist; a rectangular box appearing on a computer screen on which information is displayed.
My plan, my goal, my wish is that A Writer’s Window opens all those windows and lets you see a little of one writer’s life, one writer’s view – not always mine, and allow you to share how that reflects yours.
And the scene across the header? While in college, one of my psychology professors asked us to describe ourselves as a house – this was about the time Barbara Walters asked an interviewee to define himself as a tree. I pictured a log cabin, set in the woods. I don’t have a cabin, but I do have a cottage. And that’s the view from my window.
A Writer's Window 