Step Into My Writer's Office...Someday

We all have those dreams—you know, the ones that the details of are so clear in our heads that we swear some day—it’ll be reality! I've found that the more I define these dreams and actually give myself visual cues on a corkboard, the more they seem to happen. My biggest dream revolves around my writer's office.

The writer's office is a dream location, but it's where it sits in the middle of that ignites my creative mind.

I’m living in a 1000 square foot cottage along the Shenandoah or perhaps near the coast of Oregon. A simple place, sunny, small, easy to care for, so I can concentrate on the outside: A huge sustainable organic garden, a cherry orchard, a pond to skinny dip in, a large labyrinth to walk in when I need to center myself. A few seats from amusement park rides left to rust and making interesting places to sit in a Tilt-A-Whirl seat or a Scrambler bench, creepy cemetery sculptures spread around the gardens that I created with my own hands…

And in the heart of it… a barn

My dream writer’s office for horror is in a barn with rusted sharp nasty farm implements hanging overhead as I work, dangling by clanking rusted chains. The floor is hard earth with a large pentacle imprinted in it where the desk sits atop it. There’s a loft where a huge array of creepy old baby dolls sit and stare down at me.



There is a life-sized Bigfoot statue lurking in a dark corner with red eyes that glow. A human-sized clown doll is poised in a chair as if having a conversation with me. One of those wonderful gypsy fortune teller booths from carnivals is in the barn near the entrance.



The walls have erotic and spooky murals marking my heritage of Vikings and Highlanders that I’ve painted over time when I was trying to break through writer’s block.



On Friday nights, I have artists come and we sit around with a model posing nude as we work on our skills of drawing the human body, followed by a merry little party by torchlight near the pond.

I have a stereo system and a projector in the barn so that I can project movies or scary slide shows onto the walls for a bit of background and inspiration as I write.

I tend to travel to places I write about, so I gather lots of photos of the most creepy aspects of the location and have them flashing on the walls to put me in the setting. The upper loft is strewn with hay and a blanket so I can lay down and study the sky through a large skylight above or perhaps make love....

Now, I dare you to give voice and description to your dreams.