Filed under: Fun Stuff
Take a peek inside the spaces where some of today's authors write, ponder, and procrastinate. This week: Dandelion Summer author Lisa Wingate's memorabilia-filled office.
Where do I write?
Among scraps of the past.
I think all writers do. As a writer, you eventually find that the people you create, the places you thought were plucked from the ether are not so misty and ethereal, after all. They're really just a patchwork of people you've known and places you've been. They're sewn together with a fine, glistening thread of imagination, stitched and fitted and nipped, turned this way and that, their textures and colors creating a quilt of story.
Somehow, when it's all over, the sharp edges blend together into patterns that are pleasing and beautiful, and you have the feeling that you've known these people before--that in some way or other you are these people. For me, every story is a blend of past and present, of fantasy and life, of the quirky and the divine. I guess that's why, over the years, I've ended up with a writer space that is a muddle of history, and mystery, and family.
![Lisa Wingate writer]()
Courtesy of Lisa Wingate
I like do-dads. There, I've admitted it. I know the modern way is to de-clutter, but I love old things-things that were useful, that were loved, that were treasured once. Things that have been passed down to me by someone I've loved.
The flotsam in my office has stories. It whispers to me as I sit writing, or walk past, or stare at the walls, waiting for words to materialize. I look at the tiny metal ice skaters in the whatnot shelf, and my mind whispers, "Where were you before you ended up in a shoebox at that estate sale? How did you travel here from your maker's hands in France? Did you arrive on some long-ago Christmas morning in a crate with tiny trains and track, underneath the tree in a big house where such things could be afforded? Did you sail here on the Titanic, escape almost forgotten in the pocket of child's coat on that cold, tragic night? Did you come to Texas in the back of a covered wagon, on a train, in a carpetbag atop a stagecoach? What? What? Speak to me! Where is the child who loved you?"
The furniture in my office has voices, too. I'm sure I need therapy. My little pub table is Writer Central for me. Typically, it's littered with stacks of to-do lists, notes about stories, research books, messy character studies torn from spiral notebooks. The antique dealer told me it came from an Irish pub. I don't know if that's true, but I like to think it is. Sometimes I imagine the lives trapped deep in the grain. What has the wood seen, first as a chestnut tree, then as lumber, then as a table in some shadowy corner? Did lovers kiss here? Did spies meet to plot their schemes? Did friends gather to toast to life and share stories of the Emerald Isle?
That's writer nectar atop the table, by the way-chai tea in a hand-thrown mug sent to me by Elizabeth Weiler, a sweet friend I met after she put my first novel, Tending Roses, in her book about book clubs. I write for two publishers and work a lot. Chai tea with a little whipped cream on top (the chocolate variety in this photo) is one of those little bribes I offer myself when a nap or Dr. Phil tempt me in the afternoons. We make our own chai mix around here. You can find my mom's special recipe on my website on the "Lisa's Scrapbook" page under "Recipes", in case you need some writer nectar of your own.
I have a strange fetish for old organizational furniture in my office. If I buy one more thing-with-tiny-drawers-in-it, my family will probably have me committed. I love card catalogs from library sales, my big roll top desk, oak file cabinets with heavy old drawers that are hard to open. The new ones with stainless steel sliders would work so much better, but they wouldn't have history. They'd lack the character of the graceful old forms cabinet that sits at the end of my row of bookshelves. The forms cabinet is a family heirloom of sorts. I found it covered in depression-era green paint and a patina of grease, in a warehouse belonging to my husband's
granddaddy. The cabinet was filled with tools, nuts, and bolts. I knew I had to save it. It had so many drawers!
![Lisa Wingate writer]()
Courtesy of Lisa Wingate
I could never have imagined how beautiful the cabinet would be, refinished and sharing space with the massive oak bookshelves of my childhood. The forms cabinet has thirty-six drawers in all (there are eighty-one little drawers in my office, but who's counting). I don't know how the cabinet came to be in Grandaddy's warehouse and neither does he, but it's a great place to keep manuscripts and paperwork. I wonder at its story. Clues hide inside the drawers in the form of log sheets, affixed on the drawer bottoms at the time of manufacture. Someone with
lovely handwriting used a fountain pen to make notations in the drawers from 1900 to 1925, off and on. I don't know what the notations, like the one in this photo, mean. I wonder about them sometimes.
Who was A.L. Sweet? What did he do in 1907 that caused his name to end up in my forms cabinet? Did he buy something, sell something, borrow money? Get arrested? Start a business? Join the army? Pass away?
Did his name fit him? Was he sweet? Was he the town baker, or the candy maker? Or was he a dastardly villain with a handlebar moustache, the type to cast helpless widows and orphans from the their farms in the dead of winter?
Did the whole town turn out for his funeral-pay final respects as Mr. A.L. Sweet traveled on to the great by-and-by? Or was he buried alone, in the rain, with only the undertaker and the gravediggers to bid him adieu?
This is where the crazy quilt of story begins-with a name, a glimpse, a notation in an unlikely place. With questions tumbling over questions, all arms and legs like children cartwheel racing down a hill. With a mist of wondering, with oddly-shaped shreds of reality, scraps of truth and fiction floating about. For me, storytelling is so much about snatching up what's already there, about the turning, and the trimming, and the fitting, and the stitching. That's why I like my busy writer space, with its clutter of found items and its myriad of nooks, cubbies, and drawers. There are dozens of stories here, hundreds perhaps, or thousands. Like the tale of A.L. Sweet.
He'll find his way into a book sooner or later, as will the tiny metal figure skaters in their colorful coats and muffs, and the old Irish pub table.
It's all fodder for another tale, and in the end, that's one of the great things about being a writer. The air is never quiet, because the things around you want to be heard. The spaces you inhabit, whether official writer-spaces or not, are filled with potential, crowded with nuggets of truth, and life, and experience, a story quilter's goldmine of scraps, just waiting to be pieced together.
Lisa Wingate is a writer and inspirational speaker in central Texas, where she lives with her husband and two sons. She grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and studied writing at Oklahoma State University. She was inspired to become a writer by a special first grade teacher. Her latest novel in the Blue Sky Hill series is
Dandelion Summer. For more information about Lisa Wingate, visit her website at
www.lisawingate.com.
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