Filed under: Fun Stuff
Author Jen Lancaster celebrates her new novel (out today!) by giving us a peek into her writing space -- and sharing the story of how she finally got there.I'm one of those people trouble instinctively finds.
Nowhere in my life has this been more evident than my writing space.
Courtesy of Jen Lancaster
When I wrote my first memoir "Bitter Is the New Black," the bulk of it was penned at the temp job I landed after having been laid off from an executive position two years previous. My boss was a lovely man who didn't care how I spent my time in the provisional cubicle as long as I was there to make the occasional lunch reservation or grab him a coffee. I had an Aeron chair, a panoramic view of the Chicago River, unlimited access to Post-it Notes, and almost eight solid hours a day to concentrate. Until now, that was the most productive and peaceful writing environment I ever had.
By the time I sold my third memoir, it became clear that my future lay in writing copy and not making copies. I quit my temp job and we set up a home office in the spare bedroom of our tiny rental row house in the unfashionable triangle between Chicago's Bucktown and Logan Square neighborhoods. The room was sunny without being too bright and cozy without feeling cramped. Crisp white crown molding complimented the pale sea foam green walls and the old scrubbed pine floors glowed from the liberal application of Murphy's Oil Soap. A majestic elm blocked the view of the alley and gave the whole room an urban tree house vibe. This room was a little slice of paradise.
That is, until the neighbors bought a purse dog and left him outside for anywhere from 10 to 16 hours a day, where he punctuated every second with an ear-splitting yip.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a dog person and I've loved them all my life. I currently have two pit bulls and one German shepherd and they're my best friends/constant companions. I've spent many adult years working for various dog rescue organizations and written many donation checks. And yet I still found myself entertaining dark thoughts about that yappy little bastard. He taunted me with every bark, as though he were saying, "Deadline! Deadline! Deadline!" each time he drew breath.
I moved my office to part of the walk-in closet in the master and finished my third memoir in what was essentially a cave. By the time I started to write "Pretty in Plaid," the annoying little dog was gone (not of my doing) and I moved back into my sunny office. But a leaking shower pan morphed in a contractor gutting a bathroom and, having no other place to store fixtures, moving everything into my office. Suddenly, I found myself sharing desk space with a toilet, so I moved the operation to the partially finished sun porch downstairs.
For two months, I worked on my book while the contractor strolled through my workspace a thousand times a day in order to cut tiles on the wet saw in the backyard. Worth noting is the job was supposed to take a week. Had I known the duration of the project, I would have worked with my landlords to procure office space nearby, yet every time I asked the contractor how much longer, he promised me it wouldn't take but a few more days.
Only now have I come to understand that "a few more days" in contractor-speak is among the world's greatest lies in the fashion of "No, I mean it, I really love you, baby" and "the check is in the mail."
Once the bathroom odyssey ended, I spent two blissful weeks working at my desk while I watched summer turn to fall on the other side of the old picture windows. That's when a record rainfall caused so much damage that porch separated from the back of the house and the walls filled with mold.
Ironically, I did some of my best work in that environment, having convinced myself that the stuff of the walls was a kind of magical brain-penicillin and it was making me extra-creative. Turns out it was slowly killing us, so we moved to a different rental property a mile away.
Despite the questionable neighborhood, the new house was nothing short of spectacular, my office in particular. I had cathedral ceilings, a wall of triple-hung Pella windows, and gleaming Brazilian cherry wood floors. I knew I'd be able to take my writing to a whole new level in this space. I bought a hand-woven garnet Persian rug and heavy black lacquered office furniture and I shaded the generous windows with striking bamboo blinds. The room was large enough to accommodate seating for guests and I arranged a comfortable area full of Asian-inspired pillows on which dogs could lounge. I even had enough space to set up a small love seat and television. No more working in a closet for me!
At no point during the leasing process did I notice the illegal daycare across the street, nor was I aware that at least three times a day, tiny children would be herded into was essentially an elaborate dog run, where they'd shove and shriek at each other for a hour before returning back indoors. This wasn't an issue when it was cold and I didn't have a book deadline, but as soon as it warmed up and my pages came due, the neighborhood volume went up to eleven. Between the day care, thumping car stereos, and an endless parade of gang members fighting at the bus stop in front of my house, I never had a single quiet moment.
For the longest time I fought the idea of moving away from the city, but last spring after reading on the crime blotter how two dead goats were found sacrificed near my alley, my husband and I decided it was probably time to go.
We bought our first home in Lake Forest, Illinois, a sleepy little suburb about thirty miles north of Chicago. Lake Forest is one of the bucolic North Shore towns I'd always seen featured in John Hughes movies. In fact, this is where Mr. Hughes called home before he passed away.
The town is full of nature preserves and it's bordered by Lake Michigan. The greatest crime to ever take place up here happened in the '80s when Mr. T. chopped down all the old oaks on his property. The New York Times even ran a story about this event, calling it "The Lake Forest Chain Saw Massacre."
When we moved in, I turned one of the upstairs bedrooms into my writing space. I love how the room provides a view of the thicket of trees separating my property from the rest of the neighborhood. From my desk, I can see the pair of boxwood mazes flanking the front door and the bluestone pathway. Our driveway - long and winding and covered in crushed stone - is also visible from my perch. The only noise I ever hear is that of birds singing or the infrequent, but soothing sound of tires rolling across the rocks.
When we first moved in, I was cruising down the drive a bit too fast and I almost hit a family of deer. For the record? Almost plowing into wildlife provides the exact same rush of panic-adrenaline as almost running over the teens tagging the garage door. Occasionally our garbage cans still get knocked over up here, but there's a certain comfort in knowing the raccoons aren't plotting identity theft.
I can't imagine being happier than I am in this house. Structurally, it's sound as can be and we'd need something a lot stronger than rain to sink the back porch. Granted, some of the finishes appear to have come directly out of a 1985 John Hughes film, but we've had a great time systematically updating the rooms to better suit our style. Every weekend I comb local antiques malls looking for just the right pieces and slowly the house is coming together.
As for my writing room, I've been afforded the kind of peace and quiet I used to dream about. I can't get over how much easier it is to work when I don't have to get out of my seat and glower at someone every ten minutes. My only distractions are the occasional deer eyeing my boxwood hedges. I'm told deer will wreck these bushes, but so far the sight of three dogs' snouts pressed up against the glass ensures the deer do nothing but window shop.
My new office is where I wrote my first novel "If You Were Here," which is fiction... of sorts. The story entails a couple who grow so sick of the city that they buy and renovate a house in the suburbs. While I was working on it, we had a team of painters stripping wallpaper downstairs and they were so quick and efficient that their presence didn't even register. At one point I was struggling to create conflict in the novel, so I asked them if they could please screw something up, but they declined.
But like I said, trouble seems to follow me.
Or maybe it's just that I create it for myself sometimes because chaos is great memoir fodder?
You see, I recently decided we should try and renovate one of our Reagan-era bathrooms ourselves. My idea was that while doing press for the new book, I'd speak about rehabbing a house with more authority. So now my peaceful, quiet office is a disaster zone and I've got a toilet riding side saddle with my desk again, because, of course, I have another looming deadline.
The good news is I didn't have to move into a closet. I simply relocated across the hall to the media room. I love this space because it's got a southern exposure and affords an unbroken view of all the budding fruit trees in the backyard. I can't see the driveway, but I do have the perfect vantage point to the pool where, in a few weeks, the dogs will be swimming.
Whereas my usual writing area is terribly girly and self-indulgent, filled with esoteric items like Twilight and Mad Men Barbie collections, this shared space is gender neutral. My husband and I had the idea to decorate it like a fraternity house circa 1940, so we're perpetually hitting estate sales and consignment shops on the lookout for sporting equipment and loving cups. We went so far as to buy an ancient pickup truck as part of our quest to find old treasures! And I'm counting the days until the Delta Tau Delta bowling trophy from 1913 I found on eBay arrives.
I've been working to create little vignettes in the built-ins. I want each display to tell a story. I adore the shelves with the horseback riding motif because they bring me back to the fictional time of when I starred in National Velvet, and they take me away from my real past of sinking houses and chasing thugs away from my garage.
Overall, what we've done in this house is to instill a sense of peace and serenity and the hope is that my work will benefit from the quiet of my current writing space.
Wait a minute, did I just hear a leaf blower?
Author photo: Jeremy Lawson
Thanks for the peek inside, Jen!
Jen Lancaster is the New York Times bestselling author of five memoirs. This is her first novel. "If You Were Here," is out now. A nationally syndicated monthly humor columnist, Jen lives outside Chicago. Find her online at Jennsylvania.