Where I Write

a minor ode to a blue velvet chair

In Iceland nearly a decade ago, driving the Golden Circle from Reykjavic, my husband and son and I visited the home where Nobel prize-winning author Halldor Laxness lived and wrote for fifty years. It is now open to visitors as the Gljúfrasteinn Museum. There was snow on the ground, and the swimming pool in front of the home was icy. The gift shop had a small book by Björn G. Björnsson, Writers’ Homes, which I keep in my living room and often open when passing by.

Halldor Laxness House, Iceland

It was a cozy home, cluttered with books, family photos, and knick-knacks. You can see photos of the rooms on the museum website.

I’m always fascinated by where writers do their work, and have visited a number of writers’ homes through the years. Early in my writing life, I spent a month at the Edna St. Vincent Millay Colony in Austerlitz, New York, located on a farm called Steepletop that Millay shared with her husband. I lived in the old barn, which had been lovingly remodeled to host writers in residence.

I’ve written in many places since then—in a hotel cafe on the Upper West Side when we lived in New York City, in the closet of the small apartment in the Castro where my husband and I lived when we first moved to San Francisco, in the finished basement of our first house in the Westlake district of Daly City (a house that fetchingly reminded me of a Krispy Kreme drive-through), in a little office with a window onto the street in our home in San Francisco’s Richmond district, and in our Paris apartment during the expat years. Mostly, though, over the past fifteen years, I’ve written in our home on a canyon south of San Francisco.

an early iteration of my home office, apparently staged, because my desk is rarely this tidy and also, the drawer is on the wrong side.

Sometimes I write in bed, and on very rare occasions I write in my home office (pictured above). Occasionally, since my son left home for college, I’ll write in his room, abandoned and tidy as it is in his absence (I recommend it, I don’t recommend it, very well then, I contradict myself). Mostly, though, I camp out here in the blue velvet chair in the living room, which gets tons of natural light. I usually wake up before my husband, and when he wanders into the living room in the morning, en route to the kitchen to make his glass of Ovaltine (or Benco if some kind soul has brought it back from France), he’ll say, “I see you’ve claimed the blue chair.”

Once I’m in the blue chair, I can stay and work for hours. I have to remind myself to get up and drink water or refill my coffee cup or peek out the front door to remember the world. One thing I love about writing is the obsessive focus it brings. I often feel scattered, anxious, pulled this way and that…but when I’m writing I drop into a deep concentration, a kind of intellectual bliss that tunes out the world.

We bought the blue velvet Room and Board Chair back in 2007, after I sold my third book. It moved with us down the Peninsula in 2009, it moved with us to Paris in 2018, it moved back to California with us at the very end of 2020, that terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad year. I imagine, if I ever move into an assisted living facility, it will move there too.

You can see where it’s faded and smushed from use. I remember thinking, when we first bought it for our house in San Francisco’s outer avenues, that it was more than we should spend for a chair, but at this point, nearly two decades later, it has worked out to pennies per use. I’ve written and revised many thousands of pages in this chair. It’s supportive, not too big and not too small, and has somehow survived cats, visiting dogs, and children—our son, his friends, nephews, nieces—not to mention hundreds of run-ins with my husband’s cookies and a few wine spills, courtesy of yours truly.

I have slept in this chair, held my son in this chair, cried in this chair, read hundreds of books in this chair, had countless of phone conversations in this chair, consumed thousands of cups of coffee in this chair. I’ve written books and stories and lectures and too many emails to count in this chair. Oh, and this: I’ve gone from a young woman to a middle-aged woman in this chair.

The ottoman was a later addition—perhaps five years ago. The lovely tray on the table, featuring a surfer walking past a glowing orange sun, is a gift to my husband from his brother.

I keep meaning to do something with the piles of books on the fireplace, but there are piles of books all over the house. I’m not sure where these would go. Every couple of weeks my husband straightens the stacks, relocates a few of them to parts unknown, attempting to instill some order.

We’ve considered getting a companion chair, which would perhaps look more sophisticated than our two mismatched sofas—one velvet, one leather—arranged in an L-shape across from the chair. But I doubt we ever will. I like the singularity of the blue velvet chair, its well-worn one-ness. It is the writing chair. I’m sitting here now.

Where do you write? I’d love to see your photos and hear about your favorite writing spot, your favorite writing chair/bed/sofa/cafe.

Thank you for reading My Fiction Obsession. If you liked this post, you might enjoy my books.

As always, happy reading!

Michelle