WRITERS DREAM HOUSE NEEDS A DREAMY INTERIOR TOO

Everyone has a ‘Dream House.’

They know it when they see it.

“That’s the house of my dreams.”

Two blocks later it’s another house.

I could drive around town all day looking at dream houses, but which one is the dreamiest?

As a writer I am selfish enough to think anyone should care about the words I hang together.

Load up on typos, bad grammar, and unrelated paragraphs and you get ignored for bad editing.

No one’s got time for that.

Be boring and see who gets to the first scroll, if that far.

But construct a piece of writing with a solid foundation, clear windows with fresh words and ideas, and make it funny?

BoomerPdx ain’t The New Yorker, but we try.

I also read The New Yorker for style pointers.

For a certain kind of writer The New Yorker is their dream house.

For others it’s a blog dream house.

 

Welcome In, Writers And Others

My dream house has a Hemingway Room with bright lights.

 

“You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”

 

It also has a small tower inspired by the B&B where the wife and I stayed in San Francisco’s Castro District.

My uncle had a place there and sold it by the time I managed to arrive.

But he had hospitality pals, one of which had the oldest house on his hill.

Topped off with a room in a tower with 360 degree views and no curtains.

How did we get to the top? By spiral staircase, of course.

 

A Writer’s Dream House

From the outside it’s like any other house.

Well lighted? Yes.

Rooms with a view? Yes.

But what’s going on inside? A three ring circus, though one ring will do.

I’m not dreaming when I write this, but a writer’s room in a dream house comes in a wide variety.

It’s a room under a stairway in London’s South Kennington.

The Ralph Lauren suite in Belgium.

In real life it’s an added room, a front room, an office room, the room with the big window looking out on a once manicured garden and fountain.

To drive it home, your writing room is your dream house, not a house with a writing room.

It’s a third floor apartment in Brooklyn over looking cars set on fire on a dead end street.

A second story apartment in Philadelphia over a plumbing warehouse.

It’s a dorm room, a bedroom, a kitchen. It’s in a housing complex, a sub-division, on the edge of town.

 

The Dreamy Interior

It’s full of characters and situations and problems to solve.

It’s where you find your beginning, middle, and end; your first act, second act, and third.

There’s the cat in the tree, the gun hung above the fireplace, and you’re the ringmaster.

You saw a cat and tried to pet it, but it ran up a tree and yowled. End of story?

You try and rescue kitty and get stuck while the cat climbs down on its own?

Or:

A new friend invites you over to show you grandpa’s Spanish-Ameircan War 30/40 Krag.

It’s on the wall. Above the fireplace. Where all dramatic guns are supposed to be.

He hands it to you and you snap through a firearms inspection from end to end, checking the chamber of death before dry-firing it.

Every weapon is loaded until proven otherwise. No funny moves, no pretend bullshit, just letting the other guy know you don’t have any pretensions about gun collecting.

“This is my weapon, this is my gun. This is for killing, this is for fun.”

Singing that song includes a dance step.

But this is a dream house -writing room post, so we’ll leave the dance for another time.

Unless you know the steps, then get your package grope on.

Until then, stay on track, write your dose of writing medicine, and find something good to read.