Every time Tall Poppy Sonja Yoerg posts a picture from around her house, I whimper and threaten to move in with her. After seeing her writing space, I’m off to pack. 🙂 — Orly
They say you can tell a lot about someone from her workspace; I suppose that’s why this blog is so popular! Let’s see what my office says about me.
No, I didn’t tidy it for the photo-op. That’s actually pretty messy for me. I can’t think in the midst of clutter, in my workspace or anywhere else. I like clean lines and mostly bare walls. (1. Sonja is obsessively tidy.)
The other thing you may have noticed is the footrest. (2. Sonja has short legs.)
Now, about the desk. My husband made it! The top is from a giant oak beam we found in the basement of the farmhouse we used to own. The legs are old baseball bats. (3. Sonja and her husband are creative/goofy/good at recycling.)
Like many other writers, I don’t always work at my desk. Especially when I’m drafting, I wander from place to place: the living room couch, the kitchen counter, the dining room, the sun room. While it might seem that I am simply bored with the spartan decor of my office, in fact I move from place to place in search of words. They must be hiding somewhere…
Wherever I am in my home, I’m lucky enough to have a particularly welcome distraction. This is the view from all the writing spots I’ve mentioned, including my office.
It’s a wonder my books get written at all, right? The view changes daily—hourly, even—and I never tire of it. In good weather, I spend more time outside digging in the garden or walking in the woods than I do sitting with laptop, so my cave is really just that, a small carved-out spot open to the world.
About Sonja
Sonja Yoerg grew up in Stowe, Vermont, where she financed her college education by waitressing at the Trapp Family Lodge. She earned a Ph.D. in biological psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and wrote a nonfiction book about animal intelligence, Clever as a Fox(Bloomsbury USA, 2001). Her novels, House Broken (2015), Middle of Somewhere (2015), and All the Best People (2017), are published by Penguin/Berkley. Sonja lives with her husband in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
My favorite things are the footrest (I also have short legs and never thought of that!) and the baseball bat legs on the desk! Now I want a desk like that! That view out your window is the most amazing sight…I envy you that! Thanks for letting us take a peek at your writing space!