This little piggie built...

Writing retreats.  Like the three little pigs, what does yours look like?  Straw, sticks, bricks, or Starbucks?

Here are some famous ones! http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/11/famous-writers-retreats

Some might be surprised by the shacks and the hotel, but I totally get it now that I am writing more often and with more direction. The need to immerse yourself in your writing without interruptions seems to be overwhelming.  I understand Thoreau and his little hut now much more than I did when it was required reading in my upper high school and beginning college classes.  The last few years I have been paying attention to the people who are writers and their stories of where they do it.  So many seem to manage writing with kids and spouses and animals running in and out.   They manage day to day happenings and unplanned surprises and still manage to write. 

But I also understand why a husband and wife who are both authors like Jim and Shannon Butcher have separate writing areas on different floors.  I see why writer Denise Grover Swank swears by headphones to write while at home with her children.  I understand the numerous people who frequent coffee shops and libraries hovering over notebooks and computers.   I also understand why Stephen King changed his lonely office to more of family friendly room.  With all he writes and the complex world he writes of, I think he really might disappear for long periods of time.

I have heard over and over that if you truly want to write, you can write anywhere.  And I have seen some of this.  I often am somewhere and suddenly feel the need to put down an idea or dialogue and carry a notebook in my purse for this purpose.  I am always brainstorming when I am cleaning house.  Makes it so much more pleasant.  But I may be one of the people who does better with a space to write.  It might be because of all the planning I would do at my teacher's desk.  I think I need some type of physical boundary that says, "This is work.  Get to it."

Right now I rotate between the living room which has the best chair and the office/grandchildren's stay over area/second tv room, and sometimes the kitchen table if I really want to spread something out.  And I wear headphones.  Sometimes I don't have them on, but I have gotten so used to having them on to write, it is like a signal to my brain to produce.  It also makes my husband not talk to me, because he thinks I cannot hear him.  Wrong.

But I want a small, tastefully decorated office with a picture window either looking out on some beautiful nature or a beautiful shirtless firm masculine neighbor.  (I once ran into my own mailbox with my car mirror trying to see if my cute neighbor got a haircut.  He had.)  A cushy chair for my long desk, a recliner when I want to type with my feet up, a coaster for my tea, and a place for all of the stuff a writer generally needs.  It is a dream.

Or I might just go out on the back patio and watch all the cars go by while I write.  There is no straw, probably could find some sticks, and all the bricks will be on my iPod, while I sing along to, "She's a brick hoooooooooouuuuuuuuuse.  OW, She's mighty, mighty, just lettin' it all hang out!