Further chat with Deborah Bouziden….
DB: You live in a beautiful part of the country as is evident by the pictures on your blog. Do you use it as a source of inspiration or muse? Do you think every writer needs a source of inspiration? How do you suggest writers find theirs?
SW: I know I’m extremely lucky to be living here, at the water’s edge, with Mount Rainier shining across the Sound right out my window, ferryboats and navy ships passing, sea lions barking, salmon leaping, rare and common seabirds everywhere I look…it’s incredibly scenic and abundant. I’ve also been lucky enough to work on my writing in secluded cabins, snowed in at a ski lodge, in a villa in Amalfi, a boutique hotel in New York, a beach house in St. Croix, on our boat…All wonderful and inspiring places.
However (you knew there was a however), all this scenery is completely superfluous to the work of a writer. If a writer waits until she has the perfect writing space, the perfect amount of time, the perfect equipment, the perfect life…she will never get anything done.
How do I suggest a writer find her source? She just needs to roll up her sleeves and write.
A writer can go anywhere in her mind. It’s one of a writer’s gifts. I’m certainly proof of that. I wrote my first novel while living in a cramped graduate student apartment, working on a typewriter set up at a card table which also served as my kitchen table. Other novels were written in a windowless spare room in a tiny tract home in the suburbs of Houston.
So the gorgeous setting is just sort of a bonus. And a reward for a job well done.
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