Writing spaces should be cluttered, makeshift, and full of scraps.

She’s a very nice person, honestly. And, I honestly believe that’s her writing space, and it’s clean and organized and meticulously decorated and everything is in its place.

Patrice, your description of her writing space as presented in the article is exactly what her prose is like. Sparse, over-the-top breathless, gushing New Yorker-ness, all surroundings fade into the subconscious…

Yet, there’s no edge to it. There’s no place where something dangerous is hiding in the drawer. You could no more imagine a secret marijuana stash as you could imagine something strange in the brown box – a wonder woman costume she dons when she’s alone, knick knacks from an adventurous backpacking jaunt across Europe when she was broke, photographs of ninjas… Anything of the unquotidian – anything that speaks to some place in the mind where things are out of place.

How can we dream, if we don’t have the kind of writing space where we can work in our pajamas, unfiltered by the lens of an audience?

I’m sitting in my desk chair right now, but my computer is on the bed, because the desk is a mess. The bed is half-covered in clean clothes I haven’t folded, yet.

I would rather tolerate some clutter than lose writing time during the week. I can clean when my brain is fried.