EVER SINCE I began to write professionally, I’ve wanted a writing space. I did my work in any number of cubicles, offices and odd corners over the years. Some of my novels were written at kitchen tables. One memoir was finished in the health office on my mother’s reserve. A section of my novel Ragged Company was written on the beach beside a mountain lake. But I never had a private place to write until now.
When we bought our cabin, Deb and I knew there were a lot of things that needed fixing. The old bachelor who had built the place had let it run down over time. Bit by bit, we got to work. The thing that seemed hardest to tackle was the old garage, so we left it to last.
The garage was large and musty, badly lit with a pocked concrete floor, no heating or insulation, and a weird little addition tacked on. The walls had been fashioned from assorted pieces of castoff plywood. The picture window looking out at the lake was a single pane of glass with a few years of dust built up on it. There also was a hinged window, ten centimetres high by 1.5 metres wide. We wondered about that until a neighbour told us old Walter would push wood through that window, then cut it on his table saw. The garage was jammed with junky cabinets and a huge pile of the sawn barn timbers the old man had used for firewood.
Mice, pack rats and other critters had used the huge gaps in the garage’s foundation to gain entry. The sliding garage door was dented, and a quirky little handmade door was just wide enough for one person to get through.
It looked like the project from hell. But Deb wanted a studio where she could do her fused glass designs. She’d trundled the kiln, glass and the assorted tools around for years, without an appropriate place to put them, and she saw potential in that garage. As we attended to the cabin’s more glaring needs, and burned off that huge pile of wood in the garage, our ideas for changing the space blossomed. As soon as we could afford the materials, we set out to tackle the renovation.
We replaced the old garage door with oak French doors. We managed to get the walls properly framed and got rid of that quirky little door. We framed the narrow window that ran the length of the roof. We insulated the place and stapled in a vapour barrier. But winter was coming, and after covering the new plywood walls with plastic we decided to wait it out.
We noticed over the winter that the insulation we’d installed had little or no effect. When spring came, we discovered that the ceiling had never been insulated, either. Once it was spray-foamed to the right height, we got to work again. We replaced the old single-pane window with a modern casement. I filled the gaps in the foundation. We brought in baseboard heaters and hired a local tradesman to hang the drywall. We put in a 220-amp circuit for Deb’s kiln along with proper ventilation for it. Ceiling fans regulated the heat, and we built elaborate drywall drops to cover the array of wires the old bachelor had run willy-nilly through the garage.
Once the paint went on, the garage looked amazing. But we still had problems with the floor. The poured concrete wasn’t level. The cost of pouring a whole new floor would have been huge, so we mixed cement and levelled things as best we could by hand. Once we’d sanded it smooth, we laid a layer of floor padding over a vapour barrier, then for three agonizing days knelt and pressed free-floating laminate into place. When we were finished, the place was stunning.
Nowadays, Deb’s studio takes up the back end of the garage, near the new picture window. She’s already fashioned some awesome art pieces she’s given away as gifts. We have a second refrigerator out there, a work-out machine, weights and a warm, inviting sitting area with a TV, a stereo, as of a, a rocker and a wing chair.
The far side of the old garage, where the quirky little door used to be, is my space. We put a loft bed there for when company comes, and I’ve set up an office under the bed’s frame. I’ve got a long work shelf suspended by metal hooks, where my computer sits, and a slimmer shelf for my books and files. I face the wall when I write, but that’s how I like it—the outdoors is too distracting for me. When I sit at my desk, all I can see is what’s in my imagination.
A favourite picture of my wife sits right in front of my monitor. It was taken on Gabriola Island the first summer we were together. As I’m writing, I see that wonderful smiling face, and I am convinced that magic is alive in the universe. On the wall, there’s a picture of the two of us standing beside a thousand-year-old cedar tree. Hanging beside that are the two eagle feathers we tied together as part of our marriage ceremony. I’ve also mounted a quote from the writer George Eliot: “I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”
My medicine box sits at the far edge of my desk. It holds the sweetgrass, cedar, sage and tobacco that we use to bless our home. There are rocks in that box, too, and gifts of tobacco I’ve been given for making presentations. A portable electronic keyboard, my guitar and my djembe sit beside the loft ladder. A music stand awaits the next batch of guitar music I’ll try to learn.
A collection of my published titles is displayed on the narrow shelf above me, along with a photo of Deb and me on a roller coaster and an editorial cartoon of me from the Calgary Herald that makes our friends laugh. That shelf also holds a dictionary, a thesaurus, a manual for writing screenplays, CD copies of my radio commentaries and a stack of CDs that I’ll be reviewing for my music column on the Internet. Directly above hangs a white eagle feather that belonged to the grandmother of a friend from the Sechelt Nation. I am surrounded in my writing space by the things I love and that sustain me. When I sit in that space, I feel creative and empowered.
The Creator meant for me to write. Not to think about it, not to plan for it, not to wait for inspiration, but to write to honour the gift I was given. So I come here every day and I write something. Once I’ve done that, I use my space in other ways: to browse the Internet, do research, play my guitar or drums, read, or listen to Brahms, or Miles Davis or the Reverend Gary Davis. Sometimes I just lean back in my chair, swivel around and gaze at the fabulous space my wife and I have built together. An art space. A space for creativity. A part of both our worlds, and a part of us joined together, for the common purpose of finding joy.