When my son was two and a half years old, he suddenly developed night terrors. My husband and I spent the summer passing him back and forth over and over until dawn as we tried to help him sleep. Worried and desperate, we reached out to our pediatrician for guidance and she informed us that we could expect the problem to last roughly six months (she was right), and offered the following suggestion for our son’s bedtime to help ease him to sleep and (hopefully) reduce the likelihood that he would wake screaming from nightmares at three in the morning: place a chair just outside the threshold of his open bedroom door and sit in it until he fell asleep. We were not supposed to engage with him, apart from reminding him that it was bedtime, we were right there, and he was perfectly safe. Some nights, it took nearly two hours for him to stop popping up to peer over the edge of his crib to see if we were still sitting there. I found this experience maddening—having to avoid making eye contact, resisting the urge to respond when he chattered away at me, being stuck in one spot like a trapped animal. I kept myself sane by using the chair time to write. I’d stretch my legs out in front of me, press my feet against the opposite wall, and turn my lap into a table for my computer and then I would start typing, doing my best to get lost in my work and ignore the sad, tiny child whimpering for my attention from only a few feet away.
I wrote eighty thousand words of a YA novel this way, stuck in a dark hallway, illuminated only by the light of my laptop screen. I have yet to finish this manuscript, but I’ve returned to it every few months or so in the years since and am always pleasantly surprised by my ability to slip back into the world I’ve created there. I add a little bit and then put it away for a while, but I fully intend to finish it someday and hope to get it published. I would love to hold in my hands a book that was born from the most difficult period of my early parenting experience. A book, written in the dark, that brought me some much-needed light.
Where We Write is a blog series that aims to showcase the spaces and places that are the backdrops of your creative work. We would especially love to highlight unique or unconventional writing spaces. While we will be prioritizing posts from past contributors, we welcome any writers who wish to share a little bit about where they write to submit essays for blog publication to littlethoughtspress@gmail.com (please put Blog Submission in the subject line). If you’re comfortable, please provide a few pictures of where you write, as well as a short post that addresses any/all of the following: How did you come to choose or create this space? What is unique about it? What specific challenges/inspirations does the space provide? What is your favorite thing you have written there?
Take us on a tour of where you write!