My husband calls me an Itinerant Fiction Writer. He doesn’t really understand why it’s so hard for me to write at home, where I have a desk, a couch, nice lighting, good music, and a Writing Dog who is always happy to listen to passages.

I can’t explain it. Some days it is possible to write at home, but mostly the phone rings or the Writing Dog is in the mood to chase tennis balls, or I start to think that if I just vacuumed up a few dozen dust balls and threw in a load of laundry, I’d be so much happier.

So today, for the third time this week, I went to the library to write my novel. I think it encourages a novel to be around other books, so every now and then it’s good to take it away from home, let it see a possible bright future for itself. It’s like Take Your Children to Work Day. They could get inspired to be better.

Here are the good things about our local library:

  • Good armchairs.
  • Many of them next to plugs for your laptop.
  • They let you bring tea in.
  • If your cell phone rings, they don’t yell at you, or say, “ssssh.”
  • There are cold parts of the library and hot parts, so you can choose which temperature you would like, and even move back and forth dozens of times if you wish.
  • The tables next to the magazines are in the hot part of the library, where a person should not be hanging out anyway if they are hoping to get any work done.
  • If you can stand it, there are even little carrels where you can be totally alone, but it’s a little like sitting in a wooden box. Plenty of time for that when you’re dead, I say.

Today I was sitting in the mystery section, in a very wonderful red armchair. I had my iced tea on the table next to me…and I was typing away very fast on a passage of my novel that I’ve been excited about writing. (Page 380 at last!)

And the nicest little thing happened. A woman came over and started looking over all the mysteries on the shelves. She picked up one book and then another, paged through them, put them back. And then she went right over to where the Sarah Graves books are (Sarah Graves is the pseudonym for my writing friend Mary), and grabbed two of her books off the shelf and went away, looking very happy with herself.

That, I’m sorry, is just something good that can’t happen in your own home.