Writing Aboard A Sailboat | IWSG

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a place to share and encourage, where writers can express their doubts and concerns without appearing foolish or weak. It's a great place to mingle with like minded people each month during IWSG day.

Every month there's an optional question which may prompt folks to share advice, insights, a personal experience or story. Some folks answer the question in their IWSG blog post or let it inspire them if they're struggling with what to say.

This month's question is:

"What are five objects we'd find in your writing space?"

Check out how people have answered this month's question, as well as the other insecurities and writing topics they may have shared by visiting the IWSG sign-up list here. You can see how I answered the question below.


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Hmm...what can I say about my writing space? Right now it's very, very messy. We have so many projects going on at the moment, that our entire sailboat is in chaos. Floorboards are up in the main living area due to a crack in our hull. There's a big hole in the side of our boat where we took one of our windows to rebed it. Tools are scattered everywhere. Oh, and did I mention that we don't have a working toilet on board?

The only place that we can sit down (or rather lay down) these days is in our aft cabin where our bed is. And that's where I've been trying to write these days. Ordinarily, it's a comfy, little nest, but even this room has stuff piled everywhere.

As I sat in my bed writing this blog post with my computer propped up on my lap, I looked around to pick out five objects to share with you. I decided to omit the bag of dirty laundry from the list, although, that's the first thing you see when you walk in. So, here we go - stuff in my writing space:

1 - A container of oatmeal. We started to provision for cruising to the Bahamas and I still need to find places to store all of our food. In the meantime, the oatmeal container provides a convenient perch for a toy dinosaur.

2 - Baskets full of clothes and dishtowels. When you live on a sailboat, you have very limited space and need to get creative when it comes to storing things.

3 - Collapsible water containers. We're going to fill these with distilled water for our batteries. We use four golf cart batteries for our power when we're not at a marina. We charge the batteries with our solar panels and our engine's alternator.

4 - A ziploc bag of tissues. Cardboard is a no-no on boats as they can harbor bugs, not to mention get all mildewy. I take tissues out of the boxes they come in and put them in ziploc bags. I need to do the same thing with my containers of oatmeal.

5 - A stack of books, some of which are ones that I've written.

Curious what our aft cabin looks like? Here are some pictures from when things were less chaotic. You can see more photos here.



Some of you may be asking yourself, "Where's Simon?" Well, my imaginary cat got so fed up with the chaos on board that he traveled forward in time to when all of our boat projects are completed and the boat is neat and tidy. In the future, there's plenty of space for him to take naps and play with his catnip mice. In the present, not so much.

What are five objects we'd find in your writing or work space?


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