When I was asked this question recently, my first instinct was to say, rather flippantly, “I can work anytime, anywhere,” because I don’t like to make a big deal out of what I do. But then, when I took a closer look at it, I realized that answer would’ve been a flat-out lie.

So, I’ve got to admit it: I’m actually very neurotic about when, where, and how I work. I didn’t even realize until I was in my fifties how much of an impact my childhood had had on how I approached my life and what I did with it.

The truth is, because I was an only child, my house was very quiet when I was growing up. Sometimes, like the inside-of-a-tomb quiet. Often my father was gone for weeks at a time, so it was just my mom and me, and we had no pets that I can remember until we finally settled down in San Antonio. My mother was one of six children, my father one of five, and they both seemed to revel in the peaceful silence – except when I was practicing piano, or they were playing music together. We didn’t even have a television in the house until I was thirteen, and by then I was way too busy to watch it. I read and did homework without interruption. My father wrote and studied in solitude. My mother was the only person in the family who never seemed to stop moving.

Being the product of so much peace and quiet, I discovered that college was a nightmare. It was way too loud, and I was surrounded by too many people. It was too chaotic, and I didn’t last long. When I got married and had our daughter, the first thing we did was turn on the television and put her to bed right next to it. Bless her heart. But now, to this very day, she can sleep through anything. Noise doesn’t bother her in the least. Thank God for that.

I can’t write if it isn’t silent. I can’t even think. I wish I could play music when I’m working because I grew up with it and I love it so much, but I can’t. My brain automatically latches on to the lyrics, and I begin building an entirely different story based on them, and then, there I go… I’ve lost it all.

I took my first online creative writing course when I’d been married just a few years and I was at home with a toddler, developing a mush-brain. But that course was like God had dropped manna from heaven, right into my lap. For the first time, I could study, and learn, and write without ever leaving my house or my child. I wrote and studied when she slept and my husband, Kevin, was at work. He bought me my first electric typewriter, and actually managed to sneak a huge metal desk into our second-floor apartment bedroom for my birthday without me knowing. (I still don’t know how he managed that, but I have a picture of that desk with a huge bow on it, so I know it’s true.)

Even many years later, when I was asked to be Managing Editor of three publications in Texas, I was still able to work at home, except when I had to meet with production once a month, hold writers’ meetings for our freelancers (at my home), and do interviews around the state for my own stories. In other words, I’ve always been able to tailor-make my work schedule – and it’s a blessing that I could. It’s always allowed me, even with all my neuroses, to do exactly what I wanted and needed to do.

I still have to have complete silence when I’m writing. I still have to have complete privacy because, for some reason, I’m very self-conscious if anyone else is in my office or is watching me. (In other words, no kitchen tables or internet cafes for me.) I used to work late at night because it was the only time I wasn’t interrupted, but now I can work whenever I want. Biorhythms don’t seem to matter anymore. (I still use an old Word Program, but I’m learning that AI is my friend when it comes to plotting or character development.) 

Not too much has changed. The habits I developed when I was very young are still the habits that are leading me today.

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