Dear Wigleaf,

I write this from my bedroom—which, for two years, has also been the office where I work my day job; and my twin babies' nursery, the only place they'll sleep simultaneously for longer than a few minutes; and their older brother's preferred playroom, repository for more Lego bricks and Brio trains and other plastic knickknacks than the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; and my sporadic nail salon and day spa (self-care!); and the folding/staging area for five people's laundry; and the creative workspace where I draft my novel one weekly paragraph at a time.

I used to go all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons. I don't anymore! For a change of scenery, I haul myself from one corner of the room to another and hope it shakes something loose in my brain.

The other day, my four-year-old was annoyed at me for working when he wanted to play, so he detached the cord from my breast pump and wrapped one end around my bedroom doorknob, stretched it across the crack in the door, and then weighed down the other end with a stack of Moleskine notebooks, partly filled with little shards of story ideas. I didn't realize what he'd done until I tried to leave the room and found myself trapped. Obvious symbolism always seems so ham-fisted in fiction, but it doesn't begin to compete with the stuff of real life.

Wish I were there!

~Shannon