Last summer my studio apartment was invaded by bedbugs, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  With all my stuff packed up for three weeks of bug bombing, I decided to create a dedicated office space for writing.  Two walls got painted a light green to create a relaxing environment.  Two shelving units and a filing cabinet became the third wall.  The result was an office space isolated from the rest of the apartment, and, since this is Silicon Valley, slightly larger than a standard 8' x 8' cube.

This is not the paperless office of the future.  Everything that I write starts off as something created in long hand, a series of Post-It Notes, or on the typewriter before being entered into the computer.  Although I do some editing on the computer, I do a lot of editing on paper.  Being able to touch paper and spill red ink are important to me as a writer.  These days I find it easy to create the rough draft on the typewriter, scanned the page into the computer, and clean up the text on the screen.

At WonderCon 2009, I picked up two full-size posters to hang on the wall.  The first one is the "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster that's often seen in The X-Files TV series.   When I was seeing a personal counselor about my mother's death from breast cancer in 2004 during the 2006/2007 school year at San Jose City College, I watched all nine seasons of The X-Files DVDs.  The weirdness from that show made the weirdness of my atypical dysfunctional life look normal in comparison.  My counselor found me to be a fascinating patient since the conversations about my emotional state revolved around my knowledge of  books, movies and TV.  While searching for my lost childhood, I rediscovered my passion to be a writer again.  The other poster is for a 1950's style science fiction movie called Alien Trespass that's coming out this year that was a free give away at the Wondercon table.