Where Writers Write: Mike Kleine

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where some of TNBBC's favorite authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen.

This is Mike Kleine. He is an American author of literary fiction, and electronic music. He received a B.A. in French literature. Someday, he will begin his M.A. in English literature. He currently lives somewhere in the Midwest. Mastodon Farm (Atlatl, 2012) is his first book.

The book trailer for Mastodon Farm is pretty interesting. You should take a peek before Mike takes you on a tour of the places in which he finds himself writing:

Where Mike Kleine Writes

I’m 23 years old. I can’t afford anything so there is no writing studio for me.

Mastodon Farm, I wrote in France, so the picture of the desk and the chair is of that place in France.

Here, in the Midwest, I write in the living room and the bedroom.

Generally, I am in the living room. This is where I keep the desktop computer. I like typing on a keyboard that is not a laptop keyboard and I like to look at things on a screen that is not a laptop screen, so most of the time, I am on the desktop computer in the living room. After that, I’m in the bedroom.

There’s not a lot of room in bedroom, but this is fine I guess. How much room do you need, really (if you think about it)? Also, it’s tidy, since there isn’t that much room for anything. I have a mattress and all the stuff you need to build a complete bed, with the headboard and all that, but I never feel like putting it together, so mostly, I sleep on the floor.

I have a bookshelf, in the bedroom. I’ve never had a bookshelf, so this is something new for me. Usually, my books stay in cardboard boxes or plastic containers, so it’s nice not to have to do that anymore. Mostly though, I have the laptop in the bedroom because sometimes, I wake up super early so I can write down ideas. And even if there are no ideas, I still do it. It’s something good to do sometimes, I think.

The rest of the time, it’s for when I wake up in the middle of the night. It takes too long to turn on the desktop computer so I use the laptop computer to type things I think up in the middle of the night. I also have a notebook I bought—this great big black thing, with a hardcover—just for that, writing down ideas and stuff, but I’m too afraid to write anything in it, in case I mess up… So most of the time, I just write on envelopes and the back of old print-outs.

If I had the money for an iPhone 6 or whatever, I’d probably be writing my next book on that. But probably not.

Check back next week to see where Letitia Moffitt writes.