Where Writers Write: Theasa Tuohy

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 the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Theasa Tuohy. 

Theasa is the author of Five O'Clock Follies: What's a Woman Doing Here, Anyway? It published this past October by Calliope Press.

Where Theasa Tuohy Writes

I can write anywhere, and I have. Sitting on the floor of the AP bureau in Oklahoma City with a borrowed computer after the bombing of the Murrah building there in 1995. Taking notes on the run  or scribbling them surreptitiously on a tear-stained napkin cupped in the palm of my hand (funerals and other such sad occasions), but mostly in noisy newsrooms, phones ringing, editors shouting, wires clacking. But now that I'm writing novels, I work mostly in this most wonderful, cluttered but serene space next to my bed. I can roll out in the morn, while still in that half-asleep, half-awake dream state that is so perfect for fiction. You just put your fingers on the keys, and they begin moving on their own, so that by time you're really awake you're not at all tempted to go read the newspaper, or run the vacuum,  or do any one of the millions of things that writers often use as an excuse to avoid facing the  blank screen.

Slightly obstructing my view of the Manhattan skyline through my French-Country blue shutters are balcony baskets of mostly pansies, but also a small azalea and other assorted whatevers.  I'm once in awhile distracted by a buzzing bee, busily moving from flower to flower spreading pollen. But not for one second, have I lost the touch to write on trains, or planes, or city buses, or in the palm of my hand, or on my palm, for that matter, when inspiration strikes.

Check back next week to see where Courtney Mauk does her writing.