An Alcove of One's Own

I spent my afternoon trying to carve a suitable writing space out of the downstairs room with the books.  It's not an office, as it also houses our dressers and so many bookcases that there isn't room to put a desk down there. It's not a spare bedroom, as there is no bed (or any other furniture on which to sit or lie). It's just a room, and its predominant feature is books. There isn't, in fact, a spare 6 inches on any of the walls against which to put a desk, a card table, or even a collapsible tray table, which is what I have right now as a working flat surface. There is an empty space in front of the closet (a seldom-used closet that houses seldom-worn coats and boardgames), though, and so I set up my folding tray table and one of those collapsible canvas camping chairs in front of the closet, facing one of my bookshelves. I set up a lamp, too--effectively in the center of the room--and toted in my electric space heater (as the "downstairs" is half underground and the carpet, I am certain, is the only thing between my feet and the cement foundation, and therefore I could also hang a side of beef down there without worrying about spoilage). My goal is to procure an electric blanket instead of the space heater as it has greater efficiency and practicality (when the writing is done, I vacate that room post-haste), but so far, this is a decent stopgap, I suppose.

I also made an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my writing for at least the month of November. For some reason, I am motivated by numbers, despite my general hate-hate relationship with them, and I am willing to take any motivation I can rustle up. Why November?  It's National Novel Writing Month.  I'm not officially a NaNo participant, but the aura of writing floating in the ether is helpful. I'm not tallying on a single project, but I'm taking the month as a chance to finish up some things I've started or to get some projects onto a running start. Words are words: however they come, I'll take them.