Living in a two bedroom apartment where all the rooms are divided up evenly between my significant other and I often leads to contention and shut doors demanding privacy for a clear head beg fights. This is especially true when we both work full time and the writing thing is something I take seriously as a second job.

You’re right when you say that the people around you, should you decide to work at home, think that your space is their space. Switching off a cell phone is easy enough as is turning off the twitter, IM, whatever online communication devise is your savvy but turning people ‘off’ or ‘down’ is another problem entirely.

Anymore my trips home are done so my parents are at work and I am the only one at their place able to sip coffee and write for hours uninterrupted. It is very difficult for people to conceive that the priory is the work even if their is no ‘product’ readily visible. I publish an online novel just for that reason. Sometimes people need to see what you do in order to respect it and even more so, respect the process.

I suppose in the end it is like everything in life. It is an attempt, an endeavor and if we didn’t have the creative demons chasing our heels we’d probably not write at all.

However, I do have parents. These days, they are not unsupportive with regards to my writing (though it took some time to get there), but they have next to zero knowledge about the publishing industry. So I get things like “Books are published all the time, so why isn’t any of yours?” or “I just heard/read about this absolutely dreadful sounding book and it got published. So if stuff like that gets published, surely a publisher would take yours.” Never mind that “this absolutely dreadful sounding book” is usually a literary novel targeted at a completely different market.

It also took me some time to make clear that even though I am at the computer all the time anyway, I don’t necessarily have the time to write an e-mail to this or that classmate of my mother’s on her behalf or order this or that item for her right now, especially when none of those things are urgent. Just as it took some time to make it clear to my Dad that even though I am working at the computer, that does not automatically mean that I will help him with this or that business letter right now, unless it’s really urgent. I will write his letter later, but right now I’m doing something else. I don’t mind helping out, but paid work, my PhD and writing take priority (in that order, more or less).

I’m with ya on the family distraction. Sometimes it seems like a psychic call goes up in this household when I sit down to crank out a word count. I’ve considered buying a large, vicious dog and parking it in front of the study door, but then I’d have to take of the dog along with the kids and the spousal unit.

Which is no reason to listen, of course.

After the first few checks showed up in the mail, that helped my family see where it was going. Now, suddenly, it’s Dad’s Office, and my work time gets sacred respect. Especially as the checks get bigger…