Revamping the Writing Space with Feng Shui

First of all let me acknowledge that I know how lucky I am to have an office. In other days, in a different house, I wrote in the kitchen, with a portable Underwood on my knees and a pot of spaghetti steaming on the stove. I have an office now in what was once the baby's room. (He will be thirty years old in a few months.) I have a dream of making my office a smooth-running machine for turning out deathless prose.

But my office has problems. The desk became so cluttered not long ago that I took to dragging my laptop downstairs and working on the dining room table. Then, since no one was working in there, I put stuff in the office that there wasn't room for anywhere else. A rack of disused clothing. Four or five bushels of unsorted documents, photographs, bills, DVDs, and mysterious machine parts.

The day I couldn't get the door open for the clutter I knew it was time.

One of the things about the office, which was once the baby's room, and then the teen-ager's room, was its location in the house, bagwa-wise. If you pay any attention at all to the tenets of Feng Shui you know that the northeast corner is the money corner. If you don't clear out the clutter and let the good chi flow smoothly you will be doomed to poverty. No wealth can flow your way. As proof of this, one time when I cleaned out the teen-ager's room and straightened it all up I won two hundred dollars in a football pool the following day. Things like that never happen to me. You may say, ha-ha, native superstition, but two hundred dollars is two hundred dollars.

In the belief that there must be something in it if the Chinese take it so seriously I went online and checked out what needed to be done with my office in order to sharpen up my writing career and attract money.

The Knowing Ones said, first of all, clear out the clutter.

I cleared out the clutter. Three bags of clothes have gone to St. Andrews' Thrift Shop. Five bushels of stuff have been sorted, identified, filed or discarded. You wouldn't believe some of the things I came across. Hey, there was a three-ounce bottle of cologne I brought back from Bouchercon in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2006. It still had half an ounce in it. I squirted it on myself. Nice smell.

Then they said, don't have your desk facing the door. But don't have it facing a wall, either. Well, the room is too small and the desk too big. Either it faces the wall or it faces the door. (You know I'm not turning my back to the door.) I opted for facing the door. If the bad energy gets all over me, so be it. I can always hang a crystal.

Then they said, put something like a mountain behind your desk, either a huge plant or a picture. Something. So I got a reproduction of an elegant old travel poster to hang up.

Then they said, put something in the money corner like a plant. That will attract money. And something purple. That will attract big, dignified money. I went to the florist and got this plant and a little purple pot to put it in. Right after that I found a dime in the street.

Then they said–and this is particularly important–make sure not to have anything blue, or watery, or metallic on your north wall, or all your fame will be quenched. Instead you want fire. Pictures of fire. Candles burning. Red. Orange. Hot stuff.

My whole office was painted blue. I figured this explained a lot about the way my writing career has been going, so I re-painted it a sort of greeny-yellow (that could be a fire color, depending on what's burning) and sent away for a poster of a Mexican volcano to hang on the north wall. And of course a candle. I light it on days when I feel that I have enough on the ball to remember to blow it out, because burning down the house will bring me more fame than I really need right now.

Kate Gallison

Good Luck!

The new year is upon us, and for all us triskaidekaphobes and generally superstitious people it is a time of trepidation. We dodged the Mayan Apocalypse only to be cast into a year ending with the dreaded number thirteen. We must counteract this. We must strive to get lucky. (Not necessarily in the carnal sense.)

Not my office, but it would certainly be nice

Take steps! Attract good luck to yourself! The Chinese know all about how this is done. For example, in my (admittedly shallow) studies of Feng Shui I found that my little home office occupies the wealth area of our house. What this means is that I have to clean and organize my office before I can make a dime this year. I was going to show you a picture of what it looks like now, but I would have to kill myself for shame. It's that bad. So I'll clean my office and Feng Shui the daylights out of it. Plants that simulate mountains. Crystals that concentrate good energy. When it's nice again I'll post a picture.

When one does this, when one clears out the bad energy in one's wealth area, the Chinese say, the money comes rolling in. That would be nice. Of course the whole Feng Shui thing is an alien concept to my particular ethnic group, Anglo-Canadian-Wasp-Irish. My own family was as superstitious as any Asian, but they lived by different superstitions. Never put a hat on the bed. When you take off your shoes, put them together the right way 'round, right shoe on the right side, left shoe on the left. Otherwise all your luck will walk away from you. If a picture falls off the wall someone will die. If you spill salt, throw a bit over your left shoulder or you'll have a fight with a friend. Never work on your clothes while you're wearing them. Sew your clothes upon your back, poverty you'll never lack, goes the rhyme.

Actually that one is not so different from the stricture to keep your office neat and carefully-ordered. It's all about work habits. Good work habits make good luck. So keep the hat off the bed, folks, and put your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone. May 2013 be the best year yet for all of us.

Kate Gallison