Maria Keffler

I am a 1950's housewife. My desk is a little nook in my kitchen, where my laptop sits on a miniature shelf above the lunch boxes and a stack of folders for the PTO, the Girl Scouts and the bills/receipts file. I think I intended to be a feminist when I grew up. My husband irons his own shirts, though. Does that count for anything?

If I think I'm going to get some good, solid, uninterrupted time to write (i.e., the rest of the family units are either out of the house or buckled into their straightjackets and muzzles), I take the laptop to my rocking chair in the corner of the living room, next to which I keep my Bible, journal, a couple of craft books, and a stack of my husband's typo'd business cards. Every time he reorders, the company prints them wrong at least once, and I get a handy box of linen-feel, card-stock scrap paper. (Does anyone's name actually have the same letter three times in a row?)

Though I am the poster child for introversion, one of my favorite writing desks is a table at a coffee shop. It makes me feel French, and cosmopolitan, and caffeinated. Somehow I write better that way. Or maybe I just think I do.

I grew up on a small farm in rural Indiana. It was a great place to be a kid, but a little lonely since I had very few friends within easy travel distance. My mom said I got along with animals better than I did people, to which I replied, "Moo," and flicked my tail at her.

I've loved writing ever since I first got a pencil gripped the right way in my hand, and without siblings or neighbor kids with whom to enjoy Monopoly or dodge ball or cow-tipping, I had lots of time to put long, hackneyed stories onto reams of looseleaf paper. I still have some of them. When I fear that my writing has not improved since childhood, I peruse them, reassured that at least the heroes in my present stories aren't galloping in to save the day on silver unicorns. ('Cause everyone knows unicorns only come in white and pink.)