A Writer's Feng Shui

Rethinking the creative space.

The view from my new “office.”

Many years ago, a healer advised me to move at least one piece of furniture in the house every six months or so. “It helps change the energy,” she said. “It renews things. Refreshes them.” I’ve never studied Feng Shui, but I understood what she meant.

I’ve been thinking about her words lately, because a few months ago I changed things up without really intending to.

It was January, and I was spending hours each day on The Writer’s Miracle Method to meet my mid-January deadline. One Saturday I brought my laptop from my downstairs office to the living room, set up a card table in front of the fireplace, and never went back.

The fireplace makes a great backdrop for Zoom classes. And, of course, through the winter, it offered a kind of coziness—along with a cup of tea and a blanket—that feels like it’s embedded in a writer’s DNA.

But there’s more to it than that.

Over the twenty-five years Bob and I have lived here, countless classes, workshops, and retreats have centered in this living room. We’ve watched an entire generation of nieces, nephews, and grandchildren play here and grow up before our eyes. We’ve hosted family reunions. A friend once stood here and sang “O Holy Night,” and it feels like her high notes are still reverberating.

We hosted author and A Course in Miracles teacher Marianne Williamson for a house party in this room. I’ve counseled clients here. Problems have been solved here. Books have been conceived and birthed here. There have been card games and Christmas mornings and long conversations that changed lives.

There is good energy in this room, with its vaulted ceiling and huge picture windows.

There are angels in this room.

Downstairs, on the other hand, I have a spacious room that has long been my official office. It’s filled with books and files, a large desk my ex-husband bought for me in the early 1980s, and a computer desk I bought for myself after the divorce.

I have my mother-in-law’s recliner. Artwork a friend painted in the 1990s. My mother’s antique sewing machine table, which I’ve never used but can hardly look at without seeing her there, bent over quilts-in-progress for the last thirty years of her life.

My “real” office overlooks our backyard, the hosta bed, the grove of trees, and the hills beyond our house. It has an adjoining bathroom and kitchenette. For more than two decades, I’ve spent hours there every day.

“Time to make that long commute,” I’d say to Bob after breakfast, before I headed downstairs to start my day.

“Watch out for traffic,” he’d say.

In that office, I have what feels like acres of space. Reading corners. Favorite photos. Keepsakes from around the world. Gifts from friends and readers. Framed covers of my books. They’re all things I’m grateful for and once thought an office should be.

And yet for the last four months, I’ve been working at a card table in the living room, looking out over the front field, with nothing but my laptop, my phone, a handwritten to-do list, a legal pad, my calendar, and my A Course in Miraclesbook. Oh, and a pen. And a pencil.

And I’ve discovered that’s all I need.

I have spaciousness of a different kind. Not square footage, but portability. Detachment. The spaciousness of less stuff.

Meanwhile, my actual office has become a parking lot for Christmas decorations, then Easter decorations, along with stacks of papers I once thought I needed and no longer do. Several printed drafts of The Writer’s Miracle Method sit on that expansive desk, along with receipts from 2025, neatly paper-clipped after tax season, still waiting for a place to go.

My writing life now is relatively paperless and remarkably light. It’s almost shocking to realize how much of modern life exists in conversations, emails, texts, videos, Word documents, and PDFs that never become physical objects at all. How much of what matters now moves without touching anything concrete. How much can be created without shelves, drawers, cabinets, or clutter.

How little I need to create more than ever before.

So…whether or not I return to my former office, I’ll be rearranging the furniture there.

I’m hoping my mother’s sewing machine cabinet finds a good home with someone in the family. It may be time to let the big desk—and its ties to another chapter of life—go. I need to clear the bookshelves, too, and decide what to do with the magazines that carry my byline from years ago. It turns out that memories don’t need as much shelf space as we think.

Recently a client showed me a room she had emptied of hobby supplies, leaving only a desk, a chair, and a file cabinet. What once might have looked sterile to me now looked like peace. Liberation.

So I’m letting a lot of things go.

As I find more peace in my inner home, I find that I need less in my material one. I once considered a physical room the epicenter of my achievement, productivity, history, and identity. But it became cluttered. Not just with stacks of unfilled papers, but with outdated identities, emotional weight, old definitions of how life should look.

So, I get to make room for what’s new—not in a room, but in consciousness. A different kind of Feng Shui.

Seems I no longer need my office to create my inner life. I simply need my mind to reflect it.

Sending blessings,

Deb

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Thank you to Susan Eaton for inviting me to be a guest on her Embodied Holiness Podcast.

I met Susan at our Story Summit Her Spirit retreat last August, and I immediately knew we’d have A LOT to talk about. She’s a pastor, author, wife, mom, gardener, podcaster, and so much more, and she brings light to everything she does. She’s one of those people who just lights up every space they’re in, even though—or because—she’s had her own share of challenges and sorrows in her life.

So when she asked me to be a guest on her podcast to talk about some of the principles in my book Be the Light that You Are, I was really honored. And when it came time to record it, I discovered all over again how much we have in common, and how much I enjoy her curiosity and compassion.

You can listen to the podcast here. And if you’re looking for peace, comfort, hope, and inspiration, please check out Susan’s other podcasts and books.

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The Writer’s Miracle Method will be here in six months!

I finished up my copyedits for the book earlier this month, and in the next couple of weeks, I’ll get the first page proofs, which is such an exciting stage for an author. For the first time, I’ll see exactly how the book is going to look when readers open it up.

As a reader, you may not pay a lot of attention to page design, but it’s an art for sure. Choosing the right font, the right leading (the space between the lines), the right shaded boxes—even the width of the margins—can make or break the reader’s experience with the book. And I can tell you from the preview I’ve seen, the designer at St. Martin’s did a beautiful job.

The book is available here for pre-order. I can’t wait to introduce it to you October 13!

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A NOTE TO MY READERS: I write “A World of Your Own” as a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, which is led by Julie Gammack, of Des Moines. I’m honored to be part of this group, featuring the diverse voices of more than 70 professional writers and journalists across the state of Iowa. I encourage you to check out their columns.