There's this funny episode of the sitcom "Roseanne" in which Roseanne decides to revive the ambitions of her youth to be a great writer. Of course, great writing begins with actually writing something, and Roseanne unfortunately finds her long-established domestic life and duties making creative thought very difficult.

She starts out by getting up early in the morning and writing at the kitchen table. Soon enough, her husband Dan is up, trying to have a conversation with her. He quickly catches on that she needs some quiet time to focus, so he obliges and proceeds to read his newspaper, ruffling the pages loudly (but not intentionally). Roseanne moves to the living room to write, but very quickly her peace there is interrupted by little D.J. who turns on the television. Dan notices and enters, telling Roseanne to go back to the kitchen table; he'll stay in the living room with D.J. The silent space at the kitchen table is short-lived, however, as teen daughters Becky and Darlene come crashing down, Darlene shouting a loud "Good morning" to everyone. "Shhh!" Becky loudly whispers, "Mom is trying to write.?" The two try to preserve the quiet around Roseanne's personal writing space, but eventually they are whispering a conversation, one on each side of her.

Things don't look good for this frazzled mom trying to write the great American novel. Roseanne's birthday approaches, and Dan has a bright idea. He and the kids renovate the basement, making it into Roseanne's very own writing room, a little office of sorts with a desk and shelves Dan built himself ("For holding all your manuscripts," he says). Darlene and D.J. give her paper and pencils, Becky gives her a dictionary, and Dan gives her the gift of a day all to herself to write -- he's taking the kids out for the whole day.

Roseanne spends all day down in that little space set aside especially for her to write. She ends up spending the day tidying up. She later tells Dan she can't write because she just has too much going on. Between her job and keeping house, she just doesn't have any room in her brain for creativity.

Later, as she's putting D.J. to bed, he asks her to tell him a story. It's about P.J. Pannawack, a little boy whose adventures Roseanne makes up purely for her son's amusement. "Why isn't P.J. Pannawack in the library?" D.J. asks his mom. "Well, because he's not a real book, just something I made up," Roseanne says. D.J. answers, "Oh. Well, he should be in a book."

Later that night, as Dan is checking the doors and turning off the lights, he can't find Roseanne anywhere. Finally looking into D.J.'s room, he finds his son snoozing soundly in bed and Roseanne sitting next to him, scribbling furiously in her notebook. He smiles and leaves them alone.

Roseanne has found her inspiration -- and her writing space -- intimately connected with, and subservient to, the routine stuff of life.

Like Roseanne, I find it very hard to write at home, whether in complete silence or smack-dab in the hustle and bustle of family activity (especially not smack-dab in the hustle and bustle of family activity). We have tried several times to create a writing space for me, an office of my very own. Downstairs in our library, we once created a nook (okay, a cubicle) using book shelves, placing our big desk in the corner and adorning it with tools for writing and paper and reference books and other inspirations. In four years, I've never written a single word at that desk.

Instead, my best writing always comes out there. I have to get away, it seems. But not to someplace "inspirational." I once toyed with the idea of writing in the vast, lush indoor gardens at the Opryland Hotel, but I never tried it. Not just because it's far from home and would cost money to park my car, but mainly because I know I'd be too distracted in such a place.

My best writing has been done at my local coffee shop. Plain decor, unobtrusive music, the soft buzz of people talking around me. There's noise, there's activity, but none of it requires my attention. I also completed a fair bit of writing in my first novel while stuck between two fat persons on a flight from Nashville to Spokane, Washington. Elbows pinned to my sides, I somehow managed to write nearly thirty pages into my black-and-white composition book, which took up the entire area of that little tray table.

My best writing place is not quiet, but it's also not too noisy. It's in the midst of hubbub but not any hubbub which may require me to participate (as at home). I need to get away, but not to any place picturesque or peaceful. And it seems that, whenever I best lay my plans to write, the more they go awry -- basically, the lesser my output and creativity. The best writing happens in the flow of life, when we're not trying too hard to artificially make the process special. Putting thoughts on paper is hard enough, special enough; we only make it harder when we make too big a deal of things on the periphery, when we become more enamored with the idea of writing than we are with the work of writing itself. (Sort of like the person who loves books but rarely reads.)

Here's one of the more well-known anecdotes from Stephen King's On Writing:

For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room . . . In 1981, I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study in the rear of the house. For six years, I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind . . .

A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living room suite where it had been. . . . In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a baseball game or a movie and eat pizza. . . . I got another desk -- it's handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave. . . . I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. I came through all the stuff I told you about . . . and now I'm going to tell you as much as I can about the job. . . .

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around.