Where Writers Write: Sue Ingalls Finan

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a series in which authors showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Sue Ingalls Finan. 

She is a graduate of University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and Loyola University Chicago. She taught American history and literature in Chicago, Pittsburgh and Northern California, and her adaptive writing and story-telling are featured in diverse media – textbooks, anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. “The Cards Don’t Lie” (She Writes Press, Oct. 9, 2018) is her first novel. Now living in Sonoma County with her history buff husband Jim, she writes for her local newspaper and volunteers at hospitals and libraries with Duffy, her Irish wolfhound therapy dog.

Where Sue Ingalls Finan Writes

For me it’s not the where that’s important– it’s the important wear!...

When looking for inspiration, I slip into my snuggly Ugg moccasins. And while cuddled in their warm fuzzies, ideas slip into my head.

They take me lots of places – around our neighborhood of bulcolic lakes and wildlife, weekly visits to local libraries and museums, exploring and sightseeing our many diverse locales while in the passenger’s seat of my husband’s car, shopping for the latest and greatest at farmers’ markets, cooking Ottolenghie’s newest recipes in the kitchen, even perched on the sofa watching the Borgias or the Durrells on Netflix.

And always, as my feet are making impressions in the Uggs’ fleecy soles, so too are impressions being made on me, lining my soul with suggestive writing notions. Once ensconced in my “writer’s zone,”, I jot down concepts on scrap papers and post-its, and sort through them later.   Llike that scene in the movie “The Post,”; the “office floor” becomes littered with numerous pieces of the “evidence” - (my thoughtful manifestations-) and not worthy of being photographed.)  Such a delight to find that various notions I’d scribbled are quite plush proposals; and many a perfect fit for what I’d intended and needed.

And I’m again aware that all were enabled by the wear of my cozy moccasins: Hugs to my Uggs!