Virginia Woolf is famous for saying that a woman needs money and a room of her own if she’s going to write fiction. This week, I finally have a room of my own again.

It’s been almost a whole year since I packed my office up.

My son was no longer a newborn and needed to move out of our room and into his own space. So I packed up my writing books, my notes, 80,000 drafts of my novel, my office supplies, my Gandalf and Obi Wan Kenobi action figures and everything else I’ve managed to accumulate over the last 15 years of my career and moved my desk to a corner of our bedroom.

Then we moved, and I had my own room again, but since we moved during the holidays, all the boxes we didn’t want people to see got hidden in my office. Then my son’s playpen got moved in. And while it was a room, and mine, it was filled with crap, and I could find nothing in it.

Oh, you need to use the printer?
YOU SHALL NOT PASS.

After a few months of working in this disaster, I took some time this week to find all the boxes that contained my office. I still don’t know where about 20 percent of my things are, but I found and unpacked most of them. (Including Gandalf. I losy Obi-Wan, but I like to think there’s a little blue action-figure Force ghost floating around in here.)

My office is back. I can find my notes. I can find my stapler and the extra ink for the printer. And most importantly, I have a room of my own again. It’s not perfect. The walls in here still need to be plastered and painted, which means I will have to move everything again. (I refuse to think of that right now.)

Now I just need some money.