Novelicious - The Female Fiction and Chick Lit Blog

My Writing Room - Evonne Wareham

Evonne Wareham is a romantic thriller writer and the author of Never Coming Home which is out in early March.

My Writing Room by Evonne Wareham

 

I don't actually have a writing room.  Writing tends to sprawl into several parts of the house, but this is the corner of the dining room where most of the work gets done.  The comfy chair and the stool are essential, as my first draft is always written in longhand, then typed and re-drafted on an elderly computer which currently lives upstairs.  I'm very fond of it, as it doesn't sulk and throw hissy fits like the temperamental laptop in the picture.  The writing slope on the stool was made by my grandfather for my grandmother, who was a prolific letter writer.

This is a favourite place to write, because of the French windows. It has good light, and a view of my tiny courtyard garden, which is full of pots.  It’s very sheltered, so there are hyacinths just coming out and daffodils in bud.  The local moggies usually come around on a visit of inspection at some point in the day, to check that I'm working, and always seem surprised to find that I am.

My Writing Room - Christina Jones

This week we have a fantastic My Writing Room piece from Christina Jones. Christina's latest novel is Never Can Say Goodbye.

 

My Writing Room by Christina Jones

My writing room is my daughter’s ex-bedroom. And I call it my study – not office – because office sounds too much like work. Study sounds sort of cosy – I fondly imagine it has deep armchairs, a roaring fire and floor to ceiling bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes. Sadly, it doesn’t.

When we bought the house there were far more of us living here, so over the years I’ve shuffled my writing paraphernalia from bedroom to bedroom as one became vacant (sorry, I realise I’ve just made it sound like some sort of mansion instead of a pre-war terrace. We’ve only got four bedrooms but I’ve had ‘em all) and settled on this one five years ago because it’s big, and looks out over the back garden which is full of trees and quite wild, so there are loads of birds, and the cats, and butterflies and flowers to gaze at – all very pleasant - although I’d prefer to gaze out at the sea. (We live as far from the sea as it’s possible to get so this isn’t an option). I always say I’m going to paint a seascape mural on the fence panels at the bottom of the garden – but as I’m a lousy artist fortunately I haven’t succumbed – yet. This room also gives the least distraction. I’m easily distracted…

As my daughter’s bedroom it housed more mess and muddle than anyone would believe possible. As my study it houses more mess and muddle than anyone…  But it’s my own little messy bit of heaven where I escape the harsh and unpleasant stuff in the real world that I so want to change and know I never will, and drift away into creating my funny cosy villages and romantic happy-ever-afters.

 I’m not scarily obsessive about it being “my space” though. I can write with people in the room, with music blaring (can’t work in silence so the radio or stereo is always on), and talk to the family at the same time as I’m writing – I like company  - as long as no-one touches the piles of papers, mountains of books and umpteen scribbled-on-things. I know what everything is for and where it is – unless someone else (I’m looking at you, my congenitally neat OCD husband!) decides to “tidy”…

My Writing Room - Charlotte Betts

Today we are having a gander at Charlotte Betts' beautiful writing room. The Apothecary's Daughter by Charlotte Betts has just been published and you can read our review here.

My Writing Room by Charlotte Betts

 

 

I have a wonderful writing room in a converted outbuilding, rather grandly called the studio, as it’s where I used to base my interior design business. One day, when I find some time, I’ll use it to paint watercolours again. Unfortunately, due to the astronomically rising cost of heating oil I can only afford to use the studio in the summer.

It has a large roof lantern which floods the room with light and a high, wide window like a giant letterbox above my desk, from where I can see the garden and watch the birds on the feeder hanging from the pergola. Beyond the garden are woods, mostly beech and silver birch. Sometimes the garden is visited by deer to the detriment of the roses!

The studio is painted a soothing pale duck-egg blue and has one wall lined with bookshelves. I have a favourite wingchair where I do my thinking and research and drink endless cups of tea. In the summer I always write with the door open and can stroll around the garden muttering snatches of dialogue under my breath while I wrestle with plot problems.

In the winter, now I have a demanding and time consuming day job in an office in the local town, I simply write whenever and wherever I can. Most often I set up my laptop in the orangery which open-plan to the kitchen and you can see it in the photo above. It’s light and spacious and, in the interest of preventing back problems, I use a proper office chair at the ten-seater Victorian dining table. There is plenty of space to set out all my research files and books but it is annoying to have to clear it away for dinner time. (Actually, I usually just push it all down to one end and try to disguise it by placing a large bunch of flowers in front!) I still have wonderful views over the garden to the woods and I can keep an eye on the potatoes if I’m preparing the dinner at the same time as writing. Sadly, this is a common occurrence.

Sometimes I manage to take a lunch break from the office and my colleagues joke that I’m going back to the seventeenth century for an hour. I take my net book over the road to The Chequers Hotel, order a cappuccino and set up camp in the bar. I’ve learnt to shut out all muzak and conversation and I immerse myself in the novel, typing away like fury to beat the clock. I never have time for writer’s block any more and it’s amazing what you can achieve in terms of word count, if you have to, in a short space of time.

And then there are the notebooks. A lot of ‘writing’ goes on in my head, wherever I happen to be: on a train, driving or waiting to see the dentist. I have notebooks in various different sizes and colours to suit different handbags and pockets. I would no more leave the house without a notebook than my shoes since I hyperventilate at the thought of forgetting any fantastic ideas that will surely evaporate if not speedily captured on paper.

 You can read more about my writing life on my website at www.charlottebetts.com

 

My Writing Room - Daphne Kalotay

This week, Daphne Kalotay (who we also interviewed this week) tells us about her writing room in Boston.

My Writing Room by Daphne Kalotay

I’m very fortunate in that I rent a lovely apartment with its own study off of the main room.  This study has nice big built-in bookshelves, which I think make any room look immediately better!  But best of all is the sunlight; the room faces southeast, making it nice and bright in the morning, which is when I like to write.  And natural light always gives me energy, especially in the winter (which can be long here in Boston.)

I like to be able to spread out, so when I first moved in and started looking for a desk, none seemed large enough.  I ended up buying this dining room table at Crate and Barrel, and put it together myself; only if you look underneath will you see that not all the screws are in correctly….  The chair came from the furniture company where my sister works; it supposedly has some irregularity that made it unsellable, but I’ve found it comfortable.  I also like that it’s red, because I learned somewhere that red is an energizing color.  The rug I chose for the floor is red, too; a friend brought it back for me from Morocco.

 I know that some writers don’t like distractions and wouldn’t want their work area to be facing a somewhat busy street, but I’m the opposite.  Since writing is such a solitary activity, I like (crave, actually) the company of the world outside—the sound of passing cars, of people chatting, of dogs barking and birds chirping.  So a key element of why my writing room works well for me is that I can look right out the window and see life going on all around me—people walking past, the mailman making his rounds, a neighbor out jogging.

One block away is a playground, and when I have the windows open there’s a constant din of children’s voices (lots of joyful screaming), which I find lively and vitalizing.

 It’s now been nearly ten years that I’ve been writing at this desk; it has faded quite a bit from all the sunlight.  Sometimes I put out some inspiring little thing to keep me going—a photograph, or a quote I like.  Right now I have a little picture of a bird I clipped from a magazine, just because I love birds and thought it was cute.  I also have a postcard of a picture by Rodin, because it figures in the new piece I’m writing.

 Visit Daphne's Website

Join Daphne on Facebook

 

My Writing Room - Martina Reilly

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

This week we look into Martina Reilly's writing space. Martina's novel, Even Better Than The Real Thing has just been released.

 

My Writing Room by Martina Reilly

You have no idea how long it took to try and make my writing space look inviting and interesting, but  the camera never lies. This is it, minus all the junk that usually sits on my desk. I write, at the moment in my sitting room, facing a wall. The room itself holds four sofas, two computers, two televisions, a hall table, a printer which sits on a chair and numerous labelled boxes.

We’re actually in the middle of a house move – we have been for over a year now, so we’re in a rented house, which holds all the landlords furniture and all of ours. At first I didn’t believe I would be able to write in such a space, but I have discovered, much to my delight, that I can literally write anywhere, once I’m interested in what I’m doing. I’ve written my latest book (not out until 2013) here. The room itself would be cosy if it wasn’t so cluttered and the place where we live is quiet, so most days, despite the cluttered nightmare of my surroundings, it is peaceful. Because we’re renting, no one around really wants to invest much time in getting to know us, so during the day, when the children are at school, no one calls to my door, unlike the last place we lived where we knew everyone. This situation has been great for my writing but terrible for my social life.  Thank God for the phone, Facebook and twitter!

Even Better than the Real Thing was written partly from my bed (in our old house) I used to think how fabulous this arrangement was until I ended up crippled, both in body and in wallet! Due to severe stiffness and pain in my neck and shoulder, I could barely get out of bed most mornings and thanks to Google, I convinced myself I had advanced arthritis. The physio however soon put me straight and advised me to invest in a new chair – the snazzy red one you can see in the picture, a back cushion – which is not in the picture – and the keyboard, which my laptop sits on. This keyboard cost about one hundred euro and was the best money I ever spent. Ignore the paintbrushes, I dabble occasionally but have no idea how they got into this picture!

Hopefully by the time the next book comes out, I’ll have a really cool writing space, with shelves and gadgets and views of green, well tended gardens to stimulate me. For now however, I’ll just stick with the view of the wall! 

My website is www.martinareilly.info and you can catch me on Facebook or Twitter at @Martinareilly.

My Writing Room - Sophie Duffy

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

Today we have a nosy at the writing space of Sophie Duffy. Sophie is the author of The Generation Game, which Debs reviewed last year.

 

My Writing Room by Sophie Duffy

I have always written in bed. All my homework, O levels, A levels, first degree and Masters, were all done, studied and revised for in whatever bed I had at the time – the 2 foot 6 inch childhood bed, the dodgy-springed-ever-so-slightly-Tracey-Emin student  bed, the marriage bed. My bed is my office – it has all I need – a notebook, my phone, my laptop, Filofax, pen, Habitat blanket. And my dog to keep me silent company (not that she’s officially even allowed upstairs). Plus the room overlooks our garden and I can watch my kids doing dare devil stunts on the trampoline and in the distance is the sea – which I can hear in winter when the surf’s up and busy.

I started writing fiction about ten years ago when the kids were aged 3, 5 and 6. Spare time was scarce and I had to fit writing in where I could – while they watched Teletubbies and Blue Peter, while I was cooking tea, while they were busy with Lego and Barbies. I never had the luxury of writer’s block as there wasn’t time. I learnt early on to write in short bursts and I have never quite recovered those early years of mad creative energy. At the weekends I would retreat to bed and instead of catch up on sleep I would write. It’s all I could think about.

Now they are teenagers and I have longer stretches of time, I find other ways of filling it when I know I should be writing – my younger self would be telling me to get on with it and I should listen to her. But life changes. I’ve changed. Now I have the dog for company during the day and I go out for walks on the beach and wrestle with story ideas and character traits. But it’s still my bed I come back to.

The bedroom is not the tidiest but it is full of family nostalgia which inspires me; family is what I am interested in and what I write about. There are old photos of my brothers and me, long-gone family members, my babies. My grandmother’s Edmund Dulac illustrations cover two walls. Books and old papers are piled up on the floor next to my side of the bed. A chair lurks somewhere beneath discarded clothes that wait to be hung up again. I suppose my writing room reflects the kind of writer I am (chaotic). It also reflects my writing which is down-to-earth.

Now if I could just get the dog off my feet I could get on with some more...

VISIT SOPHIE'S WEBSITE

My Writing Room - Clare Dowling

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

Today we are peeking into the (gorgeous) writing space of Clare Dowling!

Clare is an Irish Times bestselling novelist. Her latest book is Too Close For Comfort.

My Writing Room by Clare Dowling

 

For years I wrote sitting on my bed with my laptop plonked on my knees, thinking myself very bohemian.   But then one shoulder seized up, followed quickly by the other, and I ended up in a physiotherapist’s clinic hunched over like Quasimodo.  It would only get worse, I was told, unless I sat at a desk, with proper arm support. 

I’m not that keen on desks, so my compromise is the kitchen island.  It’s cheery and bright there, with loads of supportive room for the elbows.  I like my high stool, although it’s a bit creaky, and there’s a really nice feeling of being in the thick of family life, instead of cloistered away upstairs in the attic.  The downside is that, being in the kitchen, I’m forever thinking about food, or wanting cups of tea.   And everybody thinks you’re fair game for a quick nutella sandwich request. 

It’s not a very personal space – you’d be more likely to find a leftover red pepper by my computer than a beautifully framed photo of my family – but it means I can whip my laptop away two minutes before the kids arrive home from school, and I’m good to go. 

My Writing Room - Cally Taylor

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

Today our guest is the lovely Cally Taylor, author of Heaven Can Wait and the brand new, wonderful Home For Christmas.

 

My Writing Room by Cally Taylor

 

Ever since I stopped living in house shares in the late 90s and lived on my own instead I had to learn to squash my life into one tiny one-bedroomed flat after another. Both of my novels - ‘Heaven Can Wait’  and ‘Home for Christmas’ - were written either at a desk in my bedroom or on a laptop on my knee in the living room and it wasn’t until I moved in with my boyfriend earlier this year that I finally got a ‘room of my own’ in which to write. 

My Writing Room - Shari Low

BY DEBS CARR

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

My Writing Room by Shari Low

My writing space is actually the corner of the family room in our house. In the pic, it looks like a haven of tranquillity, but the opposite is true. At any time there’s usually one son sitting behind me saving the universe on his X-box, another playing Summertime on the saxophone for the 4653 time and the dog is battering my leg with a squeaky rubber hamburger in the hope that I’ll throw it for her. It’s probably a good thing that chaos and noise makes me focus better.

My Writing Room - Christina Courtenay

BY DEBS CARR

I usually sit and write in what is jokingly called my “office” – it’s really just a cluttered corner in a small alcove off our bedroom, but I love it anyway.  I have a small desk and lots of shelves, which is all I need.  I could write anywhere really, but I prefer to sit there because I have a proper keyboard hooked up to my laptop.  I find laptop keyboards really hard to type on, although I do sometimes sit on my bed or on the sofa to write as well.

I have two laptops, not because I think I’ll write more books that way, but I like to keep my writing on one that’s not connected to the internet.  I figured if I only have that one on, I wouldn’t be tempted to check e-mails, Twitter or Facebook quite so often, although having an iPhone sort of ruined that plan.  On the wall, I have a notice board, where I keep my extensive collection of images of possible heroes.  They’re just for inspiration of course, not indiscriminate ogling :)

My book shelves contain all sorts of research books, plus other bits and pieces that might come in useful one day.  Also my collection of favourite DVD’s and umpteen files of genealogy stuff.  And at the top there are some stuffed toys that have sentimental value in one way or another, including my first ever teddy bear who was once possibly a polar bear, but is now more or less without fur and definitely not white!

On the other walls are drawings made by my daughters and a poster of a sumo wrestler – the inspiration for my hero in The Scarlet Kimono.  It may all look very messy (and let’s not even mention the floor, which hasn’t been seen for months I’m afraid), but I know where everything is and it works for me!  The fact that there is no window is actually a bonus as well, because it means I don’t get distracted by the view or what’s going on outside.  Now if someone could just get rid of the guy with the leaf blower who seems to have taken up permanent residence in our street, it would all be just perfect …

The winner of the copy of Highland Storms is...Aileen Russell. Please can you email your address to me (Debs Carr) and I'll forward it to Choc Lit Publishers so they can send your prize on to you.

My Writing Room - Eleanor Moran

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

Today we have a little nosy into the writing life of Eleanor Moran, whose latest book is the fabulously witty Breakfast In Bed

 

My Writing Room by Eleanor Moran

I've always craved an average writing day, but I wrote my first 3 novels round a really busy full time job as an executive producer for drama at the BBC so I never had the luxury! I write on the train to Cardiff for script meetings, trying not to drop crumbs into my keyboard, I write before work, after work, at weekends, always ensuring I have one clear day off. I find it really hard to sit down and write at my desk, I get such itchy feet, so I rotate between various North London caves. It's amazing I'm not either bankrupt or thirty stone considering how much French toast I've eaten in Ottolenghi in the pursuit of literary greatness. I tend to thank them in the acknowledgements. There's great eavesdropping potential too (all writers are terrible magpies, even if they don't admit it).

My Writing Room – Dorothy Koomson

POSTED BY DEBS CARR

We asked Dorothy Koomson to tell us a bit about her writing space and she very kindly agreed to do so.

Crikey! I feel a complete fraud doing this piece because I don’t have – and never really have had - a writing room. Or even a specific place I write. Apart from my bed. I write a lot in bed.

I didn’t stop working full-time as a journalist/Deputy Editor until after my fourth book, Marshmallows For Breakfast, was published, so I had to squeeze in writing whenever and wherever I could. That meant getting on the train, elbowing people aside to commandeer a corner seat to write on my 20-minute journey into London or even sitting in during my lunch-break wherever I was freelancing writing in my notebook.

I’m lucky in that I don’t need a special place to write. Ideally I’d be able to sit down, but if not, writing long-hand - as I often do – means I can still write if I’m standing up. If I’m in my bedroom or the kitchen or the living room, I’ll very often have the television on because I’m a complete television addict. (I was going to say I was committed to research, but that wouldn’t be the entire story.)

My Writing Room - Sheila O' Flanagan

Taking inspiration from The Guardian's 'Writers' Rooms', Sky Arts' 'The Write Place' and Book Chick City's excellent 'Where Stories Are Made'; My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

This week we take a peek inside the writing room of Sheila O' Flanagan. Sheila's latest novel All For You is one of our top picks for July.

My Writing Room by Sheila O' Flanagan

I wrote my first novel, Dreaming of a Stranger, in the garage of my house in Clontarf. The conversion job on the garage (done by the previous owners) was very basic, and the temperature never seemed to rise to a few degrees above zero. It was also on the gloomy side, because it faced the north east and didn’t get much sun.

When I eventually gave up the day job to become a full-time writer I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stick the cold garage all day. So I decided to build up over it and relocate my writing room to upstairs.

Now, my desk is right beside a full-length window and it overlooks the garden, which means I can watch the birds, the squirrels and the occasional hedgehog that wander in. There’s another window behind me so that I can see downstairs, into my living-room. Even though authors are supposed to work in splendid isolation it’s good to be able to see what’s going on in the house sometimes.

My Writing Room - Amanda Addison

Taking inspiration from The Guardian's 'Writers' Rooms', Sky Arts' 'The Write Place' and Book Chick City's excellent 'Where Stories Are Made'; My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.   

This week we have the writing room of Amanda Addison, author of Laura's Handmade Life...

My Writing Room by Amanda Addison

I write in what is the smallest room in the house. It also doubles up as my studio. After moving to the country from a small terraced house in the city, where my bedroom doubled up as my study/studio, I very much value this me space. Luckily, gone are the days of sleeping in a bedroom amidst oil paint fumes or finding a few pins and sewing needles in the bed!

Although my study is small, the window faces east, which means in the mornings it is bright and filled with light. It is a perfect morning writing space.

A writing space is so important, in my estimation, that the first homework I set my creative writing students is to find a writing space where they can work regularly. I always surprise them, saying that my space is quite bare and minimal – very few pictures etc.  I intended my study to be empty, rather like a monk’s cell so, that I could easily get into the writing zone without any visual distractions – very hard for someone who initially trained as an artist!