roomless

I've been looking over these writing room pics enviously today, such lovely rooms! I don't have one at the moment. Its been handed over to drills and filling foam for windows to be fitted! It may be sometime till I get a room back. I think when I do I'll may re decorate entirely, change the color for the first time ever, get rid of most of stuff in there. Colour is going to be an issue though.

What colour is positive, creative, but still possible to live with? It's the one room I don't have to share and therefore paint cream or beige.

writers room 13

There's a simple purity to this writing area, a clarity. The white walls, the little old desk facing the window with no curtains. The writer looks forward and out at the sky, no swags, no nets, no accessories for window treatments to distract, no nets to wash. The writer comes here and leave s all that little stuff behind. I love how the room feels timeless, a classic Persian style rug, a wooden chair, pens in a pot. Only the office chair puts any date on when the photo was taken. Fashion, decor, consumerism, the little distractions and concerns of modern life seem stripped away here. The space is kept simple, a blank canvas for the imagination. It looks very peaceful in this writers attic haven, the writer ascends the stairs and leaves the rest of the house below. It gets quieter and a writing state is entered further with every footstep the writer takes.

What the writer says: It's a bedroom at the top of the house (you can see the bed on the right) overlooking the gardens, because I like to be high up when I write, feeling as if I'm away from real life. The old white desk is the one I've written on since I was a poverty- stricken single parent and I wrote my first novel on it - it feels like part of the writing process to me now. Ditto most of the stuff I have around me there - the stuff on the wall which my kids gave me, the carpet I inherited when my grandmother died - they're all part of the real me and my history from which my writing mentality comes. The room's never been decorated since I moved into it, as `i think you can see, because I can never get to allowing it to be disrupted. At the mo it's in novel-rearranging mode - all my plans laid out on the table, and the old version laid out in sections on the floor (with the felt tip pens! I know it looks mess, but it's not, in my head!

I love this. I don't know any writer who doesn't have the concern that their work space looks a mess to the outside eye, piles of paper on the floor, pages spread out, yet to the writer there's often so much more to it. When I was young my mother bought me a desk because she couldn't stand to see 'the mess'I made of my bedroom floor.Now you can work at the desk she said.She wasn't happy that even though she had made the effort to buy me a nice second hand desk papers still got laid out on the floor. I'd come in and find them tidied away. It was a feeling of dismay, 'Noo!' I had a system. I needed to see the pages laid out on the floor like that, in that order. Sometimes words need to be spread out. Ideas are bigger than a desk , no matter how adequate the desk may be. There's something to do with spacial awareness involved, the necessity of seeing a page in relation to another, a phrase in the context of the pages previous. For this often nothing but the floor will do, it looks like paper out of place to anyone who walks in, but it's not. I like that this writer forgives themselves on this and just recognizes, I need space, it will look messy, but this is my area to work in and I will use it as I need. I suppose this is one of the reasons people believe writing is an anti social activity- writers need quiet sometimes, need thinking time, need a little space, and need to make a mess now and then. I suppose the families of writers need to know this, understand and tip toe around papers sometimes if the writer doesn't have the luxury of their own room to do it in. I'm glad I'm a writer instead of living with one because it may not be easy at first.

writers room 12

These writing areas all belong to the same writer. The writer describes one of them as novel writing desk (top left), the other desk as editing corner (above right) and the chair area is described as poetry corner. I love how different each of these areas feels. Novel area is the most office like desk, files stored near by to hand, the lap top in wait. It feels business like in comparison to other writing areas. This seems apt to how novelists approach working on a novel. It is work, requires a set routine, a recognition that a desk is there to be gone to for the strenuous graft of working on the serious business of a novel. No distractions, discipline. Interestingly, editing corner is on a different desk ( a lovely old one.) This is a great idea. Editing is a different part of the brain to initial creativity; it is often impossible to switch from editing to creating new work. One task is about letting anything come out, letting rip, just write, see what is there. The other is about organising and removing words sometimes, finding patterns, framing, then re framing sometimes. Totally different experiences. It seems apt that two areas are devoted to them. The writer goes to the desk with an intention reinforced by which desk they are at- a place to write a novel, a place to edit. They are getting into the required mindset by just going to this desk or that one. There are books and an iron cockerel on the editing corner desk, this seems to indicate the writer may also write the odd new bit of work here and be more playful in this area than when in the mindset of novel writing. By contrast, poetry corner is a big comfy chair with cushions and a wool throw- poetry compared to novel writing or editing seems like a matter of relaxing for the writer. Poetry can be about the comfort of words and language, much needed perhaps after shifts of novel graft.

What the writer says:I like to write poetry in pencil because I make lots of alterations and corrections as I go along, and writing in pencil enables me to rub things out, rather than crossing out and replacing the words, maybe several times. This makes it easier for me to read when I transfer it to my PC. I have one of those very fat draughtsman's propelling pencils with an integral rubber which is good for my arthritic fingers as well.

  The poetry corner is a really old comfy chair which I got second hand.It makes you feel as though you're sitting on your Daddy's lap. I use the cushion as a lap-desk. The editing corner is my PC station where I do everything else as well as editing, but it's pretty much essential to the process because it has  my only connection to a printer.

My novel writing place is in my recently finished Office/Studio/Workshop, which I've been waiting to be finished for at least 2 years and as such I'm hugely pleased with it. In the same large room is a large table for craft work and a smaller table for my sewing machine, as well as a couple of free-standing bookshelves and other bracket shelves. The large craft table has finally helped me to print out my poems and
file them. I didn't have enough room at my PC desk.

What writers write with is interesting. Some use brightly coloured felt tip pens (I'm always fascinated with why and how.) Some use biros or only fountain pens, some only write in blue or black ink. Some don't use longhand much at all. (I like an inky pen, preferably black, I buy them in bulk, a different brand feels different and less right to use.) Pencil's remind me of childhood. As adults everything we have to sign is in ink. Writing in pencil seems to give permission for childlike ideas and playfulness to come out in the process of writing. The cats are there waiting to get in on poetry corner, to sit on that big chair the writer describes as a lap.

writer's room 11

There is a wonderful mix of inspirational items and space in this area. It looks tidy, a lot of clear space to keep distractions at a minumum and give creativity space, yet the writer hasn't gone for a Spartan look, but still holds dear a few little items of inspiration ( books, a few framed pictures on the wall, and on the desk, one on the wall looks mysterious and slightly sinister, one is in bright coloured felt pen and has a childlike innocence.) So we'd expect a mix in the work of the writers maybe. This looks like a space that isn't shrine like, or too full, but is designated for creativity- clutter banished for clarity in this one space no matter how chaotic other areas in the house may get. The writer says:

This is my desk on a good day--the top surface is visible. I tend to spread out paper, books and small piles of random things that do not belong on a desk. Right now, my desk is a blank slate. I find supreme pleasure in just sitting here, looking at the walls or out the window, waiting for an idea to surface.

I once met a writer who had a full time job, young children, and was so pushed for time she had to get up at 5am to get any writing done at all (that's dedication.) At the time my desk was always chaos, upon talking to her I was amazed, she said her desk was the only tidy area in the house. She was very strict about this, her desk, her space, so her way (writer's like their own things I think for the writing part of their life- my keyboard, my photo, my notebook, my weird pens and funny pictures in my area.) 'Tidy desk, tidy mind' she said. I was so interested in her approach I was inspired to sort my desk out and make a proper area for myself to work in. This clean surface work area reminded me of this.

Writer's Room 10

We always knew there was something going on with men and sheds. We have that little book to thank, but even before then we suspected. Men like their sheds, possibly because it is their own space, maybe the little space they've carved out for themselves. It is a place to listen to the radio, sort seeds, enter without wiping their feet. Having an office or study (what you call it depends on how you feel about what you do there I suppose, mine is called the playroom) is a luxury we may not have room for in our homes increasingly bursting at the seams. Bedrooms have to come first for the kids, play rooms even. More people than ever are working from home, so often the spaces we once had for creativity become places of other work. I think we're going to see a rise in the phenomenon of the writing shed because writers still want to carve out their own sacred little space. The shed is perfect for this, there we can let go of all Kim and Aggie tidiness indoctrination, we can blow a raspberry at the Changing Room team. Laurence Llewelyn Bowen just wouldn't be comfortable here. Sheds are, well sheds. We can do what we want there. We don't have to paint the walls or wonder if our colour scheme is so last year. No one will judge shed. Few visitors will see it. No pretension. No anything, just shed. It's a gift to writers, no planning permission required. If we have a little garden and a few hundred quid we have our own little space. It needs very little in it. The thing about shed is just from taking that small walk outside down the garden we are making a commitment to an hour or so of creative me time. Chances are no one can hear a peep from us.

I like how this writing shed area is so simple. The honesty of wood, a little photo tacked to the wall, a few books, the light from the window and the laptop- what more do we need? Nothing to dust. Wood warms in the sun, cools down over time.

What the writer said is this: A million years ago I sat smoking B&H in a cellar in Kirkstall painting five foot canvasses and that was the last studio space I ever had, the last great mix of boredom, dream, graft and accident. I’ve yearned for some place of my own ever since, and a year or so back we put this place in the garden. It’s a haven, but I’m still learning to use it. Every writer needs a corner. I used to write anywhere I could lie down, and out of shot is a sofa where I can lie and listen to some block rocking beats as I do my prep, reading whatever piles up on the floor. The calling cards of the imagination.

Doesn't sound like it gets much better than this. Shed seems a zen like place. Interesting that the writers says 'I'm still learning how to use it.' This will come I think, it may well be learning the art of shed is to learn to relax and enter the mental temporary state of being able to leave the house, work, not done tasks, whatever at the bottom of the garden for a bit and just be in the shed.

Writer's Room 9

I Ialways loved seeing writer's rooms in The Guardian, but many are expensive looking rooms, some look like they've had interior designers and are in very nice buildings. It's a lovely daydream to see them, but the reality for most writers is very different. I like posting people's little spaces here because it seems to honour all writers, the ones who might not be famous, most likely aren't rich, but they write and create their own space for it where they can. I love their dedication. I love that they will write where they can find the space to. I admire people who can write with kitchen rolls around them or in alcoves.

The reality of the country we are living in is money is tight. I hope this sees us stepping away from a keeping up with the Jones's mentality. Those interior design shows have had their day. I love that writer's rooms all seem to be less about design than comfort. They seem to be the one place we can put away the guilt borne from Anthea Turner type shows about being tidy and keeping our possessions tucked out of sight. Newsflash Anthea- it's our house, our stuff, why do we have to hide anything? In the writer's room we seem to let it all hang out- and why not? It's the one little place we've carved out to be our selves in creativity.

This writer had two desks. One looks like it is very well organised with easy access to journals and books. It looks like a space of academic work, maybe writing papers, producing teaching materials or working on articles. There is still a hint of the creative and playful in the colourful striped boxes, and what looks like a little puppet or something poking out of the pen pot. The other desk however has a very different atmosphere- flowers, little nik nacks, momentoes, again stripes on the notebook. The desks look like they have different functions. The one by the window with friendly little reminders of love, life, happiness looks like the one the writer uses for less academic more creative work. I like this, it seems to hint at what writers aren't supposed to admit anymore (not if we want to be successful and professional) -that writing is an act of the heart sometimes. So a whole different space for other written things, a whole other side of the brain. So much colour in this room, so many little personal objects, a china cabinet, a quilt, a patchwork cushion. It is a room of personal treasures, finds. gifts from loved ones. It looks as it has evolved over the years because such things don't come readily assembled.

The writer says:My room is my sanctum, my holy of holies. I wish it wasn't so untidy but I just don't have enough space for all my books. I have to have 2 desks, because I need one for handwriting. It's full of my happy objects, often things people have given me as presents. I do all my different bits of work here from writing poetry to textbooks and teaching resources, I bring my favourite guests in here, my door is usually ajar and member of my family often pop in. I have a photo of my dear friend Matt Simpson, who died last year, watching me as I write, on my right hand. The hat on top of my printer arrived today: I have ordered it as I am doing a Victorian workshop in July and will be doing it in role and costume. I love my room and spend most of each day in here. I never get bored in here. I like fairies and dragonflies and frogs and crystals, they are part of the furniture. I love my kneehole desk. I know I have too many books but what can one do?

Have we been guilted into thinking there is such a thing as too many books? If we love the books we have, if we read them, there's no problem. Anthea Turner- no, I will not cover each and everyone of my books in wallpaper so they all match.

writer's room 8

The main feature of this little writing area seems to be the window. We get the feeling this writer often looks up and out. They place their creativity in front of the window and wait for the changes in the light to make it grow. The old photos attached to the monitor look important and motivational. I'm wondering if this is someone who needs a touchstone to boost their confidence and motivate them when working. It was hard to guess if this was the space of a male or female writer. There is a little china bowl or cup on the window and some sort of little pot, beads of some kind?

The writer says: I have to have fresh air, and I have to be able to see green things growing. The wooden blind is out of shot but bumblebees love it and think it's some kind of hidey hole in the summer. I'm always having to coax them back outside. The top photo on the monitor is me as a baby with my sister (she was 13 when I was born), she was always really encouraging (as well as organised!) and it inspires me to keep going when I don't feel like it because she always did.

The bottom one is of my great grandma. She's sitting in her cottage garden stitching a blanket. I never knew her but by all accounts she was a lovely elegant lady who I have always felt oddly close to. I love the pic. The garden is full of hollyhocks, lupins, foxgloves and delphiniums.

The books in the window are Virginia Woolf. The little china teacup has a Russian cupola design. The rest is associated clutter.

I think the most important things for me are light and fresh air, and to know that I've got people who have gone before sitting on my shoulder telling me to keep going. '

This was a lovely quote. There seemed to be something very spiritual and sensitive about the writer. They don't seem scared of bees, but seem to be quite at one with nature. They sound like they are looking out at the fox gloves, then looking at the picture of a grandma stitching a blanket in a garden and letting their imagination wander into the picture.