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.