|
Fiction Debut Author Roundtable
6.
AOTW: Where do you write? What do you envision as your "perfect" writing room?
Steve Almond: I write in the second bedroom in my apartment. It has a bay window and gets a lot of light. I also write lying down, with the computer on my lap. This makes me look a lot like an invalid, especially in winter, when I have a blanket over my legs. But I can't really sit at a desk anymore. The main thing, for me, is that I feel comfortable. Because writing is hard enough work, without also having various parts of your body cramp up.
Jay Nussbaum: I write in an office downstairs in my house. The hard part about working at home is that part I mentioned earlier, about taking a break but staying in my head. My children and I disagree on that. It's hard for them to understand that just because I'm taking a break doesn't mean I'm taking a break. From that standpoint, I guess the best situation would be a converted barn on the periphery of the property. And it would be decorated with Asian woodblock paintings, and stocked with bubble wrap and Wheat Thins.
Masha Hamilton: Right now we live in the Arizona desert and I have a separate room that overlooks cactus and brittlebush, where I can see jackrabbits and enormous lizards and the occasional bobcat. We are moving this summer to New York City, so I'm sure my writing space will shrink into a corner somewhere. All I need (so I tell myself) is a window to look out and a door that closes me in.
Terrence Cheng: Since I live in a studio apartment, my living/bedroom is my writing room as well. I suppose it's a writing corner. It was like this in my old apartment, as well, which was an even smaller studio. What I need is a comfortable chair and desk, and then QUIET. I can't write with noise of any kind. I will often unplug the phone and answering machine when I'm writing because distractions really kill your flow.
Jill Bialosky: Living in New York City there's never a perfect writing room. There just isn't the space in a two bedroom apartment. I write on the dining-room table. I do have a secret longing for a writing room all my own --- the ideal room would be all white and filled with windows and bookshelves and a big old pine table I'd use as a desk --- and I hope one day to attain that dream.
Kate Manning: The perfect place for writing is any room with no distractions, such as a refrigerator, or jackhammers outside the window. I write on the second floor of an old brownstone. The ceiling is high. The shelves go all the way up, full of books and meaningful objects like a lumpy clay gargoyle I made in third grade, and a voodoo flag my friend brought me from Haiti. This room is perfect, but really, I'm not picky. There's nothing magic about a room. When (if) I have a quiet couple of hours, I'll get to work.
Michael Redhill: I write in an office that is in an old house in downtown Toronto. I can write anywhere that I've settled into, but it takes time if I move myself somewhere. I have been developing the ability to work anywhere, however, since I am more in transit these days than I used to be, and I write on a laptop.
David Benioff: I write in the guest bedroom of my house. The perfect writing room would be a well-insulated shed where the phone never rang, car alarms never sounded, and a glass of cold vodka magically appeared when the day's writing was done.
Karen V. Siplin: I have incredibly noisy neighbors. For my first novel, I found myself dragging my laptop to the neighborhood Starbucks and Barnes and Noble. My second novel was tougher to write since I was tired of spending the entire day at coffee shops. I began to write at my parents' apartment three-four days a week. My "perfect" writing room is large and warm and very quiet. I love silence. I love to be surrounded by books. And there must always be some kind of connection to the outside world; preferably a huge window with a view and a television.
Jill A. Davis: I write in my office. Sometimes I write at the library. The "perfect" writing room is probably anywhere you can write.
Gary Shteyngart: I write in bed, laptop propped up on my knees. I am a very lazy man in that sense. My posture, as can be expected, is not so good.
Stella Pope Duarte: My writing room is actually a utility room! It was remodeled with cabinets and shelves, but I am in this room with a washer and dryer, and no air conditioning, or heat. In the summer I sweat, in the winter, I freeze. Readers don't know that I'm either half-naked, or shrouded in blankets as I write.
Anahita Firouz: I write in a large study with large windows and plenty of light on our second floor. I can see green trees and the roofs of my neighbors. I have a big computer table, bookshelves on one wall, a CD player, and a huge cork board on another wall covered with photos and clippings and our children's artwork and scraps of this and that from all sorts of places over the years. I think it's a good room for writing.
David Rosenfelt: I write in my home office, surrounded by golden retrievers. I'm lucky, because for me this is, in fact, the perfect writing room.
Ali Smith: This one I'm in now. It's at the top of the house, very small, tiny actually, like a crow's nest in a boat, and it looks out over sky and leaves and birds. The swallows came back this year on May 5th. I can hear them now.
Arthur Phillips: Everything changes, and maybe that's how to avoid block. A room is good as long as you can write in it. When you feel you can't, the room is broken, at least for a time. My perfect room moves from city to city and house to house, but there are always plenty of hot beverages.
Ad Hudler: I am very lucky; I have a perfect writing area: A mission-style wooden desk with laptop, a comfortable Aeron chair (which I strongly recommend for ANY writer; there's a reason they're so popular with writers), a wonderful view of the intracoastal waterway out my windows, and, on a nearby bookshelf, an opened dictionary.
|
