#author office

[gailcarriger]

Being a total dork with my new book: Divinity 36.

In the office in front of all my other books.

I'm wearing an eshakti dress... yes it has pockets.

[warmwittywords]

New Office to inspire the muse

Are you curious as to where I write?

Here’s a look at my new office. I still have a bit of arranging to do but it’s almost there. The perfect space to fit a desk, two laptops, trays, folders, stationery, bookshelf, filing cabinets, printer and of course – plenty of books (and pens) (oh, and notepads)!

My new office. I’m awaiting more of my books to fill the bookshelf.

Another advantage…

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[mulhollanduncovered]

Where I Work - Kate Rhodes

Kate Rhodes has written three novels in the Alice Quentin crime series, CROSSBONES YARD, A KILLING OF ANGELS (both out now in paperback) and THE WINTER FOUNDLINGS (coming in August). She talks us through the writing life from sun-up to sun-down via a hatred of desks, lazy options and how to recharge.

  This is the view from my bedroom window in Cambridge. I wake early because the dawn chorus here is deafening, then I stagger downstairs and make tea for me and my husband Dave. We sit in bed for a while, slowly waking, and taking in the view across Stourbridge Common. It never fails to comfort me, even when it’s covered in snow. Dave’s a short story writer, and sometimes it feels like we’ve spent the last twenty years chatting about writing while we wake up.

After breakfast I hurl myself outdoors, even if it’s blowing a gale. Although I’m a sloth by nature, I know it’s good for my brain to get a fast walk or a slow jog most mornings to charge my brain cells for the day ahead.

By 9am I’m ready to write, but our house is in total disarray. I don’t actually have a room to write in, because we’re about to have our loft converted into a writing room. At present it feels like every room is packed to the ceiling with junk we used to store in our over-stuffed attic.

I could write at the desk in the picture above, which sits in the corner of the spare room, but I hate desks. I’d rather kid myself that I’m just going to knock out a few words for the sheer exhilaration of it, rather than staying hunkered down for the next eight hours.

I’ll normally start by doing some scribbling in long-hand.

It’s a hangover from my days as a poet, when I used to spend days redrafting poems in countless notebooks. These days most of my writing gets done straight onto my battered PC, but I still outline plots and short story outlines in longhand. The method matches my deliberations as plots and characters gradually twist into shape. Plotting can take me weeks, but once I have a clear story in mind, the writing itself turns into a giddy headlong race, which is the fun part of being a writer.

There are quite a few hiding places in my house where I can disappear to write. If I’m feeling lazy I’ll sprawl on one of the beds and tap away while Dave works downstairs.

This lazy method is definitely a bad plan, long term. After a couple of hours my back starts to twinge and I’ll rush downstairs, looking for somewhere to sit upright. The living room table will do, and it gives me a fine view of our minute but much loved garden.

  I can’t write with Dave in the room, much as I love him. He tends to rustle pages, sigh, or play jazz music when he writes. I prefer absolute silence, so we skulk in separate rooms, coming together for lunch and occasional cups of tea. Although we read and edit each other’s work, I can’t quite imagine doing a Nicci French and writing a novel with him. Maybe it’s something we’ll try in the future, but I love the freedom to mould my fictional world in whatever shape I like. It’s hard to imagine giving up the driving seat just yet.

One of my other favourite places to write is our small conservatory.

It’s full of ambient noise. Birds singing, kids playing in neighbouring gardens, the occasional motorbike on the road outside. But none of that impinges on my imagination. It’s just a subconscious reminder that there’s a world out there that I can rejoin when the writing day is done.

I approach writing like a full-time job, working from nine in the morning, until five or six in the evening. At that point, my imagination throws up its hands and shouts, enough! Quit while you’re ahead! And if it’s a decent day, I’ll go outside with a cup of tea and sit on my garden bench, feeling lucky to be a writer by trade. Most days it feels more like a pastime than a career. Apart from the days when my brain feels slow and heavy as a concrete mixer, of course...  On days like that I’ll lie down on one of the sofas in the living room, beside the logburner, reading someone else’s book, until my brain clears again. Often Dave beats me to it. Look closely at the photo below and you’ll see his red socks, and his kindle peeping above the back of the settee. In the evening’s we have a tacit agreement not to talk about writing at all. We eat out, or go to the cinema, or go for a bike ride, and by the time morning comes, my brain is recharged and ready to start the process all over again.

[mulhollanduncovered]

Britta Bolt's writing world

Britta Bolt is the author of LONELY GRAVES, the first in the Amsterdam-set Posthumus trilogy. But 'she' is also two people, former lawyer Britta Böhler and writer Rodney Bolt. They explain how and where they collaborate.

Where it all starts…

Britta and I refer to ‘Britta Bolt’ as BriBo. This is my dining room table, where we hold ‘BriBo meetings’ to work out plot lines, talk about what the characters are getting up to, and review written chapters (usually with more cake and biscuits than pictured here). Knottier issues get taken down to our local café, for discussion over wine.

The Britta Bolt Box

The box contains the current doings. In the early stages most of the work is on paper. Later, I go up to an attic room, where I write – on computer – in a private sanctum (not even the cleaner makes it up there). The box is very similar to how I picture Posthumus’s Ponder Box.

The floor as workspace

Britta is very neat and organised…at least that’s how it seems to me when I visit her apartment. My horizontal filing system is notorious. Once (in the days when such things existed) I lost a telephone directory for a week. And my handwriting is indecipherable, often even to me.

Two visitors from upstairs

The pink paperclip hedgehog makes a guest appearance in the dining room, as I see that Ruth, our editor also has one. Like hers, mine was a gift. Perhaps this will become a Mulholland theme. The angel was a gift from Salley Vickers, one of my favourite writers. It winds up so that its wings flap, and it glows in the dark. Usually, it is upstairs beside my computer, and is the last thing I see at the end of the day, as I turn out the light.

And a resident

Britta was on holiday on the Canary Islands when she first had the idea of writing crime fiction. I had also long wanted to write crime books set in Amsterdam. Although we had already known each other a couple of years, we did not know of each other’s secret dream. But an email from the Canaries later, and Britta Bolt was born. When Britta (Böhler) returned from holiday, she brought this back for me. Now it stands on a shelf of the dining room bookcase, looking down on us as we work.

Now, down to Book III….

Rodney (and Britta)

[mulhollanduncovered]

Sabine Durrant's snapshot of a writing life

Sabine Durrant is the author of psychological thriller UNDER YOUR SKIN - out now! - as well as four previous novels for adults and children. Here she tells us where she writes, from sofa to bed, but avoiding all offices...

There is a room in our house which is technically my office. This is it.

It has a desk and a printer and a filing cabinet. But the chair has gone - I can’t remember where to - and people have started putting things in it that they don’t want any more. In this picture you can see a guitar, a dry-cleaning case containing a sleeping bag, a cat basket and a dumped pile of year nine files. The cowboy lamp on the desk is a recent arrival: it’s a reject from my son’s room. I don’t think it’s even plugged in.

The fact is all I really need when I am working is this.

I will do anything to put off writing, so I sometimes sort of slide into it. I like to set my laptop up in a place where it will look as if it has arrived by accident. In summer this is usually on the bed which is next to a big window overlooking the garden. But at the moment I’m writing this, in February, it is by the woodburning stove in the kitchen. There is a sofa there, and a stool on which the laptop can perch.

Often I am not alone. In the picture below you can just about make out a sports writer (my husband) at the kitchen table. Also a cat.

Sometimes, I am joined by a different cat.

Or this dog.

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Where I Work - by Marcus Sedgwick

A few years ago I moved back to Cambridge: when I saw this shed in the garden of one of the houses I was viewing, I put an offer in on the spot. Like most writers, I’ve had to work in all sorts of inappropriate spaces, and, like most writers, always craved the perfect place to work.

My shed is near perfect. It’s a little on the small side, but that just means I have to tidy up from time to time, which is no bad thing.

Here’s what it looks like on the inside (just after a tidy up)

The stuff on the walls is never just random – they’re all things to do with books, most usually, they’re inspiration for books I’m writing or have just finished writing.

High up on the wall are a couple of guardians – ‘V’ from Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, one of my favourite films, and Edgar the raven, both of whom make me smile every time I walk into my shed. That’s more important than it sounds, and links to the word that Edgar’s standing on. That one word – PLAY – is the single most important thing I’ve learned in the 15 years I’ve been a published author. I’ve thought a lot about writing in that time, I’ve had moments of block, I’ve had many fears and worries and concerns about how to best do the art. The importance of play, and I mean play in a focussed yet relaxed, serious and yet fun way, cannot be denied: it underlies the best work I do, I think.

Underneath that are a few spirals; I’ve just finished the second draft of a new YA novel called The Ghosts of Heaven – it’s a slightly complex quartet of novellas, each of which has the motif of the spiral underlying the text.

Beneath the spirals we come to a series of rough art by my friend Thomas Taylor. I’ve started to write graphic novels in the last year or so – and these are images from a forthcoming project: Scarlett Hart. It won’t be out for a while though. I finished a first draft in the autumn; a second draft is due and then Thomas has the gargantuan task of producing almost 200 pages of full colour art. That will take him a year or so to do. And then publication will be a year after that – comics take MUCH more work than many people give them credit for. Personally, I’ve found it a wonderful challenge to learn how to write for comics – to set up plot, character, backstory, atmosphere etc etc and yet to have so few words to do work with (95% of what you ‘write’ as the author of a graphic novel disappears into the images) is a huge task. Then, add to that, that you have to hit a page count more or less exactly (due to the cost of production of comics) and you have a major set of hills to climb. But I like a challenge.

On the left of the desk here are a few books I’ve been using to research my next novel for Mulholland – I’m deep in that process of hunting out things that I know will be useful, or hope will be, and connected to that, I guess, are the red notebooks at the back of the desk. I’m on book 10 at the moment, since 2000, and the previous 9 I keep close at hand as you never know when browsing through old ideas might finally make a connection to something that’s been lurking in your unconscious for a while. Connections are as much the stuff of a writer’s art as the imagination.

Next to the books are the edits for a short story I was recently asked to write – that will be what I work on later this week. I love writing short stories – they’re a chance to let your hair down, try something new, and experiment with style. Something which can feed back into longer work in the future, perhaps.

  I tend to change the view on my screen saver, and find something central to what I am writing about at the time – this is a building that will appear in this second Mulholland title. I won’t say where it is but it’s more sinister than it might first appear. The view through the window is pretty limited – a hint of my neighbours’ garden – but that’s a good thing – it’s interesting enough to stimulate day dreaming (a friend in my opinion, not an enemy), but not so interesting that you end up not doing what you should be doing.

Over to the right, although I’ve finished work on it long ago (the book is about to be published) is the cover of my first novel for Mulholland – A Love Like Blood. Covers are so important. I know that’s obvious but what might be less obvious is the nerves with which you open an email with the subject line “cover of your book”. Whenever we get to the moment of designing the book cover, you live in fear, and hope that the publisher will come up with something you love. Fortunately, this time, I loved the cover from the first design. A little tweaking and it was done. If you get sent a dodgy first attempt, you know you might be in for months of wrangling. But if you have to, you have to, because covers are the first and primary thing that sells your book once it’s out in the world. Something that some authors might not like to admit, but which, having worked in sales in publishing for many years, I know to be true.

Above the book jacket is a photo of the Italian village where the book opens – a weird and wonderful hilltop place, called Sextantio by the Romans.

And finally, here’s another important tool for me. Along with notebooks themselves, maps of one form or another have always been key to how I organise a book. So I use large sheets of paper, on which I write in pencil (because it changes all the time) and on these maps I sketch out a novel’s structure, themes character notes, and so on. Every book has a different kind of map, because every book needs to be written in a different way. Understanding that and not being scared of it is very important, and is again something I am still learning about. This map is the first go at one for the second book I’ll write for Mulholland. At the moment it doesn’t even have a working title, the characters don’t have names, the plot is still forming. It’s simultaneously one of the scariest and most exciting periods in a writer’s work cycle.

[mulhollanduncovered]

Take a tour of Greg Rucka's office!

New York Times bestselling author Greg Rucka has written countless comics and has worked on characters including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Punisher. He's also the author of over a dozen novels. ALPHA, the first in a trilogy starring Special Forces operative Jad Bell, is out in paperback now.

And he has an amazing office.

My office is in our basement, what was once the mancave/rumpus room for the original owner of the house. When we moved in, it reeked of stale cigar smoke from, we figured, 1938. We repainted, put the shelves you see in, etc. The approach is through a door from the main basement floor, which is where almost all of the comics we own are shelved.

The Baker Street plaque is a memento from a trip to London in... 2002, I think it was. It was the first time my wife, Jennifer, had ever been, and it was only my second time over, the last almost 20 years prior.

I am, as they say, a Sherlock Holmes fan. You no doubt can tell by the picture of the Baring Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I also own the Leslie Klinger New Annotated, as well.

When I sold my first novel, Keeper, I bought myself a "real" desk. I spent a lot of money on it, thinking it was going to be a good investment, and that I needed a solid, well-made desk, instead of the particleboard piece of detritus I'd had since college. It was a pretty good desk, but we never really clicked. 

After my grandmother passed away, I was asked if I wanted my grandfather's old desk. I jumped at the chance. That desk was the desk of my childhood - I remember spending hours at it, going through the treasures in its drawers, drawing and writing and generally occupying myself with the wonder of it. That's the desk I work at now; that's the desk I'm sitting at - in my grandfather's chair - as I write this. This desk is old school, solid, and magical. I love this desk.

The desk hierarchy is now that Grandfather's Desk is where I actually write; it's where I type, and it's where I take my serious notes. Published Novelist Desk is the editing desk, with an... well, editing desk on it. I tend to do my longhand breakdowns for comics there when that's the way I'm working on a comic this particular week (don't get me started; I have something like five or six different methods for comic scripting at this point, and I've no idea why I pick which one when except to say that sometimes one method works where another doesn't). It's also where I work on page proofs/galley proofs/copy edits and the like for my prose.

The shelves are pretty much full of books I either 1) love, 2) hate and keep to remind me of that hatred, 3) have no idea how I got it but I'm keeping it, 4) need for research, 5) hope to need for research, 6) cannot bear to part with for one reason or another.

Yes, I'm a big Star Wars fan. The painting behind the figures is by Jason Alexander (no, not that one), who did the art for the Queen & Country arc, "Operation: Blackwall."

The image was the cover to the first issue of the story. There's similar bits and pieces of art and action figures and the like scattered around the office. These have been collected over the last 20 years. The art is mostly from projects I've done that were of particular importance to me.

When I'm working on multiple active projects, I keep binders for each of them. When I'm working on a novel, I do the same, though the binder's purpose is different; for comics, the binders store EVERYTHING; for novels, the binder is only for the hardcopy pages I've typed. I find it infinitely easier to edit on hardcopy for prose, and part of my editing process is to read what I've written aloud, and that's easier for me if I have the paper in front of me to mark-up as I go.

As to the tools, well, I'm a writer, and we fetishize our process and find ways to procrastinate wherever and however we can. I love pens. i love paper. I love a good pencil. So sue me.

You can see in at least one of these images, I think, my current writing set-up, which I switched to about six months ago. I tried a standing desk for a while, but it wasn't working for me, so I invested instead in a laptop stand and a new freestanding keyboard.

I am passionately, dangerously in love with my new keyboard. It's a DasKeyboard Model S Professional for Macintosh, and I suppose you either understand where I'm coming from or you don't, but it CLICKS and it RESPONDS and I can FEEL when I am typing and I can HEAR when I typing and it's like silk and music and the way someone you love looks at you and I'm probably veering into dangerous territory but... suffice it to say, I type a lot, I type quickly (I'm about 140-150 wpm on a roll) and this baby keeps up and does it like a champ.

And no, they haven't paid me to say this.

And no, you cannot have my keyboard. Get your own. You try to take my keyboard, I will cut you, I swear to God.

[littlebrownandcompany-blog]

Author Office: Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block's latest Keller mystery Hit Me just landed on the extended New York Times bestsellers list. He tell us that this extraordinary book about a hit man pulled out of retirement by the recession was written in a rather ordinary room:

"While I have a home office, I usually go away to write. Much of Hit Me was written at the Beverly Laurel Hotel, in Los Angeles. I sat at a rather ordinary desk in a rather ordinary room. I could have opened the drapes and looked out at a rather ordinary pool, but I didn't see any reason to bother. For me, the work has to generate its own energy, and my surroundings are important only to the extent that they're quiet and convenient. Fifteen years ago I flew from New York to Shannon and took a room at the Listowel Arms, in Listowel (duh), Co. Kerry. I holed up there for five or six weeks to write a book set in Burma. It went well..."