Writing Space/Place - for the Share Your Space Blogfest to celebrate NaNoWriMo.

You'd think only a masochist would enter a blogfest on the first day of NaNo, but hey, you've gotta be a masochist to enter so it's right up my alley. Thanks to Summer at 'and this time...concentrate, I am writing a picture essay about my writing space.

 Just before NaNo begins is a good time to write about where I'll be writing during this crazy month devoted to pen, paper, laptops, netbooks, too much caffeine in the form of chocolate and coffee, too many quick snacks like the giant muffins at my favourite coffee shop, too many...oh, too many to mention...read on...

Trouble with this scenario, my battery always runs out - even though it's supposedly 10 hours!

I've travelled the world, but have never tasted a better muffin than at the Brisbane State Libray coffee shop.

At times we can get a bit antsy about our private writing space. When you have toddlers the writing world is usually around the dining room table, where a few words snatched here and there are better than not writing at all! Many lug laptops or netbooks with them on trains and boats and planes, while others scribble the olde worlde way with parchment and quill in a favourite chair by a roaring fire (must be a few left!)

I'm sure many of you have writing palaces to die for,  but I'm pretty sure it is a truth universally acknowledged (sorry Jane) that some of our writing spaces leave a lot to be desired. But no matter what your situation, writers write!

Oh botheration, what was that word again? Methinks a little nap is in order.

I've been a bit disgruntled with my writing space since I moved from a large beach house to a city apartment. I often go to a coffee shop at the wonderful state-of-the-art city Library a few minutes away and write, surrounded by the sounds and the wonderful smells of coffee, rather than in my tiny space. The problem with this is there is just too much stimulation - there might even be a ridgy-dige digeridoo player to serenade you - distracting.

Getting serenaded while I work.

At the moment my writing place in the apartment is in an open study/cum spare bedroom/cum office/cum husband's ebay buying frenzy space. Eeek! So I only get my writing done in spurts.


I don't feel so bad about my lack of space/place after reading Barbara Kinsolver (author of The Poisonwood Bible and recently The Lucuna), and her comments in Small Wonder. To quote: 'It is widely rumored, and also true, that I wrote my first novel in a closet. Before I get all rapturous and carried away here, I had better admit to that. The house was tiny; I was up late at night typing while another person slept, and there just wasn't any other place for me to go but that closet. The circumstances were extreme. And if I have to -- if the Furies should take my freedom or my sight -- I'll go back to writing in the dark. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their skulls and onto paper.'

Really, I'm just spoilt! I have acres of room!


For NaNoWriMo this year I have booked my own private room where I will write for 2 hours every morning at abovementioned library. This will be good discipline. Every afternoon I teach in the same library, so I will be living half my life there for the whole 30 days.

My writing space for November - a meeting room at the library.

Inside Brisbane Square LIbrary - I teach on the right and write in a meeting room on the left.

STOP PRESS! We moved the tenants out of our beach house and yesterday we began the big task of moving back in - just for weekends at this stage and of course for the Christmas week. It'll be great knowing I have my beach house overlooking the Pacific Ocean waiting for me to escape to when I'm not teaching.

My beach house writing place - just gotta get the table cleared first! I'm making a study this time, but I'm sure I'll still sit at the end of this table as it overlooks the Pacific Ocean...

 ...with a view like this...

So let's go NaNo, let's go...now what where did I put that story outline then?

TORN

Today I am torn, as well as under pressure. What to do first? Sell off some of my books on ebay? Edit that article I am writing hoping to get it published on Gonomad? Do a bit of swotting for that new student I'm tutoring next week? Polish a few short stories and get them sent off?

Really, life is so full, and that's just the virtual part! What with reading everyone's blogs, joining Twitter , which took ages since every Paris lover had taken every Parisian-themed name I thought of - finally settled on pichetsinparis, thinking of all the pichers of rose I scoffed at lunch time at the waiter's insistence, only to totter around all afternoon half asleep. I've also been searching writer's sites, writing my blog - how do we prioritise these days? Maybe you're more focussed than I am...hope someone is!

But I have got some books for sale on ebay. Now I'll have to go on every day to check on progress! Oh, well...Now I'll start on the gonomad article...