desperance (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
desperance) wrote2006-09-29 01:10 pm
desperance) wrote2006-09-29 01:10 pm
Meme: Where to Write a Novel
Describe the space(s) where you write:
Okay, then.
(1) - The study from hell. Everything is everywhere. Much of this is the cat's fault: Barry is everywhere, and dislikes sharing space with Stuff. I have a lot of Stuff. Much of it used to be on shelves; now almost all of it is on the floor, so that Barry may occasionally be on shelves.
But I can't blame Barry completely, I had myself barely recovered from that teenage-boy thing of leaving everything on the floor anyway; it took me twice my teenage to get over that, and I'm still not exactly a man who puts things away. Or sorts them out, so that the study is full of boxes which are full of paper. Some of this paper is important; some of it is links to other stuff, in my head or in my house; much of it is waste. I am not good at sorting, nor discarding.
The walls and ceiling are golden-yellow, the woodwork is a deep, deep red. Despite being a Man In Black, I like to decorate in colours. This used to be the master bedroom, so it's fairly spacious; there are four filing-cabinets, innumerable boxes, folders, files. Books, of course: books everywhere, on shelves and off: multiple copies of my own work and reference volumes, largely. Only one picture on any of the walls: Hippolyte Flandrin, "Jeune homme nu au bord de la mer" (which is my Favourite Picture, and I also have it on the wall downstairs, where it's "Ragazzo al Mare"; I used to have it in every room of the house, in one iteration or another, postcard or book cover or whatever). There was another picture on another wall up here, wild horses painted by a friend, but it fell off. Oh, and there's a spare window-frame containing a chalk drawing of me at this desk dead with a knife in my back, but that's a whole nother story...
Two computers, two monitors, three printers. One electronic typewriter, one manual. Three spare keyboards.
One big comfy chair (for the cat, apparently), one typist's chair for me.
The desk is an old mock-Victorian double-pedestal kneehole affair, unless it's genuine. I wouldn't know. It's big and broad and heavy, but not big enough; and of course it's as cluttered as the floor. Manuscripts, random papers, books I am and am not in. A bottle of water, a dish of chocolate-covered coffee beans. Floppies, zip disks, flashcards. Two keyboards, one desk-lamp. Buffy mousemat ('cos I couldn't find Spike). Random boarding passes - Korea, Montreal, Taiwan - and business cards. Etc.
(2) - The Silence Room at the Lit & Phil. I've talked about this before (and written about it, in my story "Another Chart of the Silences", in Phantoms at the Phil). The room may be beyond my powers of description, except in fiction: it's high and dim and Victorian, wall-to-ceiling books with ladders that run on rails to help you reach the high ones. There are alcoves and freestanding bookshelves, little desks in the alcoves and big tables in the middle of the floor. I like to claim one of those big tables for my own, but every now and then Someone Else Uses It, which is an offence against nature. Nature and Me. There's a big clock, and its tick is the only permitted sound against the silence; you can lose yourself in that tick. All the books are old, and many are tied up with white ribbon (because their covers have come loose, not because they've been gagged).
(3) - The pub. More specifically, the Bodega at the bottom of Westgate Road, next to the Opera House. This is a fake reconstruction of what the Lit & Phil is genuinely. It's always been an authentic pub, but ten or fifteen years ago it was done out to make it look like an Authentic Pubbe. Sigh. Still, it has early photos on the walls, and alcoves (and again one of those is Mine, except when Someone Else has got there first), and they keep their beer very well; and it's very quiet through the day, so it's easy to work in there. I don't mind music and I don't mind other people's conversation, indeed I quite like the sounds of busyness around me, but crowds make work impossible; I don't go there at weekends. Well, not to work.
(I've written about the Bodega too, in my story "Luke, Homeward Angel" from Taverns of the Dead.)
(4) - Oh, anywhere & everywhere else. Friends' kitchen tables, coffee shops (Ottakars in Lincoln is almost a constant), stations, airports, wherever. But the three above are the regulars.
And yours?
Okay, then.
(1) - The study from hell. Everything is everywhere. Much of this is the cat's fault: Barry is everywhere, and dislikes sharing space with Stuff. I have a lot of Stuff. Much of it used to be on shelves; now almost all of it is on the floor, so that Barry may occasionally be on shelves.
But I can't blame Barry completely, I had myself barely recovered from that teenage-boy thing of leaving everything on the floor anyway; it took me twice my teenage to get over that, and I'm still not exactly a man who puts things away. Or sorts them out, so that the study is full of boxes which are full of paper. Some of this paper is important; some of it is links to other stuff, in my head or in my house; much of it is waste. I am not good at sorting, nor discarding.
The walls and ceiling are golden-yellow, the woodwork is a deep, deep red. Despite being a Man In Black, I like to decorate in colours. This used to be the master bedroom, so it's fairly spacious; there are four filing-cabinets, innumerable boxes, folders, files. Books, of course: books everywhere, on shelves and off: multiple copies of my own work and reference volumes, largely. Only one picture on any of the walls: Hippolyte Flandrin, "Jeune homme nu au bord de la mer" (which is my Favourite Picture, and I also have it on the wall downstairs, where it's "Ragazzo al Mare"; I used to have it in every room of the house, in one iteration or another, postcard or book cover or whatever). There was another picture on another wall up here, wild horses painted by a friend, but it fell off. Oh, and there's a spare window-frame containing a chalk drawing of me at this desk dead with a knife in my back, but that's a whole nother story...
Two computers, two monitors, three printers. One electronic typewriter, one manual. Three spare keyboards.
One big comfy chair (for the cat, apparently), one typist's chair for me.
The desk is an old mock-Victorian double-pedestal kneehole affair, unless it's genuine. I wouldn't know. It's big and broad and heavy, but not big enough; and of course it's as cluttered as the floor. Manuscripts, random papers, books I am and am not in. A bottle of water, a dish of chocolate-covered coffee beans. Floppies, zip disks, flashcards. Two keyboards, one desk-lamp. Buffy mousemat ('cos I couldn't find Spike). Random boarding passes - Korea, Montreal, Taiwan - and business cards. Etc.
(2) - The Silence Room at the Lit & Phil. I've talked about this before (and written about it, in my story "Another Chart of the Silences", in Phantoms at the Phil). The room may be beyond my powers of description, except in fiction: it's high and dim and Victorian, wall-to-ceiling books with ladders that run on rails to help you reach the high ones. There are alcoves and freestanding bookshelves, little desks in the alcoves and big tables in the middle of the floor. I like to claim one of those big tables for my own, but every now and then Someone Else Uses It, which is an offence against nature. Nature and Me. There's a big clock, and its tick is the only permitted sound against the silence; you can lose yourself in that tick. All the books are old, and many are tied up with white ribbon (because their covers have come loose, not because they've been gagged).
(3) - The pub. More specifically, the Bodega at the bottom of Westgate Road, next to the Opera House. This is a fake reconstruction of what the Lit & Phil is genuinely. It's always been an authentic pub, but ten or fifteen years ago it was done out to make it look like an Authentic Pubbe. Sigh. Still, it has early photos on the walls, and alcoves (and again one of those is Mine, except when Someone Else has got there first), and they keep their beer very well; and it's very quiet through the day, so it's easy to work in there. I don't mind music and I don't mind other people's conversation, indeed I quite like the sounds of busyness around me, but crowds make work impossible; I don't go there at weekends. Well, not to work.
(I've written about the Bodega too, in my story "Luke, Homeward Angel" from Taverns of the Dead.)
(4) - Oh, anywhere & everywhere else. Friends' kitchen tables, coffee shops (Ottakars in Lincoln is almost a constant), stations, airports, wherever. But the three above are the regulars.
And yours?
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I've been in the habit of writing one night a week, usually Friday, since my family moved here which is four and a half years; when I lived on my own in Cambridge I wrote much more flexibly, and it would be interesting to see if I can do that again now that it involves less organising other people to do so.
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I can't use it from midday to early evening in the summer because it is too damn hot and I can't read the screen.
2. The railway station - windswept and often rainswept and none too comfortable now they've taken away two of the benches ('cos the charvas had kicked 'em so badly nobody could actually sit on them) I have to spend time here every day and that is the one and only reason handheld computers were invented (I'm on my third - two Psion 5s that both just stopped working, which is why I don't have number three ['cos they stopped making them] but rather an HP iPaq which hasn't failed me - yet. It gets backed up multiply on a daily basis - I am NEVER going to lose anything again because of systems failure - or my own stupidity) Which leads to the train. Twenty minutes each way twice a day, that's 5/600 words. Terry Pratchett says you can write a novel in three months that way.
3. The toilet cubicle at my work. It isn't pretty but it is quiet and nobody hears me tap tapping on the screen of my pda (which slides unobtrusively into the pocket of any trousers I might wear) 10/15 minutes twice a day, that's 3/400 words a day. Every little helps, but it isn't really the best place to be writing sex scenes . . .
4. Wherever I happen to be. You never really stop thinking about it, do you.
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IMG SRC= html command. Most ISPs (over here, anyway) seem to provide space. Do you do your webpage yourself?
I wouldn't need to see large expanses of wood so much as joints. Proportion and construction details (like whether the drawer sides are dovetailed to the front) are much more diagnostic than an overall shot of a completely clean desk would be. That's why they talk of a "Terminator effect" in antiques "picking": the ability to glance at a large array of all manner of stuff and focus immediately on the genuinely old pieces. The eye learns proportions.