This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Currently, my writing routine begins each morning with a block of wood. Do I contemplate said block like some Zen master, searching the grain for enlightenment? No. I stick it in the woodburning stove along with a bundle of kindling, and light a match.
The stove is new, as is the writing room, a light, airy space constructed of glass and tile and wood, filled with a pair of trestle desks, a smartly painted bookcase and music from an ancient B&O hifi (which steadfastly refuses to talk to iTunes or Spotify, and can even get huffy with my CD choice). I am married to another writer and we work from this room in the garden with a view of the Wessex Ridgeway, currently shrouded in mist and soggy with the deluge hitting the south west. Until this year, Natasha and I have written in libraries, on the dining room table or on our laps in corners of rooms. We had a summerhouse in the previous house, cramped and unheated, a place to store garden furniture rather than to inspire work. However, Natasha wrote two and half novels in there and I whipped up a handful of screenplays. Married friends wonder how we can work together in such close proximity. It’s true that the worst sound in the universe is the sound of one spouse typing. But for the most part we co-habit and even co-write in a state of marital… You thought I was going to say ‘bliss’.As of this moment, we’re both working on projects that when complete will be the first to emerge from our new space, which leads to an unsettling thought. Have we upset the writing gods by displacing ourselves? Judging by the tempest I can see raging over the ridgeway, some deity or other is having a hissy fit. The only way to combat superstition is with routine. A thousand words a day, come hell or high water (lately, more of the latter). But a new wrinkle has shaken up the old routine. A wrinkle that goes by the name of Luke. Not yet a year and a half, and already able to name all the birds in the garden – they’re all ‘cuckoos’ apparently. Unless they’re ‘owls’. Or quite possibly ‘cars’. My new novel is for him. Now if only he’d go to sleep long enough to let me finish the thing.
David Solomons lives in Dorset with his wife Natasha and son, Luke. All three write. One of them uses crayons. David's debut novel, Not Another Happy Ending, is out now.