This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Here is my dream space – my fantasy writing room. Take a look around… A note-pad, opened to reveal frantic, exited scribbles – scribbles that will develop into a world-wide best-seller that whose movie rights will be instantly snapped up (the film will star Salma Hayek, Aneurin Barnard and Penelope Keith…) A vase of fresh sweet peas infuse the room with the fragrance of Summers Past; of hidden gardens with secrets to keep. The table is uncluttered – free from bills, and unopened letters about potential building works next door. I have the space for a couple of wonderful books beside me – books that I will flip open and gain great surges of inspiration from whenever I need it. There is no system for listening to music, for the only music I need is in my head and it is the soundtrack to my novel – a fusion of Rogers and Hammerstein and Donna Summer. There is a mint green cup and saucer, awaiting the pale splash of Jasmine tea at four o’clock, to be poured by a maid called Edith in Victorian uniform. There is no mobile phone. No computer. Just quiet. This is of course not real.
In truth, my writing room is awash with disorder, with panic. There is disruption every few minutes – distraction every twenty seconds. The doorbell rings, the phone beeps, somewhere downstairs I hear the sound of the television being switched on and a voice declaiming the wondrous properties of Cillit Bang drifts up the stairs to me. One square of Lindt Extra Creamy rests guiltily behind a copy of Heat magazine, next to unpaid parking fines and old ink cartridges for a printer that refuses to work. Daphne Du Maurier, Nancy Mitford and Sue Townsend works are absolutely banned – I can’t possibly start reading stuff that good or I will fall into a pit of despair and never write again. The desk is trembling on the brink of chaos.
But who needs a photograph of that? Let’s stick to the dream, the aspiration…
If we can’t have that, then what can we have?
The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp by Eva Rice is out now!