This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
As the photograph probably reveals…I am a bit of a neat freak! I can’t work with outstanding paperwork cluttering up my desk, so everything is paid, filled out or filed away pretty much as soon as it arrives. I don’t have a study – my desk is in an alcove in my dining room. It faces the wall to decrease distraction but there’s a window to the right looking out onto the garden, which I spend far too much time staring out of if things aren’t going well.
Next to my computer is my notebook, which contains all my research notes as well as ideas about plot and character, and the very vague chapter outlines I try to write before I embark on each new chapter of a book. It’s a gorgeous thing – leather bound and embossed with my initials. It was a present from my publishers on the publication of my second book, and I love it. A lot of the time I don’t even look at any notes as I write, but it has to be there anyway. It seems to act as a rudder, somehow! The big pile of books is my ‘still to read’ pile for research for the new book. I’ve read enough to begin writing, and will read these as I go along – in the afternoons once the day’s writing is done.
The morning brain is definitely better for creativity. I try to be at my desk with everything cleared away, ready to start by nine. I start by re-reading and editing what I wrote the day before, to get immersed in the story once more, and then I write at least 2000 words – sometimes more, but I try not to write less than that. Sometimes that takes until lunch time, sometimes I have to take a break for a few hours and then start again and work through the afternoon as well. But 2000 – 3000 words seems to be the amount of story that is there in my head, ready to be written, on any given day. This is five days a week, more if time is tight or I’m on a roll. In the afternoon I do any admin, research or bits and bobs of publicity writing that need doing. If I can stick to this, I can have a first draft of a novel written in four months.I always write in 12 point Times New Roman. Anything else just looks wrong. I’m interrupted by my two cats, who start pestering me for food from about three o'clock in the afternoon even though they never get fed until five. The kitchen is a few paces away so there’s a steady stream of mint tea, ginger tea, green tea – anything to keep me from drinking too much black tea! There are no biscuits or easily snackable foods in my house. That would be a disaster. I have taken my laptop to different places to work in the past, but I find it so much easier to get distracted if I’m in an unfamiliar place – even if it’s not a particularly interesting place. Home is better. I always used to work in silence but when I was writing my last book, The Night Falling, I found that some music actually helped me to focus. I listened to Alt-J’s first album and three different Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros albums on constant shuffle.
I’ve just got back from my research trip and am about to start writing book six for Orion, which is set in Oman in 1920 and 1958. I think I’ll be listening to Nick Mulvey and George Ezra as I write this one.
The Night Falling by Katherine Webb is out now.