This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
I wrote my first novel, Fat Girls and Fairy Cakes, on the kitchen table because I felt closer to my heroine, a curvy woman with a passion for cake. As the novel also includes recipes, there was always a batch of fairy cakes in the oven while I wrote – a literary must as the delectable waft of vanilla or warm chocolate helped my creative juices flow.
When I began writing my second novel, Younger, Thinner, Blonder, the kitchen table didn’t feel right. After a little while, I came over all Virginia Woolf and wanted ‘a room of one’s own’. Besides, as my latest heroine is Tanya Travis, a designer-clad TV presenter, there’s no way she’d sit in a kitchen while the washer whirred, kids yelled and the cats meowed for food. So I turned the spare room into a ‘writer’s loft’. OK, it was a box-room with a desk and a lamp covered with a scarf (my futile attempt at bohemia in a Barratt Home), but a girl can dream.
I kept telling everyone I ‘have to be alone’ and would swish upstairs Greta Garbo style. My family respected my wishes and didn’t disturb me – and I hated it. Every time I heard laughter or smelled toast, I was drawn back downstairs to the noisy bosom of my family, and any thought of writing was lost in the lure of Coronation Street. Consequently, I moved back downstairs and positioned myself on the sofa where I could write, eat, bark orders and watch TV – at the same time.Anyway, earlier this year my husband took pity on me (as I toiled to bring my latest seminal work to fruition and the cat landed on my laptop, wiping a day’s work). He suggested a ‘proper’ desk in the kitchen. This way I could look out onto the garden, make toast, feed cats, put a wash on at my whim and bark orders between rooms without having to run up and down the stairs.
And so … my writing room was born. It’s pink and black, has a swivel chair (my daughter likes to ‘race’ on it), and I have lots of cupboards to hide my stashes of counterfeit chocolate. Yes it’s untidy, but I know where everything is. So now I spend hours slaving over my laptop, the only sound being the cats meowing, the washer whirring and someone asking where their clean socks/keys are and when dinner will be ready. Virginia Woolf would be horrified …
Sue Watson's new book, Younger, Thinner, Blonder, is out now.