This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.
Today our guest is the lovely Cally Taylor, author of Heaven Can Wait and the brand new, wonderful Home For Christmas.
My Writing Room by Cally Taylor
Ever since I stopped living in house shares in the late 90s and lived on my own instead I had to learn to squash my life into one tiny one-bedroomed flat after another. Both of my novels – ‘Heaven Can Wait’ and ‘Home for Christmas’ – were written either at a desk in my bedroom or on a laptop on my knee in the living room and it wasn’t until I moved in with my boyfriend earlier this year that I finally got a ‘room of my own’ in which to write.
My boyfriend and I share our rented two up, two down terraced house in Bristol with our gigantic book, DVD and music collections and our baby son. As a result space isn’t something we have a lot of! The original plan was for me to share the nursery with the baby but we soon realised that wasn’t a very practicable solution. Instead we turned the utility room into a study and I currently share my writing space with the washing machine, ironing board and clothes drying rack (artfully cut out of the photo above!). Despite my unusual wash-day companions and the lack of door, I couldn’t be happier! My record player lives on a table to the left of my desk so music is always on tap, my motto ‘live well, love much, laugh often’ hangs from the window in front of me and my Doctor Who figures and other toys, plus photos of my friends and family, decorate one side of the room. Also in the window, above one of my speakers, is the Elizabeth Goudge Trophy that I won for best novel opening at the RNA conference in Newport this year.
In the foreground of the photo you can see an antique wooden writing slope that was a gift from my parents. It’s full of lovely writing bits and bobs like quilled pens, sealing wax and stamps and, although I never use it, I do love looking at it. Teetering above it are a small sample of the books in my ‘to be read’ pile. I tend not to read very much when I’m writing my own novels – so I’m not influenced by another writer’s voice or style – but it’s lovely to have so many to choose from when I’ve finished a first draft. Most of my writing reference books, as well as the foreign versions of ‘Heaven Can Wait’ and ‘Home for Christmas’, live upstairs where there’s a bit more space.