This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Today we are looking at the Writing Room of Pam Jenoff. Her latest book is called The Ambassador’s Daughter, and it's out this month.
My Writing Room by Pam Jenoff
This is my desk at the university where I teach law school (my “day job”). I try to get in a few hours of writing before the rest of the day begins. The truth is I can write anywhere – and have. Coffee shops, trains, airports, the doctor’s waiting room, my car. As Anne Lamott said, “I used to not be able to work if there were dishes in the sink. Then I had a child and now I can work if there is a corpse in the sink.” This is so true. You write wherever you have to in order to get it done.
I do have some sentimental favourite writing places from the past. When my now-husband and I first moved in together, we had a small apartment in the city. In the predawn hours (that is when I used to write when I was a practicing attorney, from 5-7am before work) I would creep to the upper room and write at our shared desk, overlooking the gritty rooftops as the sun rose. The most beautiful place I’ve written is the lakeside palace in Salzburg, Austria where The Sound of Music was filmed. I once went on a writer’s retreat in Banff, Canada and had a cabin out in the forest where I could watch deer come over the bluff as I wrote. Of course, having to navigate around a moose to get there was a bit intimidating!
These days, I no longer get to write in castles and cabins. I do still have a few favourite writing places. Hotels are wonderful places to write, so I always try and carve our writing time when I am on book tour or other trip alone. Also, when I am nearing the end of writing a book, I sneak away to a tiny beachfront motel to have a weekend alone with the manuscript and beat it into submission. I do someday dream of having a house by the sea where I can write. But for now it is the little office you see in the photo!