This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
I write in several different places: at my desk in the home office I share with my husband Michael and where I work as a freelance journalist; at a carrel on the silent tenth floor of the University of Glasgow; and at my kitchen table when my husband is making phone calls and I need to concentrate.
These days I try to write more at my desk and make writing fiction part and parcel of my day rather than waste good writing time travelling across town to the library. Besides, my office is near the kitchen and an endless supply of tea. And when I run out of writing steam, I can usually persuade Michael to go for a walk in the leafy streets around our home. I find cafés too noisy and distracting and, on a sunny day, libraries can feel too airless.
My desk used to be a functional journalist’s working space, scattered with cuttings, notebooks and to-do lists with piles of newspapers and magazines around my feet. Now when I write fiction I clear away the trappings of my work. I’ve also tacked up postcards on the wall of images that inspire me – always about the next book to help it grow in the back of my mind while I’m working on the current one.I do sometimes daydream about my perfect writing space: an elegant glass desk with a slim silver laptop, a pretty notebook, a vase of white roses illuminated by a silver lamp and an artfully stacked set of reference books. The reality is a desk cluttered with the material for whatever feature I’m working on, a pile of ignored ‘urgent’ paperwork, an empty mug or two and any Lego creations my eight-year-old son Adam has left for me to admire.
Paris Kiss by Maggie Ritchie is scheduled for release on 26 February.