It’s a central spot, a
crossroads of work & life where the two can meet and sort out the day’s
demands on my time and mental space.
Our kitchen is full of
morning light, and also lit by ceiling lamps which imitate sunshine when it’s
dull. Sitting at the table – which is from IKEA, clean, modern, waxed oak – I keep
half an eye on the cat, and help the dog chase him off if his hunt looks set to
be successful.
The kitchen table is
also big enough for me to spread out the A2 sheets of paper I use for plotting.
I weigh them down with coasters and coffee mugs, and sketch mind maps and
constellations of characters. On the reverse side, I chart structural turning
points: epiphanies, crises and climaxes, brainstorming options for each.
The Main Dramatic
Question for a work-in-progress is written in the bottom left-hand corner,
along with two core questions for my protagonist: what one thing will make them
succeed? And what one thing could make them fail?
These three questions will
be scored out and rewritten time and again during the course of writing a
story, and if the paper plan becomes too messy, I start over. It’s a non-linear,
iterative process. Fluid & flexible. Unlike typing, which is constricted
& constraining.
When writing, either on
the laptop or paper, I don’t have particular rituals or object fetishes, though
I do love beautiful hard-back notebooks. Occasionally I wonder, if I rented an
even more remote cottage without electricity for a month or two, whether I might be able
to get the bones of a story down on paper without the endless editing that has
become a tiresome and time-consuming habit when working digitally.
Now, nearing midwinter,
the kitchen table has been reclaimed for Christmas decorations and planned family
dinners, and the kitchen door is shut against the north wind, which slams hail
and sleet off Dartmoor against the house.
Banished upstairs to a desk in the spare room, I can still hear the sparrows squabbling and the
hoots of collared doves. I can even see the moor and a wider sky. But it’s not
the same. This isn’t a place to day-dream; the spare room doesn’t feel like the
heart of anything.
And the
work-in-progress? Well, there’s always January. Happy Christmas, everyone.
@HouseRowena
