How to support a writer - Kelly McCaughrain

As further evidence that I am in fact living in some sort of benign Truman Show, to cap my incredible book-year, just last month I was awarded the role of Children’s Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland!

This two-year role was created by the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens University Belfast and the Arts Council Northern Ireland to promote children’s reading and writing, and I think it’s a fantastic recognition of how important Kids’ Lit is. 

The best part is I get to spend two years talking about creativity, hanging out with young writers, and working on my own writing as well! 

I’m still working out my plans and finding out about all the exciting things I get to be involved in. When things are more definite, I will be blogging all about it (I will be blogging the hell out of this adventure).

Until then, can I just take this opportunity to talk about the writing part? Specifically writing spaces.

I’d like to point out that I now, for the first time in my entire life, have my own office! OK, in the grand scheme of things this may seem like a tiny detail but actually I’m starting to realise that it’s not. 

So far in my life, my working environments have consisted of:

• A cinema kiosk
• Poundstretcher shop floor
• Xtra-vision counter
• Back room of a bank
• Charity shop
• Open plan admin pool where I shared a computer AND A CHAIR
 

And my writing environments have consisted of:

• Dining room table
• Kitchen table
• Sofa
• Garden table
• Greenhouse
• Bed

For the last 20 years I’ve been a note taker for adult students with special needs. This means sitting in the corners of various classrooms trying to be as invisible as possible. I have no co-workers. I once got in a lift with my boss and didn’t recognise her.

In none of my jobs have I ever had so much as a coat hook to call my own, let alone a parking space, a locker, a computer, a kitchen, a drawer, a desk, or a door I could close. I’ve had a very nomadic working life. I’m a zen master in the art of packing a rucksack (never a shoulder bag, you gotta balance that weight evenly), making packed lunches, wearing the correct number of layers to ensure optimum body temperature no matter the environment, footwear you can spend a whole (rainy) day in, portable technology, and I have a thermal mug that will keep tea hot for about a month.

Basically me

I suspect many full-time writers endure similar conditions since they’re probably earning a living by hauling their butts around schools and libraries. I never thought about it much, I just occasionally daydreamed about being able to go to the bathroom without taking all my possessions with me.

But suddenly… I have my very own office. And it occurs to me that the Room of One’s Own isn’t just the fantasy of writers anymore, it’s probably a luxury for most people these days. Most desk-workers work in open-plan spaces. Privacy is a definite luxury.

But my office is in the Seamus Heaney Centre at QUB, a place dedicated to writing, and where they understand that asking writers to share an open-plan office would be like asking hermits to flat-share.

I’m used to writing in my garden. Rain, hail or shine I can spend ten straight hours sitting outdoors until I’m dragged in to go to bed (and I’ve found myself looking thoughtfully at the hammock at 11pm). Can I write in a small, skylighted, third-floor office?

Moving day!

Well, I’m giving it a go. I do feel slightly like feral cat that someone’s trying to tame but it could grow on me. And it’s so nice to be able to leave things there overnight! This is a revelation. It may not seem like much but it’s a little bit like having a home after twenty years of homelessness. In an occupational sense.

And the peace. The lack of distraction. Being able to take time off my paid work to do this. That’s the real miracle.

I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that having my own office would be so important. I am passionate about the idea that kids need to be given time and space and freedom to be creative (in fact, that’s exactly what I’m going to focus the first year of the fellowship on). The Seamus Heaney Centre and the Arts Council have given me exactly that – two years, office space, no restrictions or conditions. This is how you support a writer. 

Needs more books

My little office in the Seamus Heaney Centre is not just a room, it’s a symbol of all that support. And I’m so very happy and grateful. 

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Kelly McCaughrain is the author of the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year,

Flying Tips for Flightless Birds. 

She is the Children's Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland #CWFNI

@KMcCaughrain

Seeking spaces for stories - by Rowena House

Writers often talk about their special writing places. For me, in recent years, it’s been our kitchen table, much to my husband’s chagrin, since my research books and notebooks and scrolls of mind-mapping paper do rather spread.

After I broke my leg in February, he gave up dropping hints about the desk upstairs, and rearranged the kitchen to make me a writing snug in one corner. It’s an old-fashioned, winged arm-chair, with a small angled desk, and a large footrest so I can type with my leg raised and still see the garden, the wild birds and our ash trees coming into leaf.

 

 

I love this Dahl-esque snug. It’s near the kettle and biscuit barrel, and close enough to the dog’s day bed that I can see him snoozing, and he can sniff me sneaking a biscuit, which I always intended to share. Honest.

Now that the leg is healing, I’m wondering whether to stage a sit-in here, and write another book (paid work permitting). But another bit of me hankers after a retreat, somewhere wild and remote: a place to wander into new mental spaces.

Once I met a writer who lived in safari camp in the Maasi Mara National Reserve, in Kenya, paying his rent by giving talks in the evening. Just imagine! After reading Jack London, I used to fantasize about spending a winter snowed up somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, in a log cabin with a fire blazing, and bears and wolves outside.

Author friend Liz McWhirter, of Black Snow Falling fame, has such tempting tales of her retreat on the Isle of Iona, and also Moniack Mhor. Applying for a month’s retreat at Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian has been on my to-do list for years.  

As a journalist, I had to be able to write anywhere: a telex room, a corner desk of a local Reuter’s office, or some soulless conference hotel bedroom. On a gap year, I wrote in bars and cafés in Africa and Latin America. I’d find one in each place I stopped, and go there night after night until the regulars “adopted” me as their resident writer, and the kids or drunks stopped hassling me.

I’ve still got all the scraps of description I scribbled that year on wine-stained napkins and receipts: the sounds of a tropical storm under a straining bamboo thatch, with the palm trees bent to the ground outside; sea-thoughts while wildlife watching on a brigandine schooner off the Galapagos Islands; air mail letters and postcards which, for some long-forgotten reason, I never sent.

They’re all in box files in the spare bedroom: notes from another century.

Recently, my dad gave me another box file with the letters and cards I sent to him and Mum, a treasure trove to add to my collection of letters and notes she sent to me.

Now that our son is about to embark on university, I’m wondering if it’s time to open these boxes and look back to find my next story, or should one always move on?

Advice welcome!

Evolving Writing Spaces by Chitra Soundar

 My writing space has evolved over the last fifteen years of my writing life. I always had a desk (which was really for my computer) and used to write there. For me going to that desk meant I had changed roles from executive or sister or daughter to writer.

While I write in notebooks by longhand a lot, especially the first drafts of my picture books, I still like to do revisions and the edits on my computer. I almost never write more than the first chapter of a longer story in my notebook. My typing is definitely faster than my longhand writing and I want to get the words down before they slip away from my brain.

The other thing I used to do a lot especially when I was working full time at the day job, was writing in coffee shops, libraries, on trains and parks. But nowadays I realise, as I have gotten older, I prefer to write at home than anywhere else. While I can block out all noise and write in a coffee shop or a library, the sheer effort of going from one quiet place (which is my flat) to another not-so-quiet place with travel and standing in the queue to buy an espresso behind someone who’s buying a skinny latte decaf with almond milk and chocolate on top, feels counter-productive.

The fact that I write from five in the morning till eleven also means writing at home is far more convenient. I don’t have to change out of my pyjamas until my writing is done and I can have as many coffees I want (although I do only one), without a queue or a foamy flower on top.

My writing space preferences have also changed since I’ve been travelling a lot more and relying on my laptop than desktop. I’ve hardly used my desktop Mac in a year or two and I like the convenience of my laptop. That also has freed me from the desk. I write on the sofa, or on my bed propped up by pillows. Even when I do write at the desk, I stand up write as my table can rise higher when I want to do that.

I used to dream about writing sheds and comfy sofas, a bookshelf on the side, a fire in the corner and such. But I realise I’m most comfortable in my living space – especially because I live alone and I am always near a power point for my phone and laptop and the Wi-Fi is of good strength. And of course setting up a shed inside a London flat might not be a good idea anyway. Unless of course, I can build a tiny one and I can shrink myself to enter a new world full of imaginary people.

Because I’ve changed from desk to bed/sofa writer, I’ve been looking at ergonomic ideas that could help me. Just a word of caution – I’m not recommending or endorsing any of the below. I just want to share some of the research I’m doing to improve my writing space.

Here are a couple of examples of a prop-up pillow or wedges as they are called – for reading or writing.

or this -  http://www.qvcuk.com/c4e4e018-15b8-4f92-a517-2f3a093d4776

And here are some tables that go up or down and help you write sitting down or standing up. 

https://www.posturite.co.uk/desks-furniture/height-adjustable-standing-desks.html

I also checked out some famous people to see where they write. Here is a wonderful selection of American writers and poets and their writing spaces.

So has your writing space evolved? If so why? Are you still comfortable at the kitchen table or the sofa or do you prefer a white noise environment like a coffee shop or library? Tell us all about it.