Where do you write?

I came across this blog about words and writing the other day, which is informative and great fun: A Writer’s Edge is by Georgina Hancock, based in San Diego. She has a thoughtful post on writers’ writing spaces, referring to a fad awhile back for writers to post photos of their desks on their litblogs. She says that her writing space is not just her desk but her whole house:

My real writing space, however is my whole house. The desk is in my bedroom now, but the other one still contains a large file cabinet and all my photo and spare electronic equipment. The library is in the kitchen, and I keep notebooks, a clipboard, writing instruments in the living room. Papers and newsprint turn up in every room, too. I’ve learned to function like a man, spread out and take up all the space!

It made me think of Dickens, who used to be able to write anywhere. In the evenings, his friends would be gathered round entertaining themselves with parlour games and dancing and chat. And he’d be there with them all, scribbling away at his novel!

I used to write at my desk in my study in the flat I had in Central London. It became a sort of sacred space - I would write my novels there and only there. I worked on a laptop with a black-and-white screen and only 16MB RAM (amazing, huh?). This was just before the internet invaded all our homes so I was not connected to the world wide web. It was my literary haven.

After I published my two novels, I treated myself to a fancy desktop PC with a colour screen and internet hook-up and speakers and everything. I explored the internet, I wrote business letters, I emailed, I uploaded photos… yep, you guessed it. I did everything but write another novel.

I’ve hung on to my trusty old laptop and use it when I want to focus on writing fiction. I threw out the rollerball mouse ages ago and navigate around the page with the arrow keys, Alt, Ctrl and F keys. I have to save everything on a floppy disk (remember them?). It makes me feel very old-fashioned and literary, almost as if I’m using an old Remington typewriter… Surely great works of literary fiction must follow?

In the house in the suburbs where I live now, my study is for admin like paying bills etc, emailing and surfing and running my communications and social media consultancy. When I work on my writing, I use the old laptop - or a more modern user-friendly one - downstairs on the sofa with a view of the leafy tree in my garden. Or I sit out on the patio in the summer, listening to the birds and enjoying the warmth.

Writing of course also goes on when I’m not actually tapping at the keys. I often get my best ideas just staring into space or lying in bed. Sometimes, it’s as I’m watching a film or reading a book. My mind takes an idea and wanders off and suddenly, there it is, the next step in the plot has worked itself out.

Where do you write?