I've been tagged to take part in an Inspiring Places blog hop by my friend Cate Russell-Cole. It's a fun idea to see what places, images or even moods, inspire us to write.
We all have our favourite places, and mine is the back verandah of my house. In fact, it's a west-facing, enclosed Queenslander which is sunny all day—bliss in winter, but very hot in summer. As long as I keep the windows open and the blinds drawn, the air circulates and I can enjoy sitting there at my desk almost all year round. The light is wonderful, and the fact it faces my backyard makes it the most pleasant room in the house. All I need do is spin my chair around and I have an unhindered view of my garden. That is its best feature.
Compared to some I've seen, my desk is quite humble—a simple glass table I purchased at Officeworks, together with chair and portable wheeled shelving I can move about when needed. As you can see from the pic, it just manages to hold my laptop, the piles of notebooks I've gathered over the years where I scribble my fledgling ideas, plot lines, character genealogies and snippets of dialogue which I don't always use. There's also my trusty and well-used Roget's Thesaurus (which I've had since university), my Oxford Dictionary (is there any other?) and of course, a couple of cork boards where I pin all the essentials—character profiles, covers of my books, and a yearly planner. How else would I be able to remember when I was scheduled for a book blog tour or Facebook event? I plan on getting another table and join them together to double my work space, which probably means I'll add more bits and pieces of paper and add to the clutter. But hey, what's creativity without a mess?
Overseeing all, is my beloved bust of Sherlock Holmes—a gift from my students after our first school excursion to France to visit the battlefields of the First World War.
Well, there it is—the little space where the Dantonville Legacy series was born.
I'm now passing the baton to my other writer buddies. What's your creative space? What can't you write without? Add the logo, mention who tagged you, and have fun.
