January 2013
1 post
M. F. Bloxam
Seriously, how many modest rooms furnished to soothe and reassure their skittish occupants can we look at before we begin to suspect that we writers are, finally, less fascinating than we are deserving of sympathy?
This is the place in my head where I write.
On the left is a well, bored down to a subterranean lake; its iron bucket brings up eyeless, tentacled plotlines transparent as...
December 2012
1 post
Ernest Hebert
The first time I heard a word that I wanted to use for my work space was back in grad school when my poet friend Reg Gibbons referred to his work space as “my office.” Ah, I thought, that’s it. The reason I can’t write is I don’t have an office. Of course most writers will understand that this kind of twisted reasoning is part of the career track. After a while you begin to recognize...
November 2012
1 post
Matt Dojny
I officially started writing my novel (The Festival of Earthly Delights) in April of 2005, although its true origins can be traced back to 1997, when I was living in Khon Kaen, Thailand. In lieu of any other entertainment, I spent almost every evening sitting on an overturned trashcan outside my apartment, drinking lao-Lao and writing epically overlong letters that, years later, I’d use as the raw...
October 2012
2 posts
Kathleen Alcott
After years of bookshelves I thought less than beautiful, I finally did something right. These are old library ladders with the support side sawed off that I mounted inexpertly to the wall with twine and nails. I like how they lean in different directions. Also pictured: an old wheel a friend found in her backyard, a hat that is too ridiculous to wear almost anywhere,...
Erika Robuck
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway
I agree with Mr. Hemingway about books, and my writing space is full of them. I enjoy being cocooned in words, and when my words won’t come, I simply turn to my shelves and take pleasure in the pages that some other writer agonized over for my enjoyment, before I return to my own pages to do the same.
Inspiration comes by way of...
September 2012
4 posts
Erin Morgenstern
This is, alas, not a proper office. This is a windowless writing cave in an apartment I moved into last year and I will be vacating by the time 2013 rolls around. It is a temporary space, teeny but functional and thanks to Black Phoenix Trading Post it smells like mahogany and teakwood with swirls of cigar smoke, patchouli, tonka, cardamom, Spanish moss, and bourbon vanilla.
The next...
Dani Shapiro
This is my office at home in rural Connecticut. Sometimes I prefer working at home, and sometimes I wish I had an office outside the house. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. For the last few years I’ve preferred to work at home, so I can stop in the middle of the day and do my yoga practice. And I can talk to the dogs.
Wherever I’ve lived and worked, I’ve always...
Erica Jong
I love to write early in the morning when the whole world is quiet except for the birds. Whether in New York City or Connecticut, I get more done between four a.m. and eight a.m. than at any other time during the day. I used to go to Venice to write because it was so peaceful and 6 hours ahead of New York. Now I try to recreate this peace wherever I am. Yoga stretches and alternate...
Lee Woodruff
This is my office in our cottage on Lake George. It’s paneled in warm wood and the shelves are filled with items that have significance or bring me comfort — photos in birch bark frames, fir scented candles, my first thesaurus, tin soldiers from when my son was a boy, a jar of Le Mer face cream.
The office is small and cozy and my dog Woody is often curled up...
July 2012
1 post
Karolina Waclawiak
This is where I spend most of my time at home in Brooklyn. My desk is right next to our patio where we’ve created a bird haven. I have a little bird bath and feeder along with dozens of potted plants so the birds can feel at home. They line the railing while I’m working and chirp to the music I play while writing. We have a Cardinal family who frequent our establishment and have seen...
March 2012
3 posts
Guy Capecelatro III
For me any place can be a good place to write. I love the in between: airports, rock shows, waiting for a bus. There’s something about pausing that makes my brain tingle. I’m always carrying a pen and a little Moleskin notebook, filling it with nearly indecipherable scrawl. The initial rush of inspiration is deliciously intoxicating and figuring out how to capture that early outpouring has been...
Lauren Groff
Before my first son was born, my husband converted the handyman’s workshop in the garage to my office space so that I could work without hearing the bloody screams of my newborn. It is insufficiently climate-controlled, and has a spider problem. The rugs are too tired to be in the domestic sphere, and most of my books live in the house, where there’s no mold. I love my space...
Jeffrey Ricker
Sometimes, I think I want a writing office. Since I don’t have one, I tend to be nomadic, both inside and outside the house. When I’m at home, more often than not I write at the dining room table. I like this because a) it’s the least-used room in the house next to the guest bedroom, which at least gets used for occasional ironing. (We have two guest bedrooms; one of them...
February 2012
2 posts
Lena Roy
I am the most persnickety of writers whenever I am starting a new project. Like the princess and the pea, everything has to be just right. I have to get out of the house and be in a public space for stimulation, and I have to have coffee and snacks. Where does this lead me to? Starbucks, or some such coffee shop stands in for my office. I need a little noise and friendly banter with...
Christian A. Dumais
For the purposes of this exercise, Christian A. Dumais will be played by the writer. The dogs, Dudikoff and Commissioner Gordon, will play themselves and are contractually obligated to do their own stunts. The writer always had a bedroom or a living room that happened to have a desk, but he never had a room that was exclusively an office until last year. Because of this, the writer did most of his...
January 2012
3 posts
Eric D. Goodman
It recently occurred to me that for all my decades of writing, I’ve written at least part of every draft novel and short story at the same, simple desk. A modest, pine desk that belonged to my father.
I was 12 when I wrote my first draft of my first novel in a spiral notebook and then transcribed it on an old PC in a forgotten word processing program called “Multimate.” I did so at my...
Matthew Allard
This is my writing/creative space. It’s a small lofted area above my living room. If this were MTV’s Cribs I would usher you up and grandly state, “This is where the magic happens!”
I know I’m very lucky to have a place separate from “living” to go and operate, so I’m always reminding myself not to take it for granted. It’s crammed with all of the creative...
Quote, Unquote
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing. - Benjamin Franklin
December 2011
3 posts
Nicholson Baker
I work all over the house, and in the yard when it’s warm—and often at restaurants and coffee shops. But my favorite place is to write is at our kitchen table, especially when the sun comes angling in.
The refrigerator turns on and off, the wall clock ticks, the cat jingles her food in the saucer as she crunches it, and there’s a nice shine to whatever fruit is in the...
Jason Ciaramella
You see that picture? It’s kind of misleading. Sure that’s where I’m doing all my writing these days, but up until a few months ago everything I ever had published was written on a cramped kitchen table next to a window that magnified the sun and always made me feel like I was being roasted alive. I’m glad I don’t have to write there anymore.
Now that we have that out of the way, I’ll...
Peter Straub
The 5th floor hallway leading to my office. A photo of the esteemed Mr. John Clute is visible in the foreground.
What you see when you get to the doorway. What do you know, it’s a desk! And a computer!
My desk from the cockpit, with glasses, water, and book I’m blurbing. (It’s good.) I’ve been sitting front of this view since 1985, and I’ve...
November 2011
2 posts
Joe Hill
So one time I wrote this comic where a kid uses an impossible key to unlock his head. Inside his head there’s a secret world, filled with dinosaurs and legos and space invaders and so on. It’s a mindscape, crowded with the stuff he loves and obsesses over.
My office is kind of the same way for me… a rough approximation of what’s in my head, given physical form....
Tom Sniegoski
So, this is where the magic happens … it’s where something happens, that’s for sure. I used to work out of a tiny office space in another part of our eighty year old home in Stoughton, MA, but was quickly out growing it. I wanted to move, to get a bigger place, but my wife had another idea. You see, there was this old sun porch that ran along side the back of our...
September 2011
2 posts
Christopher Golden
My desk is a dusty mess, but you can catch a glimpse of just a few of the statues of comic book characters, including Hellboy, Moon Knight, and Green Arrow. I’ve never seen anything in the crystal ball there. The art to the right of my desk is by Mike Mignola, from HELLBOY: THE LOST ARMY. To the left, a painting by Eric Powell of a character I created that never saw the light of...
Sherrie Flick
I’ve taken to writing on my deck this summer. It isn’t attached to our house but instead to a garage that we converted into a writing studio on the opposite end of our property. I live in Pittsburgh on the South Side slopes. Everything slopes, it’s true. And our yard runs uphill from the house to the studio. So I must trudge upwards when I want to write. This is metaphorical on...
August 2011
14 posts
Toby Ball
I’m not sure, but I bet I speak for a lot of writers when I say that when you have a full-time job and two kids, you write when and where you can. Most of the time that means somewhere in our house - I have an office in our guest room, the living room couch is comfortable, I write in bed a fair amount. When possible, I have a game on silently in the background so that when I...
Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
Write Place, Write Time is taking the weekend off. We’ll be back on Tuesday.
Please enjoy this video of a slow loris being tickled while you wait.
Rebecca Cox
My desk is in the front of the house, to the right of the front door. I write with a slumbering audience of two dogs. My two-year-old Jack Russell, Fred, regularly squashes his wiry-haired body behind me on this black leather chair, forcing me towards the edge of my seat. I, of course, just as regularly concede to his wishes. The bookshelves to my right contain an odd assortment of bibelot,...
John Minichillo
One of the things that attracted us to this house in East Nashville, was the stone façade and the way it was tucked away in trees and greenery, despite being in the city. My writing room was beyond this window, in what was supposed to be the master bedroom. I didn’t notice until after we moved in, but there’s a cross above the window, so the room has a holiness about it, the outer look of a...
Lish McBride
When I was a kid I had this idea of where writers write—a big dark wooden desk, probably in an office with giant bookshelves stacked with books. Somewhere quiet and smart looking where they could have Deep Writerly Thoughts. Classical music might be playing in the background. You never know. I thought someday, when I was a writer, I would have that.
You should probably know that I...
A book walks into a bar...
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Joey Comeau
I write in my bedroom, on the edge of my bed. This is also where I read, watch television, and play video games. When I’m struggling with a problem in a book, I turn on some familiar music and lay down and look up at the ceiling until my brain figures it out. You are supposed to have a separate area for sleeping and working, I think. It helps your brain develop a pattern. “When...
Clark Knowles
My office. I found the desk on the side of the road. It’s my first grown up writing desk. I used to write on a sheet of plywood streched across two sawhorses. Then I upgraded to a table from a yardsale. Then I found this. I hadn’t been writing much for about a year, but as soon as I saw this desk, I wanted to write. We’d had weeks of hard rain and the desk appeared on the first...
Elif Batuman
Finding the right workspace, for me, involved a lot of trial and error. In the end, this workspace turned out to be in some undergrowth.
It might not look luxurious, but there’s room for everything I need: a cup of tea, a reference volume or two, a spiral notebook and pen, and of course my IMAGINATION. I just scooch down there in the peat and let her go wild.
It has often been...
Jennifer Gilmore
Here is my space. It’s also a closet, though it does have a window. I look out of the window often, and have relationships with other people who are doing the same. I have a lot of stuff around my desk, I realize looking at this now, even though this is a time when there is little of the stacks of papers and manuscripts that usually clutter it. Just above my desk hangs a a drawing by my...
Lev Grossman
When we bought our house about two years ago the real estate agent pointed out the ivy-covered brick wall at the back of the garden and said, “Isn’t it magical? It’ll look different every different month of the year. It’s an ever-changing tableau of the seasons!”
Much later, after painful meetings with architects and structural engineers, we used to recite other quotations from the real...
Alan Heathcock
My writing studio is a 1967 Roadrunner travel trailer that for most of its life was an Idaho State Police surveillance vehicle, and is now packed with books and trophies and random oddities. Inside, there’s old beautiful wood paneling, which smells like woods and feels like wood and feels cozy and connects me with reality.
With my wife’s help, I took pages from my...
Tobias Carroll
Something I’ve learned in the last few years: when I want to sit down and write, it helps to have a window nearby. My desktop computer dwells in my office, the one room in my apartment without any windows, and for far too long I’d wondered why I was more prone to distraction in that particular space than anywhere else. A month or so ago, the desktop tower I’d used for the previous five years...
Jonathan Maberry
I’m self-employed as a full-time writer, so I can work wherever I can sit down with my laptop. I often divide my workday between writing at home and writing in coffee shops. I’m a caffeine nomad, and will frequently spend a couple of hours at a Starbucks then move to the coffee shop in a bookstore, then go back home. Breaking up the day refreshes my mind and gives me time to think. My office...
July 2011
14 posts
Jami Attenberg
I live in a crumbly old loft building in Brooklyn, where people are always coming and going and leaving a trail behind. I bought this table from a neighbor across the hall from me who was moving out and selling everything in his apartment. He was some sort of musician/interior designer/con artist, and I will admit he had a lot of nice stuff. He was very masculine and overbearing. He told me...
Dana Stabenow
My workspace used to be two folding tables from Costco and my bookshelves press-board put-togethers from Fred Meyer. Now, I have a desk and shelves specifically built for the purpose. I feel like a real writer for the first time in my life.
I have two gods and one goddess who watch over me at work and keep me on track; Sebastian, the calypso crab from The Little...
Jessica Anya Blau
This is the studio where I’m currently writing at a writers’ colony in Virginia (VCCA). The horses wander around outside my windows all day and a toad appears outside my door every night. I talk to the horses and they respond with snorts and head bows. When I talk to the toad he completely ignores me—I think I’m being shunned. This is a beautiful and peaceful place to write...
Cherie Priest
I don’t really have an office, just a portion of wall in our living room. (Tiny downtown Seattle apartment. You know how it goes.) But there you go, and that’s what it looks like. Yes, that’s a cast iron candelabra. The framed images are line art from the interior illustrations of my mosaic collection DREADFUL SKIN (courtesy of Bill Schafer at Subterranean, artist Mark...
Sarah McCoy
My writing office is a loft at the top of the stairs. It’s a small area that lets me see and hear everything that’s going on in the house—my perch in the tree. It’s a basic space. I didn’t spend years or even hours dreaming of what it would look like. I wrote my first novel in the living room of a small apartment over a bakery where I shared the couch with my husband and nightly ESPN marathons....
Manuel Munoz
I tend to write mostly at night, but because it’s summer and very hot during the day in Tucson, I try to work during the morning so I can visit with friends in the evening. This is my desk, which is upstairs. The blue folder to the left is my tactic for the summer: write what I can, then print it out and place it in the folder for the next day. Reread it before even opening the...
Lynne Griffin
This room without a door—through which you have to pass to get to our screened-in porch—is where I spend more hours than I care to count writing my novels. It’s affectionately called Boston. When my children were little and interruptions unremitting, I sat them down one day and told them some parents drive to Boston to a job while others work from home, but both deserve the same respect. No...
Ann Napolitano
Since my children were born, I have become a writing nomad. Essentially, I can and will write anywhere that my two young sons are not. Usually this entails leaving my apartment. Several frequently utilized locations are: a bedroom at my parents’ house in New Jersey, a library for the blind in Chelsea, the basement of a Starbucks in Brooklyn, and the second floor of two separate McDonalds (one...
Station Identification
Our (mostly) fearless leader is this month’s Algonquin Books Booksellers Rock! profile.
And scene.
Tayari Jones
Since I am in the middle of a 40-city reading tour to promote my new novel, Silver Sparrow, I find myself spending a lot of time writing on airplanes. In this photo you see my trusty Netbook, which has traveled with me so much that I should get it its own seat and passport. The beverage in the corner is a screwdriver to calm my flying nerves. iPod is plugged in for white noise and my flashdrive to...
Laura Miller
I write a lot and read a lot, which can be ergonomically dicey. For whatever reason, it’s easiest on my shoulders for me to write with my laptop on my lap, sitting in this chair in a corner of my apartment. JUST as important is the rolling Levo Book Stand, shown in this photo. This thing has changed my life! When you need to read for 4 or 5 hours a day, holding a...
