Laurie Halse Anderson

I got serious about my writing twenty years ago. Since then I’ve written in a closet, in an attic, in a basement, on the front seat of the car, at basketball and soccer and swim practices, in more hotels than I’d like to remember, and for two memorable years whilst living in a small apartment, at the south end of the couch in the living room.

A few years ago I married my childhood sweetheart and moved back home to the boondocks of Northern New York. My husband saw my desperate need for a creative space that would be free from kids, phones, the Internet, and our large, loud dogs. Did I mention that he’s a carpenter? He and a buddy of his found a 125-year-old church window (minus the glass) in a salvage yard. They built my writing cottage around that magic window.

We tried to use as many recycled and sustainable building materials as possible. The floorboards are rehabbed pine planks found at the same salvage yard. The insulation is a soybean-based foam, and the roof is covered with slate tiles. My electricity comes from a solar panel and small wind turbine.

I do most of my writing in that big chair. The table to the left is only for drawing. All of the photos on the walls are pictures of ancestors. They cheer me on when I struggle. This picture does not show the old-school card catalog that my kids gave me for my birthday a couple years ago. I use it to store pens, pencils, incense, knives, feathers, sea shells, and buckshot cartridges. I also have a very old dining room table in the cottage. (It is where the photographer was standing when he took this picture.) Some chapters are best written in the comfy chair and some are best written at the table. I’ve given it up trying to figure out why.

This is an outside view of my cottage in the winter. It is usually winter up here. There are a number of wood sprites and elves living in these woods. In return for snacks of discarded manuscript pages, they scare off Distractions and Procrastination.

Life is good.

Laurie Halse Anderson writes books for teenagers (WINTERGIRLS and SPEAK), and historical fiction for middle-grade readers (CHAINS and FORGE). When not writing, she chops wood, feeds her chickens, and says thank-you one million time a day to her carpenter-husband. Her super-power is her ability to ignore email. You can see a video about the construction of her writing cottage here.