Book Chick City: Where Stories Are Made: MD Lachlan

Where Stories Are Made: MD Lachlan

Thursday, May 20, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

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Where Stories Are Made is a regular feature here at Book Chick City. It's where the author takes us on a tour of their writing place, be it an office, coffee shop or park and tells us about their writing day and rituals. My guest today is fantasy writer, MD Lachlan...

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I hear sometimes that other writers have messy rooms. This makes me cackle, Bond villain style. ‘Mess?’ I feel like saying, ‘mess! I’ll show you a mess!’

The problem is that my study, which in the hands of a less hamster-like writer could be a beautiful room, is right next to the front door. Its door doesn’t close properly, so the entire family dumps their rubbish in there – pushchairs, shopping, umbrellas, coat etcs.

However, the majority of the disorder is down to me. I clear my room out to pristine condition about once every two weeks. Everything is put away – not filed, I don’t go there – but stuffed into cupboards at least. Within two days it looks like this again.

My wife tries not to open her eyes when she comes in to my room – she leaves me this corner of chaos on the understanding that I behave like a human being in the rest of the house.

This is my desk. Doesn’t look too messy, really, I suppose. Notable things are the Quentin Blake picture of the crow in the middle – an engagement present from my wife - the teddy bear’s head trophy (shot it myself in Hambley’s) and the football trophy. I only allow myself one sports trophy on the desk, god knows there wouldn’t be room for anything else if I put them all there – all right, maybe there would. The computer monitor rests on a an armoured car first aid box I’ve had since a kid – it’s full of some of my old D&D figures – and a Chinese box which may well have given a steampunk touch were it not overwhelmed by debris. The pill bottles, if you can see them, are pain killers – football and fencing at 45 years old hurt – and animal medication for the dog. If I put his pills in front of me, I remember to give them to him. I know it looks a bit Hunter S Thompson but those days are well behind me.

There is a Love Film CD which I have been meaning to post since January and only one empty coffee cup, which is an all-time low for that desk.

The totem pole was given to me for a birthday present and I thought it was awful so I stuck it in the garden. However, it aged and the base fell off and now it has a sort of rotted, ancient look to it that I like. The marionettes’ heads are from my visit to China a couple of years ago and the strange catty thing I got on my honeymoon to Sicily. It’s a guard against the evil eye, apparently.

I like things like this because of their slightly sinister and spooky appearance. The evil eye mask, in particular, represents the sort of magic I like to put in my stories – folky, alien, odd and scary. A friend of mine once tried to sleep overnight in this room but had to give up and go and bed down in the hall because he was too disturbed by the heads. I felt my work was done.

There is a picture of a parrot someone painted for me in the Amazon, a French postcard of a scene by the 18th century portrait painter Constance Charpentier which I kept because I liked it and a photo of my 3 year old’s Basil Brush toy. Basil Brush is a role model of mine.

The chair was very expensive when I bought it 10 years ago - a special orthopaedic thing. It’s broken now but it cost so much I can’t bring myself to throw it away. I’ve tried to get the manufacturers to fix it but it’s a waste of time. Around the walls are family photos, kids smears – one of which, I’ve realised looks like a discarded poultice and will have to go - and little reminders. On top of the ancient computer monitor (electronic equipment only gets replaced when it breaks in my house, never before) is a sign from an ad that always used to run in the newspapers. It reads ‘Why Not Be A Writer?’ as a reminder that I’m not here to trawl the internet. There’s a sign to its right that reads ‘Increase the Danger’. My second book in the Wolfsangel series is more of a thriller than the first one and that reminds me how thrillers are written. The new book is a sort of 9th century 24, with werewolves and Vikings instead of Jack Bauer and terrorists.

I have the New Yorker calendar, which I get every year because it’s very funny, and the cliché Keep Calm and Carry On sign. It’s a reminder that, whatever we’re going through, no one’s dropping bombs on us, like they did my mum and dad in Coventry in WWII. My mum was dug out of the ruins of her home aged three. It seems like history but people are still with us who went through all that. The sideboard to the right of the main picture has a patched hole in its side. The hole was caused when the Luftwaffe kindly knocked my grandparents’ house down. The sideboard is a huge encumbrance, as are the chairs, one of which you see to the right of the desk. They belonged to my nan, though, and I can’t bear to get rid of them

Below is a glimpse into more chaos.

You’ll note my main problem revealed by the open doors. I might tidy up but I never shut a door or put a book away by instinct. I’m just naturally untidy in the extreme. The dog in the corner is begging me just to tidy up. He’s Reg, who was the subject of my novel Lucky Dog, under my real name, that was published a few years ago. My earlier work was comedy and used to get compared – wrongly, I thought – to Nick Hornby. I used to explain that the difference between his characters and mine is that his put their CDs into alphabetical order. Mine use theirs for ashtrays. This bears out the statement ‘you only write what you know’. I don’t know how that translates to work about werewolves and Norse gods.

The painting above the dog – a study in elegance floating above the rubbish heap below is John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. I might be a fantasy author but I’m not a great fan of fantasy art on the whole, one or two exceptions aside. Out of shot on the other side of the window to the right is a picture of David Bowie in his Thin White Duke phase. I fell in love with Bowie aged 8 and, despite the fact everything he’s done since 1980 has been rubbish, I have never fallen out of love with him. A genius, in my opinion. If Elton John’s worth a knighthood, they should make Bowie king.

The room is heavy with book, as you can see. Some are my wife’s (the Harry Potter, top right) but most are mine. There’s a glimpse of a PG Wodehouse collection next to the windscreen deicer on the side. Wodehouse is a favourite of mine. I don’t have enough shelf space, so the books roost where they can.

I live in this room, writing at all hours of the day and night. I write from about nine till 2, walk the dog, then write from 3 till 5, when I pick up the kids. After they’ve gone to bed at 7, I have a sleep for a couple of hours, watch a hour’s TV (Lost at the moment) with my dinner on my lap – normally Weetabix if my wife’s doing something else as I prefer breakfast cereal to proper meals . Then I write from about 10 at night till one or two in the morning. That’s my most productive time. I try to do 2000 words a day, rain or shine. I drink too much coffee and subsist off toast, cornflakes, crisps and other good stuff.

I never listen to music when I’m writing as I find it too distracting. The only sounds are the PC whirring and the dog snoring – both of which I find comforting. One final shot of the devastation is below. Some readers may believe this is staged. I would that were so. I’d love to be a tidy person but I just never seem to have the time in an ordinary day. I have to do it all in a slash and burn once a fortnight. The tide of debris recedes and then, a few days later comes lapping back. Only when I’m drowning in it do I make efforts to drive it away. Still, I go with Einstein who said ‘if a tidy desk is the sign of a tidy mind, what are we to say of an empty desk?’

My study, for good or for bad, contains the fragments of my personality, you could guess the sort of person I am from just looking around here I think and even see a bit of my family history. So in that, way, though it’s untidy it is at least true to the person I am. A link to an article I wrote about my untidiness under my real name for The Times here.

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Wolfsangel (Gollancz) - Out Now

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3 comments:

Laura Summers said...: Loving the mess, it just made me laugh out loud.

They say a lot of creative people are messy, it's the genius at work ;-); 20 May 2010 13:22
Melissa said...: I love the mess! I'm not the only one! Thanks for the inside look. Oh, and loving the description of that book!; 20 May 2010 19:37
K.G. said...: I had to smile to see that I have company in the needing to tidy up area. Great reading, great pics. Thanks for sharing.; 22 May 2010 03:49