I don’t invite people to read work in progress, and I don’t talk about what I’m writing while I’m writing it. That’s not because I’m precious and self-obsessed – though my students will say otherwise. It’s just that the wrong word from a friend can undermine an idea so easily. While writing, I have to convince myself that what I’m creating is good – how else can you keep going for all that time? If you talk about it, and your friend looks at you in a bewildered or sceptical way, you can suddenly realise that what you’re actually produced is derivative nonsense. Writing is a deliciously lonely business, I find. It reminds me of what I did as a boy…airplane models, plasticene, and the painting of tiny soldiers for fabulous dioramas. All the other boys were out doing healthy, gregarious, back-slapping things like …and I was in my room creating little, private worlds. Nothing has changed, and I like that.
‘Where Stories Are Made’ is a new 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 Young Adult author Andy Mulligan…
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Someone told me once that the best place to write was ‘a room without a view’, and it‘s true for me. I wrote Trash in my friend Lucy’s apartment, out in the Philippines. She was away, and I shifted a small desk into her unused guest room and closed the door. I wrote for six to eight hours each day, and then took the laptop up to a hotel round the corner, where I got pleasantly drunk and re-read everything I’d written. That was during a school-holiday – I teach English and drama at the British School Manila – and knowing that you have an immoveable deadline (ie the end of the holiday, when your head fills with classes, marking and the noise of children) is a very fine thing. I tend to write in short, hard bursts.
My other favourite writing spot is a cheap hotel in Bombay, where for $15 a night I get a huge room with a groaning ceiling fan. Again, it has a small desk and definitely no view. I pop next door to the Taj Hotel for breakfast – spend two hours negotiating one of those endless buffets where you can drink pomegranate juice and have fried eggs on beef-steak…and then back to the cell for the six hour stint. Last time I was there the window was broken, and I was watched all day by a fat crow.
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You can find out more about this feature HERE
5 Comments
Congratulations! What a terrific idea. I found it fascinating to read about another Authors place to write. We all have them, and each would be so different.
The layout and photographs were spot on. I look forward to reading more of these weekly additions.
Well done indeed.
Soooz
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Love it!
So nice to read about how other authors work and their space!
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It's interesting how authors have such different needs when it comes to their writing environment.
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Thanks…I really like this section of your website…and, thanks for sending me an invite on goodreads.com.
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I find it so fascinating when a writer still does his draft on paper.
I really don't know know how he manages to write eight hours straight (Three or four I could manage, but then I'd have to stop for at leats an hour), but it's always amusing to read about authors' way of bringing the book out.
"Trash" does sound like a good read.
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