My Writing Environment

Like Roald Dahl, I am most comfortable when writing in an armchair – my writer’s womb, although so far as I know most wombs are not fitted with an angled book rest on the left to hold notes and books, a small table on the right to hold pens and whisky or a glass of wine, and a wheel-in table (like the ones that you can eat off in front of the TV) to write on. In Dahl’s case the “table” was just a flat piece of board, and he wrote with a pen. Sometimes I do that (most often while editing), but mostly it holds a lap-top computer.

Dahl had his armchair in a shed in the bottom of the garden. Mine (a dilapidated old wing-back chair of which I am inordinately fond, to the disgust of my wife Wendy) is in an attic study, where I am surrounded by books, plus a stereo that I can operate by remote control. I am not the only one who is inordinately fond of the chair. If I get up for 5 seconds, our cat Yasmin takes it over. It is for this reason that I have a second chair (a rocking chair) to which I can move if she beats me to the armchair.

In the English winter, she has the armchair full-time, because we disappear off to Australia while a friend comes in to look after her. There I have a different armchair, which I suppose makes me an armchair traveler. The Australian one is situated next to a large window, through which I can watch the parrots feeding on the veranda and Wendy working in her beloved garden.

The most important thing, though, is to get into the armchair every day, no matter whether I have any writing ideas or not. Something might come, or nothing might come. One thing is for sure - writing doesn’t happen just by dreaming about it. It happens by doing. “Just keep going” is the watchword, rather than waiting for inspiration to strike.