Assume the Position

I’m like Alex–for me writing is not Ass in Chair, it’s Ass on Cushioned Horizontal Surface. Mostly here, at the moment:

The monogrammed pillow is from my pal Mags, who got it for me from Land’s End, if memory serves.

The most important thing you need to write in bed are pillows… lots and lots of pillows.

Originally, when I moved into this apartment near the Arctic Circle last year, I planned to write here:

The desk is from IKEA, but the toile wallpaper I bought online. My daughter and I went to a garage sale last summer and they had two sets of large gold letters spelling “LOVE” for sale, for $4 each. I said, “hey, if we buy both of them, we can spell ‘EVOLVE’!” So we did.

I think maybe I’ve written exactly half a sentence at that desk. Finally, I told Grace to use it for homework and now it’s filled with a pile of Grace detritus. Oh well. It looks nice, in the living room. When I close the front flap to cover the Grace detritus.

I miss writing at my friend Sharon’s house. We used to write together at her dining room table pretty much every weekday. I was really productive there, especially for the first ten months when we couldn’t figure out the key code to get me into her wireless service. We would gossip a lot and stuff, but after an hour or so we’d get down to work, and finally I would be so in the zone that I didn’t even hear her kids when they came home, and would finally come up for air, most nights, when the family needed to set the table for dinner.

When I first moved to the Great White North, I thought I’d get a TON of writing done, since I didn’t know anybody and wouldn’t have to fight the urge to go out to lunch with people a lot and stuff. It turns out that talking to people and hanging out and non-writing social stuff is actually excellent fuel for writing stuff. You need to recharge your batteries, and often. That doesn’t happen so much here, unless I drive down to New York and hang out with pals. That’s about a five-hour drive. I go down whenever I get really stir crazy, which has been a lot over the last year or so.

At any rate, even after I got the pretty desk from IKEA, I tried to write at the cool dining room table I got on craigslist:

I got maybe the second half of that first sentence written at the table. But I spent two days painting the chairs dark green. Except for when Sharon came to visit–I got ten pages written then. It was almost as good as living in California again.

I took her to see Portsmouth:

And Salem, Mass.:

Which was fun but not writing.

And we went for a walk along the banks of the Mighty Squamscott, here in Exeter:

Which is pretty great. But not writing.

In fact, my writing–in terms of quantity and probably quality–has pretty much sucked for this past year. My pals try to reassure me that this is because the year itself was pretty sucky. Sharon is especially good at cheering me up this way. She’ll call from California and say, “well, let’s see–in the past year you’ve moved three thousand miles away to a town where you didn’t know anybody, because your daughter needed you; you got divorced; you had to leave your other daughter with your ex because you can’t physically care for her anymore on your own; your father committed suicide two weeks before your original deadline; your editor died of cancer; and you did publicity and touring for your third book; oh, and you tried to mediate amongst all the crazy relatives after your dad died. Look at it this way–you should cut yourself some slack, and you’re never going to be short of material.” This is why I love Sharon. But still, here is what my writing has been for the last year:

Now I seem to have the ball rolling, at least a little bit. Probably going to blow my new October 1st deadline, though. Especially since my Mom flew in on her way home from Greece last night, and wants to go on a roadtrip. I should stay home and write, but I have people here so seldom I kind of want to milk the opportunity for real conversation that doesn’t involve sixteen-year-olds, although the latter is not without charm.

As for methodology… well, no index cards, whiteboards, post-it notes (giant or otherwise, until we get to the copy edit stage of things.) I’m not an outliner, though I had to write a synopsis for this fourth book. My editor wasn’t crazy about my first three ideas for it, and I had so few pages over the last year that my new sweet editor asked if I could summarize what I was thinking of doing for the salespeople. Not sure they’re going to need that, now, as this book certainly won’t come out in 2011, but I guess maybe it was helpful–though the next twenty pages I wrote after the synopsis totally negated the synopsis.

I remember Lee Child once saying at a book signing that he never outlined, and when editors wanted an outline he’d make something up and then write what he wanted anyway. I suppose that’s a lot easier to do when you’re LEE CHILD. But I still raised my hand at the end and asked, “do they make you do that for every book?”

He said they did, pretty much.

I asked, “so since you never write the book that’s in the outline, can you just recycle the outline the next time they want one?”

He said he hadn’t thought of that, but that he’d definitely do it the next time he got asked for one.

I usually start a book with a scene in my head. It’s always something very place-specific, usually with a telling event at the heart of it, though the event may have nothing to do with the eventual mystery.

In A Field of Darkness, the opening is in my old apartment in Syracuse, New York, on the night a building on the next block caught fire for the second night in a row–which actually happened. It’s funny how many little things I just jotted down in the first draft ended up being themes that carried out through the entire narrative: fire, my heritage, and even photography. I said that walking into the next street to see the fire at first felt like a photograph by Weegee, by which I mean an image somewhat like this:

This is actually titled “Brooklyn Children See Gambler Murdered in the Street,” but it’s the kind of late-night spooky crowd scene I had in mind. I believe the description in Field was something like:

I cut across the tar-soft street and between the woodframe hulks facing ours. For just a second, coming out the other side, it was like stepping into one of that guy Weegee’s photos from a forties copy of Life: black-and- white, some police-scanner tragedy back when everyone wore hats and cars were bulbous as the Hindenburg.

I blinked and it was just my neighbors milling slack-jawed, tank tops and stretch shorts bursting with that translucent flesh I always attribute to Kool smoke and government cheese. I stepped in among them and chastised myself: no worse snob than a poor relation.

For The Crazy School, I thought back to the classroom I taught in at The DeSisto School in West Stockbridge, Mass, in the fall of 1989. The walls looked like this, except painted glossy mustard, and the general attitude on campus is well represented by that officious little note next to the thermostat:

In the first chapter, I wrote:

It was an ugly room. Demoralizing. I didn’t want to be in it, either, only you’re not supposed to say that when you’re the grownup.

I talk about mostly real places, in my books. Like the family cemetery on Centre Island, in Oyster Bay, New York:

That’s my favorite gravestone. It says:

Behold and see

As you pass by

As you are now

So once was I

As I am now

You soon must be

Prepare for death

To follow me

I’ve also written about the family camp, in the Adirondacks:

Here’s Dad, sitting on the porch outside the dining room last summer. We all thought that ceramic deer should’ve been thrown into the lake sometime in the Mid-Fifties. It’s fucking fugly.

My fourth book is set in Boulder, Colorado, and opens a day before my twin daughters’ first birthday. I’m cleaning the house (a lost cause) because my mother is due to fly in at any moment. It’s going to be a pretty sad book. The title is now officially Valley of Ashes. Here’s how it opens:

When we first moved to Boulder I was entirely too happy, a state of being so rare in my experience that I found it rather terrifying.

My twin daughters Parrish and India were beautiful, precocious, and brimming with health. My husband Dean was happily successful at his new job and my best, most trusted friend. We lived at the eastern feet of the Rocky Mountains in a cozy old house on the loveliest street of a charming university town. The air was fresh, the sky was blue–our yard a lush and maple-shaded green, our mellow brick front porch banked in spring with a cobalt-and-amethyst embarrassment of lilac, iris, and grape hyacinth.

Everything I’d ever wanted.

Hubris.

Sorrow is always your own, offering no temptation to fickle gods. Fucking joy, on the other hand? You might as well string your heart from the ceiling for use as a frat-party piñata.

Once I get that first scene established–in this case I’m standing in the living room of a rented house at 1913 Mapleton Street with a vacuum hose in my hand, despairing over the ugliness of the orange shag carpeting and the bomb-just-went-off housekeeping–I just hope that the characters start talking to me, or to Madeline,

my alter ego.

If you’d like to see the house we rented, go here: http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&q=1913+mapleton+street+boulder+colorado&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=1913+Mapleton+Ave,+Boulder,+Colorado+80304&gl=us&ei=

4taUTKiFBsL88AaJ4fWcDA&ved=0CBYQ8gEwAA&z=16

Then click on the little pinkish-reddish pointer pin marked “A” and then click on “Street View,” under the little thumbnail photo. It was a pretty great house.

It’s kind of like lowering your face through the surface of a swimming pool and watching a movie, when the going’s good. I see everything that’s happening while I’m typing–the furniture, the choreography of everyone in the scene. I just try to get that down precisely without too many brushstrokes; just enough detail to make it take on three dimensions.

Either it comes or it doesn’t, and boy is it terrifying when it doesn’t, let me tell you.

So here I am, lying on this bed, typing this blog… and now it’s time to try to finish the scene I’ve been working on, at Alice’s Restaurant on the shores of Gold Lake, another 3,000 feet of altitude above Boulder. Madeline has just told a joke to her friend Cary. They’re at a business dinner with Madeline’s husband Dean. Now they have to start talking about arson. They’re both in danger, but they don’t know it yet….

Maybe today I’ll write a little on my sofa, so I can talk to Mom when I get stuck.

That’s a bottle of absinthe on the table. I may need it.

In the Lair

by J.T. Ellison

This is a truly misleading topic for me, because while I have an office, a beautiful, private, somewhat comfy office, I rarely use it to write. I’ve spent the past four years writing on a laptop, which means I’m basically a nomad. I can write anywhere in the house – upstairs, downstairs, in my office, in the bonus room. But 90% of the time I write in the living room. Which is a shame, because I do love this desk (and yes that is a bat dangling from my fan…)

Now we’ve gone and messed things up, because a few weeks ago we bought a new couch. I adore said couch. It’s big enough that both Randy and I can lay on it watch movies or read – it’s a rumpus couch, without a doubt. But we had to move everything around, and sell the end tables, and suddenly, my office away from office was gone. My chair which used to back to the bookshelves now backs to the front door – disconcerting, to say the least. I’ve tried writing on rumpus couch, and that worked, sort of, because of the lovely side table beside it, but I ended up sort of hunched over, and one day last week, I found myself back in my chair. Ahhh…

So I’m in transition. I’m making a concerted effort to actually work in my office – I’ve moved almost all my material up there. My Quo Vadis Equology planner, my 5 year diary (not doing so well with that – shame on me) the old Moleskine with all my notes from last year, my bible – the Levenger Circa notebook that houses my series’ cast lists, current research, notes and other necessities, all stay upstairs now, watched over by one of my blessings, the stone carving that says “DON’T PISS OFF THE FAIRIES” My idea box in there (that red box) and the files that I get into daily.

And my Owl, who watches over me and gives me wisdom…

And my whiteboard, with book stages and due dates, plus other projects. (I’m kind of ready for October, because September’s cat looks a bit psychotic to me.)

My laptop goes on the nifty lapdesk I picked up at Staples last year and immediately got addicted to – it has the laptop, a cushion for my wrist, my Rhodia notepad/mousepad for to dos, and my Clairefontaine notebook for the book I’m working on. (If you can’t tell, I’m addicted to Exaclair products – truly the highest quality materials for writers in the world.) I’ve been trailing this through the house, searching for the right spot to nestle in and work. We’re moving the chair in my office into Randy’s and moving another one into its place, so we’ll see if that’s better.

Why don’t I work at my desk? Well, I think the true answer is I don’t feel very productive there, and I think it’s because my back is to the door. The room we made my office is strangely shaped, with an offset, diagonal door. The door opens to the stairs, and down right out the front door. Anyone vaguely familiar with Feng Shui will recognize that all my creativity leaks straight out of the house through a clear, delineated path. I don’t like the keyboard either; I’ve gotten so used to the Apple keyboard on my laptop with the individual keys (I know, there’s a word for that) and I hate the clacking the joined keys make. I’ve talked about my boxes, which you can see in the picture below – most are stored away now, but the two books I’m working on now are still out.

And here’s the view. Right into my next door neighbor’s pool. Which, let me tell you, is a real treat.

We took steps to make that problem go away last night – we planted a row of Thuja Green Giants along the fence row. They should grow to about 40′ – 60′ and kill that awful view. And I also got to dedicate the very first tree we planted to the memory of our friend David Thompson, which makes me happy, knowing that eventually, when I look out my office window, I’ll see David’s tree instead of the pool.

We’re going to redo everything here before long – put wood down, paint, and I’ll make a decision about the desk. As gorgeous as that furniture is, it takes up a LOT of room space. Space that if I turned the room, faced the opposite wall, had the door to my left instead of at my back, might make me feel more settled. But there is something about working at a desk that feels like, well, work, to me. I don’t know if redecorating will change that.

Which brings us to process. That’s something else that seems to be in flux right now. I’ve been very unsettled for the past year from both personal issues and so much travel that I’ve lost my good habits. Which is B.A.D. For someone like me, to whom schedule and order and planning are paramount, losing my habits is a big freaking deal. I also switched computers, from Windows to Mac, switched writing programs, from Word to Scrivener, back to Word, to Pages, back to Word, and back to Scrivener again. These changes were monumental, and have wrecked my normalcy. The good news is that instead of doing a major tour for THE IMMORTALS, I’m relying on the Internet, so I get to stay home for a few months. This make me very, very happy. I plan to create new habits.

All that said – I still shoot for 1,000 words a day at the beginning of a book, and struggle through the first half for months until one day, almost by magic, the story comes together, and then the last half of the book gets written in a few weeks. I think my one day record is about 8,000 words, and that’s only happened once. But I was so close…strangely enough, that book is called SO CLOSE THE HAND OF DEATH, so I guess if you look at title as an allegory for deadline, it’s right on.

And here’s a random shot – my filing cabinet, so to speak. This is my daily workspace – my Dropbox. And yes, everything is filed (and subfiled, and so on) – I’m not good when it comes to chaos.

Thanks for letting me share my space with you! This has been a fun and illuminating process, and has proven one thing to me – I have severe office envy. And if you want to compare and contrast, here’s a piece I did on the subject two years ago. It’s goes into greater detail on what’s actually ON my desk…

Wine of the Week: Mirabile Nero D’Avola 2007 – Spectacular! Rich, fruity and ridiculously inexpensive. Would I steer you wrong?

Eating the Elephant

Zoë Sharp

It was a tough decision to go back to our current workspace/process theme today, after the death of the extraordinary David Thompson of Murder By The Book in Houston TX, and Busted Flush Press. This has been posted on the MBTB website:

David Thompson: A Celebration of Life

Please join McKenna Jordan and the Murder by the Book family for a celebration of the life of David Thompson, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Monday, September 13, 2010. David loved a good party, and we will honor him by celebrating the life of an extraordinary young man who touched the lives of many in his 21 years at the bookstore.

Place: The Briar Club, 2603 Timmons Lane, Houston, TX 77027 (for map & directions, click on this link to The Briar Club)

Date & Time: Sunday, September 26, 2010, 2 to 5 p.m.

There will be margaritas and Mexican hors d’œuvres– great favorites of David’s – along with other drinks. No RSVPs are necessary.

Many have asked about tributes to David’s memory. Alafair Burke has set up a fund for those who would like to make a donation in David’s name. The charity will be determined later. For those wishing to contribute, here are the details:

Checks to the order of “In Memory of David Thompson” (NOT simply David Thompson)

Mail for deposit to:
7 E. 14th St. #1206
New York, NY 10003

Or you can make a donation by Paypal:

inmemoryofdavidthompson@hotmail.com

I hope as many as possible will manage to get to the memorial party, and will contribute to the fund.

For me, David was my publisher as well as friend, and an incredibly enthusiastic advocate for crime fiction of all kinds. As a publisher he was wonderful, and I’m not just saying that out of sentimentality. He cared passionately about getting the books out there, publicising them, helping out. When we came out to Houston in June, shortly after the publication of KILLER INSTINCT, he met us at the airport with bottles of chilled water after our flight, fed us, looked after us.

I’ll treasure the memory of attending David and McKenna’s wedding amid the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey in Scotland only two short years ago. Andy and I went expecting to be surrounded by a huge group of strangers. Instead, we were welcomed into a tiny wedding party. The reception afterwards was small enough to sit around a single table. After expecting to slip away unnoticed once the inevitable dancing was in full swing, instead we all sat and talked late into the night.

They reckon you judge people by the shape of the hole they leave in the world.

All I can say is, David left a huge hole.

Needless to say, after all this, I haven’t been getting much writing done this week. But we have a couple of long car journeys coming up, one of which is to attend the Reading Festival of Crime Writing this weekend, and that is normally one of my best opportunities to write. Because, a lot of the time, this is my office:

My old laptop (well, it’s more than six months old, so that makes it almost antique, doesn’t it?) has a cigarette-lighter adaptor, so I never have to worry about running out of battery. If it starts getting too warm, I rest it on an old clipboard. If we’re on the motorway, as in the pic, I can get more written in a couple of hours than during a day at my desk. No internet, no landline, just the ultimate bum-in-chair environment. I even have an LED light that plugs into a USB port, and is just bright enough to illuminate any bits of the keyboard I do need to look at (allthe Home/Delete/PgDn etc keys are in different places from my desktop keyboard.

Speaking of keyboards, I’m eternally grateful that I learned to touch-type a long time a go. And these days, it’s doubly useful because I’ve worn half the letters off my favourite ergonomic keyboard. I can’t seem to find this exact shape of keyboard any more. Curved ones, yes, but they don’t have the triangular gap in the middle, they just have stretched centre keys, and they’re dished rather than domed.

I’ve been using an ergo keyboard since I first had operations on my left wrist, after the fluid kept leaking out of the joint. (I blame the long reach for the clutch on my Suzuki RGV250 motorcycle.) Recently, I started having a lot of neck and back problems, and was advised by my physio to raise my monitor up further into my eyeline, and to buy a wedge-shaped cushion for my chair. I’ve done both, and my neck and back problems – touch wood – have stayed away ever since.

So, this is my untidy office space.

And yes, the arms of my typing chair are held together with duct tape, but it’s a comfy chair, and it still works, so why would I change it? I love the corner desk arrangement because it means I can rest my elbows on the desktop while I type, which reduces strain on my neck and shoulders. The ergo keyboard is one of the best thing I ever bought, and the widescreen monitor means I can look at two pages at once for doing edits, without having to resort to a microscope or binoculars to read the type.

Of course, Andy’s side of the office looks much more industrious than mine. He’s hard at work on an article. And those are lounging pants, thank you very much, not pyjamas. (He doesn’t wear pyjamas…) Andy hasn’t quite mastered the correct use of a typist’s chair, as you can see. The Tannoy iPod dock means we’re usually listening to music while we work, 5500 tracks on full shuffle makes for some interesting segues, from Stone Sour to Zydeco, Frank Sinatra to Slipknot.

The polar bear arrived recently with a World Wildlife Fund credit card. I think it’s cold enough for him. The box of sheets on the window ledge is a build-a-paper-plane-a-day calendar, but Andy’s falling behind with production. I think we’re going to have a mad plane-folding exercise at the end of the year.

Of course, there are distractions to being at home. The first of which is the spruce tree you can just see on the right outside my office window, in which the red squirrels have built a drey. Last year we had a bunch of babies, who are even cuter than the fully grown squirrels. (Yeah, I know they’re just a rat with a bushy tail and a good PR agency, but even so…)

In case you’re wondering where the books are, they’re in the upstairs lounge, next door to the office. I’m in the midst of rearranging them at the moment, which is why there are piles of them on tables, most of which have come off the shelves behind where I’m standing with the camera, and have yet to be put back. The gaps are mostly from the CDs. I’ve been downloading our music collection onto the iPod and have been putting the CDs to one side as I’ve done them. They fill several archive boxes, also out of shot. (Come on, I’m not going to show you ALL my untidiness!)

So, the process. Hmm, when I work that one out, I’ll let you know.

I think the first thing is persistence. It’s the old racing adage – to finish first, first you must finish. If you never finish a piece of work, you will never be a published author. It’s my opinion that there are far more persistent authors published than there are talented authors published. So, the first rule of my process is to GET ON WITH IT. A little at a time, and the elephant will get eaten.

Of course there are days when I really don’t feel like writing anything at all. I had one yesterday. I know I can’t afford to let myself have too many of those days. I HAVE to keep pushing forwards, or the book will stall.

To keep myself on track, I have a spreadsheet of my daily word target. It’s on a sliding scale. I work out when I’d like to have a certain amount done – say, 50,000 words. Then I break down the number of days until that date, and divide 50k by that number. If I have a good day, and do more than my target, the number for the remaining days drops. If I have a bad day (like yesterday, when my total was a big fat 0) then I regroup, recalculate, and move on.

I find around 1250 a day is a do-able target for me. I know from reading about some of my ‘Rati brethren, that would be a pathetic amount, but it’s a personal thing. It means I advance by 10,000 words every eight days. A book puts on weight at a surprising speed when you’re making that kind of progress.

Usually, the only time I don’t achieve my daily work target, is when I fall asleep at the computer. I haven’t quite mastered the art of writing in my sleep, although I’ve come pretty close to it a few times. My brother-in-law’s mum actually knits in her sleep. She knows when she’s nodded off working on something, because she always sleep-knits the same stitch pattern.

But anyway, I digress.

Getting started is always the hardest part. Finding the story is one thing. Finding the exact point at which I should invite the reader to step into that story is quite another. I try and get the first 10,000 words complete to my satisfaction before I start on the whole spreadsheet thing, otherwise it’s too tempting to run with an idea I’m not totally convinced about rather than unpick it all and start again.

I’m a planner, but not to the extent of wipeboards, I’m afraid. I like pencil and paper. When I’m creating an outline, I go for the basic idea and the broad outlines first, then keep going over it, again and again, adding in more layers of detail as I go, until I can practically do a scene-by-scene breakdown. This is still very flexible. If, when I get to a certain point in the story, it’s clear that my next scene doesn’t fit, I replot rather than write myself into a corner. I edit as I go, and summarise behind me so I can keep a track of the story so far. This is also invaluable for copyedits afterwards.

I don’t do lots of drafts, don’t just write in any given direction and see what happens. It doesn’t spoil a movie for me if I know the ending. In fact, I love watching films I’ve seen a dozen times all the more because I can enjoy the ride and the journey instead of worrying what comes next. I can savour the details. It’s the same with writing a book – just because I know the ending, doesn’t mean I’m not still excited by the method of getting there.

At the end of the day, my most important writing tools are these:

A weird and wonderful collection of books, some of which were bought second-hand because you never know when they’ll come in useful.

Sheets of scrap paper.

An old clipboard held together with duct tape (doubles as laptop tray)

A pencil, eraser and an enclosed pencil sharpener, so I don’t have to worry about the shavings.

Apart from that, I just use my neck-top computer, and the complusive, obsessive desire to tell a story.

What more do you need?

This week’s Phrase of the Week is caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt, which translated from the Latin means ‘they change their sky, not their mind, who scour across the sea’. I prefer to think of it another way: ‘The greatest journeys a man can make are inside his own head.’

Happy travels.

We Interrupt This Program…

by J.D. Rhoades

It’s very hard to write this post, and I wish you were reading my planned entry on my workspace. But the usual drollery seems inappropriate at the moment, because we’ve lost a dear friend.

David Thompson, manager of Murder by the Book in Houston and one of the founders of the excellent small publisher Busted Flush Press, passed away suddenly on Monday afternoon at the age of 38. It came as a cold steel shock to all of us in the mystery community, not just because David was so young, but because it seems impossible that someone so full of energy and enthusiasm could ever be gone from among us.

David loved books, loved writers, and even loved this crazy business. Most of all, though, he loved his beautiful wife McKenna, who became owner of the store.

It seems only fitting that this photo, taken by Our Zoe at David and McKenna’s wedding, should show the two of them happy and smiling, because that’s the way I, and everyone who knows them, best remember them.

(Our Alafair also remembers them like this, crashing on her NYC couch after being stranded by bad weather on the way home from the wedding):

I first met David shortly after my first book THE DEVIL’S RIGHT HAND, came out. A mutual friend put David in touch with me, and he invited me down to do a panel with Duane Swierczynski, Jason Starr, Allan Guthrie, and Ken Bruen (can you imagine?) I have many fond memories of that night, but one of the fondest was of David and McKenna’s hospitality. We ate well, we drank well, we laughed hard, and we ended up back at McKenna’s apartment, reading aloud from each other’s work into the wee hours. We’ve all been friends since that night. It was my first experience in this wonderful community of writers, and for that alone, I owe David Thompson a debt of gratitude I can never repay.

Of course, it doesn’t end there. All of us can testify as to the amount of time David spent hand-selling our books and promoting our careers, and of the sheer joy he took in doing so.

If you knew David, you were lucky. If you have memories to share of him, please do so in the comments.

RIP, David Thompson. May your story be told forever.

A Room With A View

By Louise Ure

My work space is a room with a view. A smallish room, only eight feet square, it’s tucked onto the back of the house like a cliffside bird’s nest and faces out to the Golden Gate Bridge. I look over a cascade of rooftops to the water and the Marin Headlands to the north.

Many of the houses are painted shades of yellow — from buttercream to Tweety bird — an effort, I think, to defy the incessant grays of the fog.

What I can’t convey to you in these photos is the sound, the low rhythmic call of the fog horn, then enough time to take a deep breath and the answering single note of the responding fog horn on the far side of the bridge.

And the clock. How can a clock so small make so much noise, as the second hand moves determinedly around? Those are the only sounds I hear, unless it’s high tide and then the sound of the waves add an undernote that sounds like faraway traffic.

My space is tidy but not organized. I prefer piles of things to an empty desktop, but could not work if there were papers, notebooks and Post-It notes scattered helter-skelter around me.

There are many things I love about this space: the dragonfly-patterned Tiffany lamp, the aircraft carrier-sized new iMac and, perhaps most importantly, the desk itself.

When I decided to turn this small room into my writing space, I couldn’t find any furniture that fit my needs. There are deep windows on three sides of the room and two doors on the fourth wall, leaving no easy arrangement of furniture or shelving. I sit, surrounded by windows like the last soldier left to guard the lighthouse.

Then I met Paul, a musician and guitar maker, who took me up on a dare: craft me a desk that can sing like a musical instrument. He did. He shaved and sanded the pale yellow oak until it gleamed. Then he inlaid strips of ebony along the edges, made drawer pulls out of chunks of turquoise, and added teardrops of abalone to mark the corners. It is a thing of beauty.

I would feel foolish telling you my process for writing as I’m so distant from those days that they feel like bedtime stories I remember being told as a child. I stumbled into writing as a way to keep my mind active in retirement and as such an accidental writer I have no tips, organizational tricks or creative advice for others. It’s all legerdemain as far as I’m concerned. Trickery with the hands and the mind.

The good part about writing being magical is that, just as a magician can make something disappear, his real trick is being able to make it come back — life-sized and solid on the stage.

I’m waiting for the magic.

Where the Books Get Made

by Alafair Burke

I’ve really enjoyed seeing where my fellow Murderati bloggers work, so now it’s my turn to welcome you into the physical space of my work world. We have a two-bedroom apartment in New York City, one of the few American cities where designated square footage for a home office is considered a luxury. When I walk in, I am greeted by a photograph that my agent commissioned of a pretty cool full-page New York Times ad that Harper ran for my fifth novel, Angel’s Tip. Photographs don’t yellow like newspaper. Smart agent.

One wall of the office is lined with storage.

Turning to the next photo, my Eames chair makes me very happy. I used to have a crappy one I bought at Costco until Lee Child persuaded me that I needed to buy myself better stuff. (He’s a pretty good Persuader. Ba-dump-bump.)

I also really like my desk. In theory, all that junk on top should be on the pull-out surface, so it gets hidden away when closed, but, well, that’s just not what happens. Sadly, that is actually pretty clean for me. If you can see exposed wood, it’s clean. The state of my office usually reflects how busy I am. Five weeks ago, there was not a single inch of clear surface to be found. Four weeks ago, after I finished my new book, it was incredibly tidy. Now I’m working on edits, and once again, some mess is accumulating.

Beneath those photos of my husband juggling, you’ll see a bulletin board I bought last summer with grand ideas of storyboarding. Note that it contains only three note cards and a newspaper clipping. On the note cards I listed character and place names. The newspaper clipping’s about a Minnesota court decision ruling that dirty bong water constituted an illegal drug. A storyboarder I am not.

Remember how I said I cleaned my office a few weeks ago? Well, cleaning for me usually means getting rid of stuff. Or at least building a huge pile of things that I need to get rid of. Still. All these weeks later. Can someone please call the Goodwill truck for me?

This is probably my favorite thing one might find in my office, Duffer enjoying the one and only sunbeam.

Here’s a couch I had in my home office back when I had a house. I rarely sit on it but see no reason to get rid of it either. That’s my little laptop on its stand, but it rarely gets used anymore at home since I got an iPad.

From my desk, I look south over Greenwich Village. I hate the people who live across the street for ruining my simple view with that ridiculous geo-dome-y thingey mcbopper. They also have colored Christmas lights around the terrace year-round. Classy.

Now that you’ve seen my home office, I should say that lately I seem to be most productive away from home. At the end of summer, I nestled myself away in Portland’s West Hills and wrote a TON in ten short days. Sans husband, sans dog, sans all responsibility, I found incredible energy and focus. Try it sometime.

In the city, as I’ve previously mentioned, I often walk down to Otto (a Mario Batali pizzeria and wine bar) with my laptop. Good wine. Tasty food. No internet signal.

You can see from the guest name on this check that I’m a regular. My bartender friend, Dennis, even made a cameo appearance in the last Ellie Hatcher novel, 212.

The wonderful thing about writing is that we can work anywhere. We can set our hours. We can travel. We can scribble sentences on airplanes and in coffee shops if we need to. We do what works for us. The only thing that matters is the writing.

A Creative Mind is Rarely Tidy

By Allison Brennan

I wrote my first ten books rotating between Starbucks, my favorite brewery, and my favorite bar & grill. The need to write outside the house was primarily because my kids were in the house, I had no private office, my desk was in the living room (read: the center of the Brennan Household) and I got little done at home. I can write with noise, no problem. I listen to loud rock music when I write, preferably with my iPod and earbuds. But I can’t write with interruptions. One? Sure. Three hundred an hour? Not so much.

So I took my laptop and hit the caffeine bar, or when Starbucks closed I went to the brewery or BJ’s restaurant. Like Alex, I love writing on planes. I tend to get a lot done, I have no idea why. Unless the person in front of me puts their seat all the way back . . . I don’t like that.

BTW, BJs has the BEST margarita in the world, the “Rita-tini”, which they’ve taken off the menu and replaced with some awful, sweet drink called the “platinum margarita.” But they still make rita-tini’s for me 🙂

But then we moved and I had my own office.

BEFORE

I considered just posting this picture because my office looks so clean! But . . . this was about two days after my bookshelves were built. The barren shelves are all packed with books now.

And here’s the other corner:

That chair is in front of the TV now, and the corner is filled with kids toys. And the books are doubled up. But it looked clean and organized for awhile!

And this used to be my view before they built houses below me:

I don’t have that view anymore (it was brown in this picture–taken in August of 2008–but in winter and spring it’s lovely.) Now I look at a house and their roof and driveway. Fortunately, they’re lower than me and I can still see the covered bridge. Not that I look out my window much.

I also have a television in my office. (My office is really a pool house/guest house–but we don’t have a pool and there’s no bed in the guest house, so guests usually take one of my kids rooms . . . anyway, it’s nearly 800 square feet. It’s also where we play games, watch movies, and do art projects and homework. It’s not really all mine . . . )

The photo I took tonight of my television didn’t turn out, but this is the entertainment center right after it was built . . . it now has a bigger tv (that I got from my husband for my last birthday) and there are blankets and pillows all over the floor from when the kids last watched a movie . . .

AFTER

I am not a neat person. In fact, I’m rather a slob. I’ve always been this way–ask my mom (she might even visit the blog now that I finally set up the computer I gave her for Christmas . . . ) and I’m 40. I’m not going to change. I had some idiotic grandiose idea that I was going to clean up the mess surrounding my desk before I posted this blog . . . but what was I thinking? So my office looks more like this now:

The table that I strategically hid with my chair are all the things (papers, books, etc) I need to find a place for. There are stacks of papers and books and magazines under the table and behind the table. Someday I’ll organize . . .

And my desk area?

(And no, it’s NOT the same Starbuck’s cup from two years ago . . . )

The stack of paper on top of the printer to the left are my finished page proofs for LOVE ME TO DEATH. They’re going out via FedEx Monday morning. The papers sticking up on the right are bills. On the left are more bills, school papers, art projects the kids made me, and assorted stuff.

My process is: sit down and write (on my iMac or MacBook Pro when away, and sometimes on my iPad with wireless keyboard.) I don’t have sticky notes. I don’t have white boards. I don’t have notebooks or scraps of paper or outlines or excel spreadsheets. In the copyedit stage I’ll often make little notes on stickies and put them on the pages of things I want to check on later for consistency, but that’s about it. Everything is in my head, which is scary, becausIe sometimes I forget things. But I’ve tried white board and notebooks and Scrivener and even an excel spreadsheet once. It doesn’t last more than a chapter. The thought of outlining an entire book gives me heart palpitations.

I start with a premise, usually a basic “what if” idea and at least one character I sort of know. I picture the opening scene and start writing. My beginnings–the first 125-150 pages, the first act, whatever you want to call it–take me longer to write than the last 300 pages. Sad, but true. The last book I wrote took me three months to write (and rewrite and rewrite) the first 150 pages +/- . . . and three weeks to write the first draft of the last 400 pages. First draft, I need to repeat, because obviously it was very rough.

My process is insane, but I’ve tried writing other ways and it does not work for me. I write. Get stuck. Go back to the beginning. Rewrite. Repeat two or three or eight times until something clicks and I know I have “it” (the first act) and then the rest of the book flows much smoother. Then when I’m done, I go back and edit, but it’s usually a clean up edit, fixing typos (there are a lot when I’m writing fast) and big inconsistencies. Then I send that to my editor KNOWING I’ll be doing revisions. I need a fresh set of eyes to read it because by this time I’m sick of the book and can’t see the problems. Writing this first draft (I call it the first draft, but I have edited it) takes 2-4 months. Revisions take 2-4 weeks. And I’ll touch every page, even if my editor loves something, because in revisions not only am I fixing story problems/making the characters deeper/heightening suspense . . . I’m also tightening, making the sentences and words stronger, cutting repetition.

I don’t know how the book is going to end when I start. I DO know that my protagonists will live, and the bad guy will get what’s coming to him, but who the bad guy is or how the protagonists solve the crime or stop the disaster, I don’t know. It wouldn’t be any fun if I did!

My brain is like my desk. Messy, but I know where everything is. 🙂

My last five books I’ve written at home (mostly) but I still go Starbucks or BJs (the brewery has closed) when I am on deadline or when I’m stuck. I find the change of scenery helps my muse. Maybe it’s the feeling that people are watching and if I’m not typing they’ll think I’m a slacker :/ Or more likely there are fewer distractions.

Whatever it is, I’ll be at Starbucks Monday morning because I have a tight deadline and I need my muse to get it into gear.

Ass In Chair. Well, sort of….

by Alexandra Sokoloff

So this is me in my office.

HAH. Nobody really believed that, right? I didn’t think so.

Your first clue is – I’m dressed. How often does that happen? Not bloody often. Second, books belong on the floor or under the bed, not neatly lined up behind glass. (Who has glass bookcases anyway? People with full-time housekeepers, or too much time on their hands, that’s who.). Third, I’m in a chair. Sitting up. Granted, it’s a very lovely chair, but if I actually wrote like this it would mean that all my best ideas would be draining down into the floor, not to mention what it’s doing to my back.

But we’ll get to my ergonomic theories in a minute.

The photo isn’t a total sham, actually – it’s a place I do write, and write exceptionally well, the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines, a writers’ retreat where I go a couple times a year with my fabulous NC writing posse, and the real-life haunted mansion on which I based the haunted house in THE UNSEEN.

But this is really where I write:

Yes, a couch. Lying down on it, with my Mac Air on my lap (which can get really hot, I haven’t worked that out, quite). I do the requisite eight hours, give or take, of Ass In Chair, only with me it’s Back On Sofa. On a very difficult day it will be Back In Bed (writing, not sleeping). I do this because it doesn’t feel so very much like working that way, because it’s easier to keep the cats off the keyboard, and especially to protect my back. Let me clarify that I don’t have a bad back. In fact I haven’t had a single back problem for at least ten years. But I am pretty sure I don’t have back problems because I’ve been lying down to work for the last ten years. Writing for as many hours a day as a professional writer has to write is VERY hard on anyone’s back; there are whole seminars on the issue. We all find our ways of coping; mine is to keep my spine relatively aligned throughout my work day.

And the couch thing could actually have something to do with my very first impressions of the writing life being old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke show, in which – when he wasn’t pacing – Rob Petrie was always lying on that couch in the office as they worked. (I had a hard time with Rose Marie always doing the typing and getting the coffee; I deliberately can’t make a decent cup of coffee or operate a stove to this day. I did seem to pick up her dating habits, however.). As a matter of fact, if you look at just about any old movie about screenwriters you will mostly see them musing while lying on couches, usually (if male) tossing an old tennis ball idly up in the air, whereas authors in movies tend to sit at desks hunched over typewriters (and they don’t outline, either, they just put a blank sheet in the roller and start typing CHAPTER ONE. Yeah, right….).

Hmm. Maybe these movie depictions are why screenwriters get no respect.

Anyway, my couch is in my living room, and there are actually two, matching, and I go back and forth between them, because variety is the spice of life, and sometimes I sit for a while at a café table (not in a café) with high stools to accommodate my legs, also in the living room.

On one wall where I can always see it, or sense it, is this painting by my mega-talented sister Elaine.

The painting is called L’Esprit de L’Escalier (a phrase I’m sure at least Zoe knows well and one which pretty much describes the core impulse to write, if you ask me. ) And the painting to me encapsulates the writing process; I never get tired of looking at it.

And on another wall, one of Elaine’s drawings: a corner on the north side of the Berkeley campus featuring the late Rather Ripped Records.

There’s something about the manic energy of this piece that puts me right back in the manic energy of Berkeley, very useful for writing.

And of course I have index cards up on structure grids everywhere, some on tables, some on the wall. This one is sticky Post Its on a white board:

I’m working on three projects at once right now so I’ve completely taken over two tables and a wall in the dining room (who needs to eat?).

This is another one of my favorite writing spots:

I know, it’s weird, but I write really, really well on planes – I can get a solid two days work in during a cross-country flight. Unfortunately I don’t write so well in hotel rooms, but research trips are always magical and staggeringly productive for me, and as any one of us can tell you, that’s just as much writing as anything.

I know, now you want photos of cabana boys (see comment section of Stephen’s post, which somehow took on a life of its own. Sorry, Steve…). But I’d much rather you post suggestions of cabana boys for me, with current contact information and typing speed, thanks…

Cabana boys aside, I have to say I have found this week of sharing workspaces more interesting than I possibly could have imagined. One thing I absolutely love about my author friends and the author life is that we all know EXACTLY what we all are doing, work-wise, at any given moment. The business side of it, the sales, will be different for all of us at different times. But the writing process? How we spend 8-10 hours or more of every day? We know intimately what all of us are doing – writing is writing, and we all live it, every day. It is overwhelmingly, as Rob posted, in our heads.

But a glimpse of these little personal quirks – how and where we sit, or lie down, in isolation or in public, as all this massive STUFF is going on inside our brains… or to put it another way, how we get that door to that alternate universe to open up inside us – has been really touching to me. I can’t wait to read more – and hear more from YOU all about the inside/outside thing, your workspaces, everything.

Finally, I’d like to send love and sympathy to the families and friends of those lost on 9/11 and in all senseless wars. Peace, Peace, Peace.

– Alex

TOO LONELY TO WRITE ALONE

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

You’re looking at my office/work-space. I’ve been writing at the Novel Café for over twenty years. I’ve written most of ten screenplays and two novels there. Recently the Novel Café went through an ownership change, and it is now called 212 Pier.

I’m an extrovert. But I’m also an introvert. And that probably wouldn’t make sense if I weren’t a Gemini.

Writing is a solitary profession. We’re inside our heads when we write. It’s lonely. And I simply cannot face it alone.

So I surround myself with people and noises and music and chaos, and I manage to filter it all out into the blur of background noise as I write. And when I get stuck or frustrated or stalled I look up and see the faces of my friends hard at work, since this is a writers’ café, and it gives me inspiration. Makes me feel part of a community. Sometimes I’ll catch the eye of another writer staring up, searching for an “out,” and I know that I can step away from my table and approach him and we can chat a while, take a break, discuss story or the weather or the local news. And then, re-energized, fitfully empowered, we each of us return to the grind.

I can only write in cafes. I cannot write in the quiet solitude of my home or, God forbid, a library. Too much silence.

Writing in cafes has appealed to me since the day I discovered that some of my favorite authors spent their days in Parisian cafes. Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin. The Lost Generation of expatriates. It all seemed so romantic. I latched onto the idea of the café writer and never let go.

I’ve written in the majority of LA’s cafes. There’s the Bourgeois Pig in Hollywood, which is just a little too “Hollywood hip” for my taste; there was the old Pick Me Up Cafe, one of the first in LA and long since closed (I read all of “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” at the Pick Me Up, coughing my brains out on second-hand smoke); the Highland Grounds in Hollywood, where I also shot part of a movie I made after graduating college; The Rose Café in Venice, and so many more.

Since I travel a lot, I’ve hit most every hip café in every major city in the U.S. I’ve found wonderful surprises in places like Columbus, Ohio, Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. When I’m in San Francisco I write at the Trieste, a fifty-year old café, which features prominently in my upcoming novel, BEAT.

I’ve pretty much settled on 212 Pier (45 minutes from my home, but well worth it), and the below cafes, which are closer to my home:

This is the Catalina Café and Brewing Company in Redondo Beach. I’ve put a lot of time on Boulevard and Beat here, and there’s a great community of screenwriters who come in every night.

This is Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach. I write under the protective guard of the shiny, metal knight, who blesses each manuscript written in his presence.

Another awesome thing is that Coffee Cartel has a special place for me in their display case. 212 Pier also has a copy of Boulevard prominently displayed in an area where they advertise the work of local authors.

I’ve pretty much given up trying to write at home. I made a feeble attempt to create an office space using an itty-bitty alcove, a nook, a crannie, in my garage. It quickly became “Steve’s Office Crap Storage Dump.”

When I have to do big, creative things, like this whiteboard for my 3 X 5 cards on WIP story points, I end up leaving it on the bedroom floor where it serves as a bed for our labradoodle.

What I’m saying is that my work-space is a mess. It’s whatever I have in my travel bag at the time, usually a stack of manila file folders filled with crap I’ve downloaded from the Internet, in no particular order, thrown onto the surface of some café table somewhere in this great big city. It’s a wonder I’m productive at all.

Everything important is on my computer. Which is basically a file folder on my desktop marked, “Beat,” for example, filled with files on character, plot, research elements, outlines, treatments and first draft chapters. I’m a very linear thinker, so I pretty much depend on writing brief paragraphs of every scene in its proper order. I’d love to get more sophisticated, but I think I’ll need a computer younger than 15 years if I hope to use the cool “author” software they’ve got in the marketplace.

Really, the last piece of sophisticated equipment I bought was an Underwood typewriter. I’m hoping to get an IBM Selectric for Hannukah.

Oh, and after reading Rob’s post on Wednesday I decided to upload a photo of my library. It’s where I worship…

I’m currently on a no-budget, youth hostel research trip in Europe, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to participate in the comments. I’ll check in if I have Internet access. I’m sure I’ll find a café with wifi! It’s high time for adventure, my friends!

Where do I work? Hmmm…That’s a good question

By Brett Battles

I don’t mind saying I’ve been a little nervous about this post since we here at Murderati decided to do a workspace theme (two) week(s). See the answer to what’s your workplace like, is not exactly a straight forward one for me. Let’s start with where, first. The simple answer to that is this is where:

(I’m talking about the world, not the wall where my map is hanging. And, yes, I also keep all my lanyards.) Okay, perhaps that’s a little over stating, and I’m certainly not trying to be flippant or snobby. But the truth is, I tend to work away from home more than I work at home. And if I’m traveling I might work in my hotel room, at the coffee shop on the corner, on the train, at a bar…wherever. Also I’m doing a lot of research while I’m traveling…taking notes, pictures, movies…getting impressions of where I’m at, etc.

But let’s stick to the actual writing process. If I’m being completely honest I do most of it when I’m not traveling. Still, there is the question of where. To answer that I need to break down my process into four parts: plotting/synopsizing, writing the book, rewriting 1 (editor’s notes, light passes), rewriting 2 (copy edits, read through, heavy rewrites).

These four parts are basically done in one of two different places: home or away from home. Plotting/synopsizing and rewriting 2 (the heavy stuff) are almost always done at home. I do a lot of talking to myself in these phases, and also some pacing and the like, so the privacy works out for me. At home, I work at my small dining room table.

Trust me, it’s usually not that clean. As you can see, I face a nice view of a green courtyard. Very soothing.

As I said, I do a lot of plotting here. So I thought I’d show you some of the tools I use:

Let’s start on that back wall…my famous giant post-its are a big help. Each page tears off and I can stick them to other walls around my place. Then there’s the dry erase board. What I do there is once I’ve filled it, I’ll take a digital photo of it then erase it and start again. On the table left to right, back row first: dry erase pens and cleaner, my MacBook, my iPad with keyboard dock (used for research, and typing when traveling), my iPhone in front of that which allows me to work away from home but not be out of touch, and one of my two digital cameras – the one shown is water proof. (I also have an HD video camera, but I tend to use the video on my digital cameras more often.) Front row from left: pad of grid paper for making building layouts and maps, set of color pencils, regular ruler and drafting ruler, my work tracking booklet where I keep track of what I do daily (word counts, what project I’m on, any significant events), digital card adaptors for iPad and computer to transfer photos, my docking cord for phone and iPad, stack of note books each for a separate project that I take with me as needed, colored index cards, and, finally, colored sharpies.

As an example of how my process is continually changing, the index cards are a recent addition, used with the new book I’ve just started writing.

Okay, so that’s my home workspace, and tools. What about those other two parts of my process – writing and rewriting 1? Those I do for the most part away from home. Why? Because for some reason when I’m creating new material the distractions at my house (TV, books, bed for napping) tear my attention away. So I go to coffee shops or cafes. For the past year and a half, I’ve found one specific place I go to most of the time. It’s the Novel Café in Santa Monica.

There are actually several Novel Cafes. Our own Mr. Schwartz turned me onto them. Only the one he exposed me to is now known as 212 Pier. I stopped going there when they shut it down for renovations when the new owners took over, and ended up going to the Novel that’s only about four blocks away. It’s newer and not quite as quirky, but I like it, and so I’ve stayed. It’s about a 20 minute drive from my place, and makes me feel like I’m going to an office…in a good way. It gets my brain focused in the right direction. Plus the cafe is set up for people to work there all day. Free wi-fi, plenty of tables and plugs, and a full kitchen. You can stay from opening to closing and they won’t kick you out. In fact, there are a lot of regulars who, like me, use it as their office, too. Web designers, screenwriters, other media professionals, and even a few other novelist (which is good since that’s the name of the shop.) I often run into my friend and mega-talented author Tim Hallinan there. We’ll end up spending a few hours writing at adjacent tables…well, writing, talking, writing…talking.

Here’s a shot of my favorite table looking out at the rest of the café:

It’s tucked into a little nook for those who want a little more privacy. This table is at the edge of that area, so I get some privacy, but also can watch what’s going on everywhere else. And as a good thriller writer, I can see the front door, so I know who’s entering in case I need to make a quick getaway out the back. (Hasn’t happened yet.)

And a reverse angle of the table:

Yeah, you’re not seeing things. Those are surfboards. A surf school operates out of a room in the back of the café. Oh, and that area just behind my table, with the open, black curtain? That’s home to a clairvoyant who keeps really odd hours and I hardly ever see her. But I’m hoping some of her psychic vibes are wafting over me as I write.

Anywho…those are my workspaces. At least for now. My process is always in a state of transformation.