Inspired by SF-author and all round excellent person Paul Cornell, who posts images of his creative working space here, I’ve decided to take the plunge and make public a photo of the room in which most of my stuff gets written:
This, as the sharper-eyed amongst you will see, is the inside of a Costa Coffee Shop. It’s the Staines Two Rivers branch, to be precise, because that’s where I work, mostly (sometimes, for the sake of variety, I sit in other coffee shops in the Staines area). I install myself at a table, shortly after dropping my kids at school, and arm myself with: a large black coffee; my iRiver plugged into my ears; and a laptop that is very specifically not connected to the internet (or I’d spend my time surfing, not writing). The fact of the matter is I find writing at home in my study less productive, because there are simply too many distractions there. The key to getting the writing done is minimising the distractions.
Bonus: check out this excellent navigable e-verson of Roald Dahl’s writing hut. Now that’s a fine, basic, distraction-free zone.