Have a look at this news story: http://www.writewords.org.uk/news/502.asp
and tell me: are you a messy-desk writer, or anally neat? I have to confess to the latter. In fact I can't write until I've cleaned the house or at least made my office extremely neat and organised, but other writers I know are chaotic, and their desks make me afraid. Which are you and why?

Hi Anna, as someone who grew up in a phenonmenally messy house (how I wish 'The Life Laundery' and 'How Clean is your House' had been on telly then and I could have nominated my family abode for a makeover) I have a resultant horror of mess - and yet my desk is far from tidy. At the moment, the left side of my desk is a sea of 5"x3" index cards, with the names of my characters, and summaries of half my chapters (keep putting off doing the other half and don't know why). Then on top of them are strewn various notes and brochures from a trip I took that I'm incorporating in to the story, topped with a mountain flower which I'd pressed in a guide book, and which fell out yesterday (too pretty to tidy away, I think).

I see my writing as an attempt to create order from the chaos of my thoughts, and my desk reflects that unfinished process. Once I have finished my novel, my desk will be tidy again. Until, of course, I start the next one...

Adele.

<Added>

Laundry, laundry, laundry - knew that didn't look quite right, but there's no room for a dictionary on my desk...

Oh I'm completely chaotic. My desk currently has (apart from the desktop pc) various bits of other computer equipment, two notebooks, several sheets of paper with notes scribbled on them, a coffee mug(half empty), a torch, three pencils and a ruler, half a printed out chapter with red pen annotations, a soft toy, 8 zip disks and a few floppy disks, a pile of CD-roms, some screen clean solution, paper clips, lots of crumbs.

I could go on. Yes, Anna, be afraid, be very afraid.

Cas

Anna

It's a never ending battle. I do like to work in a neat environment but with various notes, journals, writing text books, newspaper cuttings, note books etc around I find that I am constantly frustrated by the mess. However, I am having an old farmhouse restored and when I have my own writing space I have promised myself to keep things tidy. At least that's the theory.

Regards

Jim

Hi Anna,

I find that a messy environment makes me stressed out more than I already am. I can't work unless everything is tidy around me. Plus I write in my living room and I hate it looking untidy. I try to be organised as I hate not being able to find anything, but I am not as organised as I wish.


Marie

I don’t have a desk

The only place I could set up an office here is in the attic but a) we don’t have broadband up there and, as we want to move, it’s not worth the hassle of getting it up there and b) as I never stop writing when I’m at home, if I worked up there I’d never see my partner.

So I’m on the sofa with my laptop. I’m surrounded by books – dictionary, thesaurus, Fowler, the Oxford Book of Style, a few novels - newspapers, some Isle of Man brochures left over from Paying For The Gallery. There’s a pile of stuff waiting to be shredded alongside a printed copy of The Winter House which I’m desperately trying to keep separate. I’ve just switched on the TV by tripping over the dog and landing on the remote.

I dream of a new place. Peace. Tranquillity. A room lined with books. A large desk and an exorbitantly expensive chair. Files. Drawers. Somewhere to put everything. A view of the sea from my window...

Ahhh... bliss...

Hi Dee, like you I've always dreamt of writing at a desk with a view (my current view is of the flats across the road which inspires many Rear Window type fantasies about what the inhabitants may be up to, but is not very picturesque). However, last year I visted Sir Walter Scott's former home, Abbotsford, which is set in beautiful grounds on the banks of the river Tweed, and was very surprised to find that his study faced the back gardens (still pretty) not the river (the view). That made me think that perhaps having a really beautiful view might be too distracting, perhaps urging the writer to get outside in to the scene, and therefore not necessarily a good thing.

I hope that's made you feel better about writing where you are now, which, given your prodigious output, seems to work pretty well.

Must get scribbling myself.

Adele.

I would also like to work in a tidy space but my desk is a depository for all the junk that has no other home. At the moment I have a stack of old bills, an ancient alarm clock, an old phone handset that the children play with and a shoe box of old photo's.
My view is of bungalow roofs and gardens and in the far distance, the Thames estuary with an oil refinery perched on the banks.
We are looking to move at the moment and I dream of the perfect study, where I can hear birds sing instead of sirens and lorries and I can see greenery not the jumble of sheds and fences in garish reds and blues (sometimes I think Alan Titchmarsh has a lot to answer for).

I am so pleased that I now have an excuse for the mess that I work in. I can be tidy but I have loose standards. My idea of tidying is to make neat piles of whatever is on my desk. Things get worse when my sons use the computer for the internet. Then I retreat to the potting shed and use my spare computer. It is wonderfully peaceful down there but even messier.

Bill

Hi,

I have a desk.

A small one, just room enough for a flat computer screen and the keyboard.

It’s neat.

I don’t like to see chaos, I have enough of it in my head.

Dawn,

Oh, that makes me less afraid. me too, although I have some stuff around- inspiring photos, art, objects, but all in their place- if there isn't a clear surface I can't work...

I have the end of a table, and my papers occupy the floor on either side of my chair. Since I am not tall, it is uncomfortable to try to put my feet on the floor, so I rest them on a filled up plastic crate which is under the table below the computer. This means my knees seize up eriodically. On the floor all around the chair are stacks of papers/books/folders/notes, which are regularly toppled. At the moment, desk surface is clear other than computer, coffee cup (on beer mat) and a green pitcher full of pens. This is because I cleared my end of the table yesterday inanticipation of delivery of new computer, which I am writing on at this very moment. (The last computer died painfully on Easter Sunday, which is why I have hardly been around since then!) I am very happy that now I have a cleanmouse -- when I tried to clean the old one, I couldn't replace the little disc properly, and the ball kept falling out, but I digress.....

Anne Marie

<Added>

I meant 'knees seize up periodically' rather than 'erodically' which sounds suspiciously like 'erotically' and I am not quite sure how knees could seize up erotically, anyway.... Despite new computer, my typing still wants for something!

Adele, thank you.

I suppose I feel better about the sofa when it’s cold outside, the fire’s lit and the curtains are closed against the dark night. This is a winter house (sorry about that!) and doesn’t lend itself to long summer days.

Ani – I’m still giggling about your erotic knees! My imagination went into overdrive…

Dee.

I'm very fortunate in the fact that my closet messiness is kept under control by my wife to be.

I’m methodical and neat. That’s not a boast! (it probably indicates some underlying psychological problem)

I have a desk in the dining room, with a computer that’s used by the whole family. If I ever get to write on anything other than a part time basis I’d like to convert the loft and write up there. No view though, I think I’d spend too much time day dreaming.

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