Writers' Rooms

The minute I walk into this room of my own, I swear I become a different person. The wife, the mother, the granny, the cook, the cleaner - all vanish, for two or three hours only the writer is left.
-Margaret Forster

The room is the view. I spent quite a lot of my childhood happily looking out of windows: the coming and going of birds, and the weather seemed to be some kind of event, and now when I am not writing I look out of the window in much the same way.
-Adam Phillips

I cleverly chose the worst place in this sunny house - cold, close to a busy street, piled with toys and pans and our only phone - which will, one day, become part of the kitchen. I can't wait.
-Charlotte Mendelson

I have worked in this room since 1992, and wrote Mao: The Unknown Story here. My co-author and husband Jon Halliday has a study on the floor below. We'd meet up at lunchtime and exchange our discoveries.
-Jung Chang

My room is at the top of the house up two flights of stairs, which is very useful as people have to think before they disturb you. I've worked here for 42 years and written all my books and done all my illustrations here. For most of that time my husband, Nigel Kneale, worked next door. It was useful because we could pop into each other's room when one of us had a bad moment. We seemed to come to a stop for lunch at more or less the same moment. It was a very good time; I was very lucky. He used to tell me about the plays he was going to write, and I used to show him my pictures. Sometimes he'd say "isn't that child's head too big?" and he was always right. But he always liked them, otherwise it would have been rather awful.
-Judith Kerr

Before I had kids I used to get up early to write. If I started at 6 or 7am, and was writing well, I would finish by 1pm, sometimes earlier. I can't do that any more because my eight-year-old son is a light sleeper like me and uses the excuse to get up and come in for a chat. I've told the kids they can come in whenever they want, and because they know this they don't actually bother that much. I've read of writers who enforce something like a prison "silent system" on their families, but there are more important things than writing.
-Ronan Bennett

I'm surrounded, it turns out, by as many writing tools as possible: laptop, typewriter, notebooks, file cards, pens. I hadn't quite realised this multi-functional obsession. I tend to take notes on notebooks (always the same pens, the same notebooks). Some notes are copied on to file cards. At other times I just write straight on to the laptop - always distracted by my intermittent attention span and the temptations of the internet.
-Adam Thirlwell

I sit with my back to the beautiful central garden. There is no easy chair. When I am exhausted, I lie on the floor. I like the way the windows go from floor to high ceiling. No curtains. I prefer nothing or shutters. Curtains look like the cloakroom in a monastery. The carpet comes from Christopher Legge and is a mad Matisse Oceania of pineapples and zigzags like a pin-table. It's the kind of carpet everyone else thinks is a mistake. You need a pair of Ray-Bans. But my motto is "bugger beige".
-Craig Raine