My other half refuses to sit down at my computer any more because he can’t type using my keyboard. I guess, looking at this picture, I can understand why. I type so much, and probably a little too fast and too hard, with the tough fingernails I inherited from my mother, and the letters have worn off many of the keys. And this is the second keyboard I’ve been through in about a year.

I don’t usually notice because 95% of the time I touch type, but there are odd occasions where I find it difficult. If I’m trying to drink a cup of tea with one hand, for example, and need to type in a website address to read while I drink, then searching for a letter when not using both hands to type is quite tricky. I have to look away and then my fingers find their own way. I guess for someone who can’t touch type,
this keyboard would really be quite a challenge.

It’s not even old – maybe six or seven months. It’s wireless which I love, because I can move it around my desk to fit in with the piles of books or notepads that might otherwise get in the way, and I can easily hold it up high out of the way when my cats are playing around on my desk. It’s also super-ergonomic, which was weird at first but means my wrists don’t feel tired or sore at the end of the day. So I’m reluctant to change it back to the old non-wireless keyboard I still have sitting in my shelves, even if it does still have the letters on most of the keys. I guess if the punctuation marks start disappearing too, then I might have to give in. Until then, I’ll keep typing. Fading keyboards are just one of the curses us writers have to put up with, I suppose.

I thought it’d be interesting to do a quick survey of the house and find out where my current reads are. Of course, there are a couple by the bed. At a minimum, I usually have two books on the go next to my bed, for reading in the evening before I go to sleep, and there are two because it depends whether I have the energy left for something heavier, more literary, or if I’m exhausted and just need something lighter.

Moving on through the house, there is always a book on the dining table near the kitchen. If my husband goes to work too early (therefore eating breakfast long before me), then that’s there to read. I nearly always manage to resist reading at the table when he’s there! Sometimes this book might move to the kitchen bench or, like now, there might be another book there entirely – that’s the one I read while I’m cooking dinner, in those pauses between stirring something.

Out in the living room, there is often a book either on the sofa or the coffee table, and that usually gets attacked during ad breaks while I’m watching TV, or occasionally when I have the chance to sit down and actually spend time devoted to reading of an afternoon (that’s rare).

And finally, there is always a book in whichever handbag I’ve used last – there to be read in a waiting room or on the train or during some kind of interruption to whatever I should be doing. See what a good girl scout I am – always prepared.

What about you? Where are your current books? Let me know in the comments – you know I’m curious.

If you know me even just a little, you’ll probably be aware that I’m renowned for having a messy desk. Well, I’m a bit of a mess in general, but these days usually I manage to contain most of that to my own office area, under threat from my husband of him eating all my chocolate if I don’t. I actually love having a neat, tidy desk, but somehow it doesn’t seem that easy. I often tell people the story of my university days when I lived together with my father; when dinner time came around, he and I would both spend a few minutes moving our piles of books and papers off the dining room table (onto the floor) so we could eat, then move them back to the table when we’d finished. You see – a messy desk is genetic, it’s not my fault.

And furthermore … a messy desk might just be essential to my fiction writing abilities. In Andrea Goldsmith’s novel Reunion, there is a character named Ava who is a successful novelist. And about her, Goldsmith writes:

Ava was proof that if one is too much in thrall to everyday demands the imagination, for want of quiet and unfettered energy, becomes dormant. Her clothes were unpressed, her room was a shambles, her desk was a mess. Almost daily she would riffle the layers for a lost page, a lost pen, a phone number, and with mounting impatience would pledge to keep a tidy desk, a tidier life, but she never did. [My italics!]

My first feeling when I read this was relief; my second instinct said it might just be Goldsmith’s way of apologising for her own untidiness (I have no proof that she is untidy, but it would seem a lovely way to deal with it – spread the belief that the creativity of a novelist requires it, and she has the perfect alibi). So what do you all think – which of you writers out there have a messy desk at the moment? I’ve admitted mine in the picture above, although this is one of its tidier moments. Now I’m off to be imaginative.

Since a lot of my great ideas come in the shower, I’ve often contemplated a method for making notes there – some kind of pen to write on my shower screen (an easily, but not-too-easily, washable one, of course) and sometimes I even keep a notepad on the bathroom sink when I’ve actually set myself the task of thinking through a writing problem in the shower.

Musicians need to write down ideas too

Well, it turns out us writers are not alone. I guess musicians are a kind of writer – they’re writing music and lyrics, which sounds infinitely harder than a novel – and so they are also hit with ideas at random times. Perhaps their equivalent of my being in the shower is playing their guitars or pianos or whatever – and that’s where this post I just read about Coldplay singer Chris Martin comes in.

He has hit upon a pretty neat idea for capturing song ideas while he’s at the piano. He simply writes them on the piano. Agghh! I hear some of you saying, and surely my mother who would have murdered me if I had written ideas on our shiny black piano (and don’t worry Mum, I haven’t started now that I’ve got the piano here with me). But Chris Martin is a famous man and he’s allowed to write on pianos.

In any case, the bit that intrigues me even more is what he does with the these notes over time. Basically, the piano gets full up, and eventually, he just gets the piano repainted. And then he starts all over again.

I love having scribbles about my ideas all over the place, so I can certainly imagine having a piano covered in them could be quite inspiring. Most of my ideas are tucked into beautiful notebooks, but now I’m imagining creating posters full of my odd ideas, framing them, and making a fortune by selling them when I become famous. I’d better go start making notes.

Because blogging is all about other blogs …

As a sidenote, I clicked over and found this story through a circuitous bloggy route – Darren Rowse of ProBlogger posted on Twitter that Gina Trapani (Lifehacker founder) had started a new blog – I trust him, I trust Lifehacker and so I found my way to Smarterware. It’s a nice looking blog and if you read me because you empathise with my procrastination problem and my to-do list addiction, then you might also get something out of it.

I was procrastinating about getting a bit of work done – or I could fudge that and say I was taking a bit of a break after getting a stack of work done this morning (that’s true – I wrote my first 2,500 words for NaNoWriMo and also did a heap of blogging).

In any case, one click led to another and I was suddenly taking a 20-question quiz on procrastination. At the end they told me my score was 30/100 and that meant my test result is low – I don’t procrastinate very often. Well, you can imagine I was kind of surprised by this, because I think I’m the Queen of Procrastination.

But it turns out it all depends on what counts as procrastination. Paying bills late, for example, is an example they use of procrastinating. I’m a stickler for paying bills on time (my father was a bank manager; although ironically I suspect he doesn’t pay his bills on time. I’m sure my mother does, though). Calling people back within an appropriate time means I’m not a procrastinator. The most ironic question was one about a situation in which I urgently needed to do some work, but my desk was messy – would I clean it first or just sit down and work? Because I’m even better at being messy than I am at procrastinating, I chose sitting down and doing the work.

One bit that made me think perhaps my procrastination problem is not as bad as I thought was the realisation that when it comes to work issues, I don’t procrastinate badly enough for anyone else to notice. Very few of my editors would think that I get my work in late. Certainly in my teaching job I don’t do anything that approaches procrastination. And quite on the contrary, some colleagues and friends who know the combination of teaching and writing I do have commented that I’m actually super-organised.

Hmm. So where does this leave my excuses for not writing? I’m starting to think that the majority of my procrastination problem really is centred on fiction writing, which is tragic when it’s one of the things I love the most in life. That’s why events like NaNoWriMo are perfect for me, because they add that external pressure that I need, the deadlines that all other parts of my life seem to have that help me overcome the procrastination urge. That’s something for me to think about.

And in the meantime, I know there are a few fellow procrastinators who read this blog, so if you need an excuse to waste a few minutes, do the quiz and tell me your scores. Maybe you’ll be as surprised as I was.

So what can I learn from this non-news-flash? Well, as they quite rightly point out, sometimes to-do lists become long and un-do-able, making you feel overwhelmed and unlikely to do anything at all. I’m sometimes guilty of this and sadly, one of the first things to go when I can’t keep my list under control is my fiction writing. (But the first of all is the housework!). It’s a reminder not to make my to-do lists unmanageable, and to be aware that when a list gets overwhelming I should stop and do something about it. Rewrite it, prioritise it, and be nice to the fiction-writing side of it.

As for the housework … well, some things just don’t need to be on a list, do they?

My mother (among many others, no doubt) can well attest to the fact that I have something of an impatient personality. She often tells the story that when I was a child and I came to her and said I wanted to learn how to do something (for example, sew, cook, do something on the computer) she soon discovered that her life was much easier if she instructed me immediately. Then I’d happily amuse myself (hopefully for a while – if not, sorry Mum!). If she didn’t, I’d nag incessantly. Once I wanted to know something, I wanted to know it right then.

I just realised that this impatient streak hits my writing too. It explains absolutely perfectly why the second half of my draft novel (the first one, set in Japan) is nowhere near as good as the first half – in my opinion and according to feedback. I just wanted it to be finished, so in the last half I took less care and used the “near enough is good enough” philosophy a bit too often. That, combined with the fact that I was writing it to a deadline – the best way to overcome my procrastination – led to a flawed product.

My big hope is that just the process of having realised this will help solve the problem. As I said, this weekend I’m planning to get back to some rewriting of said “impatiently finished” novel, so we’ll see if I can do it patiently. If nothing else, I’m going to start the fixing-up process with the second half of the manuscript, the neglected-by-my-impatience half, so at least the attention each bit’s been given might balance out a bit.

Anyone out there recognise the combination of procrastination and impatience, or is it just me?

Her first Why I Didn’t Write excuse is a very simple one – she slept too late. (Mental note to self: I haven’t actually used this excuse with myself yet! But I’m a morning person, so I tend to have a book-end excuse at the other end of the day – it’s too late for me to think creatively). Sleeping too late is relatively easily fixed, but it all replies on a bit of self-discipline. That’s not so easy, I know.

Anyway, Carolyn inspired me to think about the various excuses I give myself for not working on my fiction writing, and I decided I’d just make a long list now and then ban myself from using these excuses ever again. Sounds (much too) simple but you never know. My brain has been tricked by less.

• I have to finish the writing I get paid for first
• I’m too tired
• I feel like watching TV or a DVD (rarely, but it does happen)
• I can do it tomorrow … there’s no deadline
• I’ll just read a chapter (or three) of that book and then I’ll feel more inspired
• I’m hungry and/or thirsty
• The cats are bugging me to play with them instead of sitting here typing (it’s true, they can be really annoying, one likes to put her sharp little claws into my behind!)
• I have to do the washing/unload the dishwasher/vacuum (who would’ve thought I’d ever rather do those things?)

The totally irritating thing is I don’t think I’ve ever actually experienced writers’ block – I’ve never sat there and not known what to write. It’s just that I don’t always get myself to the sitting there stage. So now I formally announce that I will never use any of the above excuses again.

The most satisfying discovery was that most of them have fairly messy desks. That puts me in excellent company. A notable exception was my favourite philosopher, Alain de Botton, who has a relatively neat-looking study (although there are piles of books on the floor, which I’d like my husband to please take note of). But when I read the story I discovered that de Botton actually rents this room off a neighbour after his original study had to be converted into a child’s bedroom, and in fact he dislikes this new room.

Ian Rankin’s desk is a bit clearer than mine is at the moment, but the room is still relatively messy. Go mess! I’m sure mess is necessary for creativity. The study of Hanif Kureishi, my favourite writer from the whole Guardian list, is something like how I’d love my study to look, one day. The floor to ceiling bookcases are something I’ve already started working on (although I still have a fair few books in boxes, and more accumulate every day). It’s neat, but chaotic, in a creative way. The only distressing thing I read there is that Kureishi writes his drafts by hand. You know, with a pen and paper. And then he types them up. His theory is that computers encourage books which are too long. Maybe true but I will continue to type everything I write – I couldn’t stand the time-wasting feeling I’d get if I had to type up a story from handwritten notes.

As for my study, it’s currently a little on the messy side, especially my desk. I just brought in a glass of wine for my evening writing session and had to move an empty tea cup to find a space for it. I’ve had a sudden influx of books for review arrive, and I don’t have a particular bookshelf for them, so they are arranged around my desk depending on whether I’ve read them yet and then subdivided into whether I’ve reviewed them yet or not. Add to that a few library books, the two notebooks I’ve deemed essential desk material because they’re related to my new novel, an overflowing in-tray (containing two or three more books to review) and small scraps of paper that my cats have torn up, and it’s far from perfect. The rest of the room is still half empty, but one side has nearly a dozen boxes that need unpacking from our move nearly a year ago. But after seeing the rooms of these successful writers, I don’t feel quite so bad at all. Unfortunately my neat husband might not see it quite the same way.

Zwei Sprachen is German for “two languages” and I’ve been following the blog because it has interesting posts in both these languages – Anna is a native German speaker who’s now lived in New York for almost 30 years, and also writes in English, and teaches writing. Sometimes I wonder if my German would ever be good enough to “really” write (we usually speak German at home – but my grammar is shocking), and I absolutely admire anybody who can creatively write in something other than their mother tongue.

However, Anna’s most recent post is a list of 99 reasons not to write. Some are very creative: she has the wrong pen, or thinking of past boyfriends. Some I can totally relate to: it’s sunny outside, or she’s hungry or tired. But the fact that she wrote enough to create 99 reasons really proves that she is writing. So I guess my point is that when I feel like I can’t write or don’t want to write, it is definitely the case that I just need to start writing. Even if it’s a list of reasons not to write – perhaps I can aim for 199 reasons – there’s always something waiting to be written, and often that will turn into something I could call “real” writing.

I’m planning to keep this in mind over the weekend when I want to get some fiction writing done – I’ve got most of the weekend to myself and hope to plan my next novel, and hopefully draft the first chapter. This is a novel that’s been swimming around in my head for about four years, and I haven’t yet sat down to really think about it in a nuts and bolts fashion, so I’m really interested to see what my subconscious has been doing with the idea. Hopefully I can report back with 99 sentences I’ve written rather than 99 reasons not to write.