Lydia Dare Guest Blog; Author of The Taming of the Wolf

Writing space is important to a lot of authors, and very individual as well. Since there are two of us who make up Lydia Dare, we thought we’d each tell you a bit about our writing space.


Jodie:

I am SO disorganized. It’s funny, I’m really anal about certain things. I am obsessed with having information on our characters – family trees, photos/drawings of their estates, servants, etc. I am particularly anal about having the perfect name. I’m anal about peerage titles.

But as far as work space goes, I am the epitome of disorganization. Sometimes I write at my day job at a cluttered desk. Sometimes I write on my sectional in my living room. Sometimes I write in the passenger seat of my car, if someone else driving, of course. And sometimes I write in bed. Sometimes there’s TV in the background. Sometimes there’s no light other than slight glow from my laptop.

I am certain I would make a feng shui expert run for the hills screaming. In fact, I’m scared to know what they would say to me. So no one tell them what a disorganized mess I am.

Tammy:

I have to have quiet when I write. No TV. No kids. No pets. No music. As long as I have that, I can write pretty much anywhere. I think I probably write more in my living room than anywhere else. I run my husband to bed at night when he finally falls asleep in his recliner watching the ballgame so that I can turn the sound down and get busy writing. He very often will say that he just wants to lay there and let the noise play in the background. That’s not conducive to writing at all.

I do have an office, but it’s so unorganized that I can’t get anything done in there. My kids tend to take it over and their paperwork, crayons, photos, etc, end up on all the livable spaces. I don’t know why it is, but there’s nothing that makes my kids want to spend time with me more than my closed office door. It’s like a “come and bug me” beacon for my six year old. I can almost hear it in his head. Door’s closed. Wonder what Mom’s doing? I better go check. And I think I’m hungry. But I don’t know what I want. Maybe she can tell me. I’ll just go ask her. Maybe she’ll know if I want a bologna sandwich or if I want her attention. Yeah, welcome to my life. For some reason, my closed office door makes my fifteen year old decide he needs to schedule his day right at that moment. Wonder if Mom has anything planned for tomorrow. I really want to see my girlfriend. Wonder if she’ll make me clean the kitchen before we can go pick her up. Of course, I will! Interrupt my writing time and I might include a toilet or two in his cleaning routine, just for the fun of it.

Do you guys have any routines (daily or specific to events/tasks) that you follow no matter what?