St Jerome and the Sleeping Cat - Joan Lennon

I'm adaptable ... ish. I can write in cafes and hotel rooms and in the quiet car on trains. I can even write with music, as long as it's classical, doesn't have lyrics and I have easy access to the off switch. I can write in a house full of people, as long as they're not, you know, in the same room. Or talking just outside the door. Or obviously having more fun than I am.

But really, for me, there's always been a perfect place to write, and this is where it's always been. A room like this, with a sleeping cat (size doesn't matter), cushions, a comfy robe, good lighting (I'm willing to use a lamp - not everybody can produce their own) windows onto a view, a bit of birdsong offstage. And solitude.

You can feel the serenity. You can practically touch the contentment - and the focus. How does Durer do that? I don't know. Art's a mystery.

I wrote recently about how writers are like flamingos, how we need each other. And I still think that's true. But this is the other thing. This room, or as close to it as we can find.

And a sleeping cat.


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If I could find the camera... Celia Rees

I'd take a photo of the chaotic mess that is my study. I know it's in here somewhere, I just can't remember which pile it is under. As a writer, I'm as prone to rituals as the Lords of Groan and one of patterns that has emerged over the years is the Big Clear Out after a book is finished, a physical and mental de-clutter before the next project gets truly underway. That is one way of spinning it, the other is I just can't find anything: letters, tax forms, notes and print-outs, books, cameras, staplers, rulers, anything I actually need has disappeared.

The problem is twofold. I am naturally messy and find it difficult to throw things away. I have, for example, a great many books - not just on the two walls of shelves, but in piles on the floor, table, futon, chair, any flat surface, and I find it hard to part with them. This is not just sentimental. I never know when I might want them and I can guarantee the next time I think, 'I know I've got a book about that somewhere', that will be the book that's gone to Oxfam. I need more space (move house? Rent storage?) to put them and I need some kind of coherent cataloguing system (alphabetical? By subject? Dewey Decimal?) but I can never quite decide how to organise them (too many decisions) so that does not get done.

Then there are the foreign editions of my own books that publishers have kindly sent to me. It is wonderful to have foreign editions, but they do mount up. If I could find a good home for them, then I could use the storage space for other stuff. If anyone has any ideas for safe disposal, please let me know.

And then there are the notebooks. Like many writers, I love stationery and find it hard to resist the lure of The New Notebook. Consequently, I have many: big ones, small ones, hard back, soft back, posh, expensive, cheap spiral pads. Most of them have something written in them, so should they be retained, part of my 'archive'? Should I even have an archive, or is that just another excuse not to throw things away? More dilemmas...

Quite apart from all that, there are the box files of documents, notes, correspondence (archive again) - should I just throw the lot out, would I even notice? Going through everything is a big job, one I keep putting off because I've got better things to do (like writing books) but I can hardly move at the moment and I actually don't have a book to write, so I guess I've run out of excuses, except I've got a blog to write - now, where is that camera?

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The Zoo and the Poet - Joan Lennon

I have a fantasy. Well, I have many fantasies, but this is one of them.

I am Poet-in-Residence at the Edinburgh Zoo. By day, I wander among the crowds, the hosts of golden, er, people, and recite poetry at them/get them to write poems with me/babble enthusiastically about alliteration, haiku, rhythm and only if absolutely unavoidable, rhyme/do more of what I already do in zoos (to the embarrassment of many) i.e. accost complete strangers and say things like, "If you stand here you can see better" or "Look - there - no, there - oh, it just walked behind that rock ..." I would help the keepers muck out and practise spider monkey facial language assiduously and soon get that wonderful inner look of one who can honestly say "I'm not a tourist - I live here." Because I would. I'd have my own enclosure, where the public could watch me write, be creative, hatch out words, just like the blue beauty nesting in the picture above. They (the public) would be discouraged from banging on the glass or passing comments such as "Oh, look - isn't she funny?!" I would reserve the right to throw poo at them if they did so anyway. Or when the writing stalled. Or just for the fun of it. And then, at nightfall, I would stay when everyone else had gone, and find out just what a deserted zoo by moonlight looks and sounds and feels like.

That's it. You can keep your Poet Laureateships and your Nobel Prize-winning - give me the post of Zoo Poet any day.

Please.

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