ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?

Where do you write? Why? Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) writes in his shed; Will Self in a small room bashing away on an old Remington typewriter. Apparently, the perpetrator of the Harry Potter stories started writing them in a café, now you can hardly pass a café without spotting someone tapping on a tablet device, a Skinny Latté cooling at their side.

Of course to some extent it depends what you are using to writeyour Opus on. Many famous writers favour long hand on paper, with a pencil; here clearly a desk is required. Barbara Cartland said she had her best ideas in bed, don’t we all. Personally, I know you are dieing to know, prefer to use my laptop, sitting at the comfy end of my large couch. The other end is less comfy as my dear, dear dog used to lie there, indeed he died there. So I often glance over at the now derelict end of my couch, regretting I gave him the less comfy side of the couch, convincing myself that it did not contribute to his sad demise. I digress. I place my laptop on a giant World Atlas, which I place on my lap; this gives me ample space to also operate my mouse. (Not the animal, in case you were getting confused with the animal content so far) I have never been able to successfully operate the internal mouse of my MacBook. So there I am sitting comfortably. Atlas on lap, laptop on top of that, clicking away, only occasionally glancing over to the other end of the couch wondering; what if I’d chosen the other end?

STEPHEN WRIGHT