Cathy Cassidy: Where I Write

Posted on 14 August 2015

I used to have a writing shed when I lived in Scotland, a little blue hut filled with all my favourite things. It had no phone line and no internet, and even though it was pretty baltic in the winter and I had to wear fingerless mittens to type, I miss it hugely now that we’ve moved down to NW England.

I guess my writing room now is a recreation of that shed. It has a daybed draped with ancient patchwork quilts and my collection of vintage children’s books is here too. When I was little, all of my books came from public libraries, and one of my hobbies now is to find and rescue as many of those old and much-loved novels as I can. There is something very comforting being surrounded by wonderful children’s books from long ago; it makes me very happy to be a part of that tradition and also helps me keep my feet firmly on the ground. Today’s bestseller can be tomorrow’s charity shop offering; it’s not a bad thing to keep that in mind! Junk shop toys jostle for space with the books, and the pinboards next to my writing desk are cluttered with pictures and presents from lovely readers met on my school and bookshop tours.

The desk itself is old, but not in a grand, antique kind of a way; more a down-at-heel kind of thing! It was bought for next to nothing from a Scottish junk shop and when we got it home we discovered old silver threepenny bits from the 1930s carefully wedged into each corner of the inside cupboard, perhaps for luck. It has been a lucky desk for me, anyway! I can look out of the window into the park and see the geese flying down to the lake, and if it’s sunny there’s a rainbow-maker on the window that soaks up the light and then projects amazing rainbows all around the room.

I’d like to say I sit at my desk religiously to write, but sometimes I curl up on the daybed with my laptop and sometimes I open up the big sash window, spread a rug on the balcony and sit in the sun looking out over the park behind our house. This is not always productive in terms of word count, but it’s a great daydreaming space. On a good writing day, I sit down at my desk at half nine, after walking the dogs in the park, and start to work. If I’m lucky a thousand words or sometimes even two thousand will come flooding out and arrange themselves painlessly into a story.

That’s a good writing day, and they can be rare; on an ordinary day, the words are harder to come by and putting them together is like arranging a particularly tricky jigsaw puzzle while wearing a blindfold. I always get stressy towards the end of a novel, and want very much to throw my laptop out of the window and emigrate to a desert island, but my husband and kids are very good at reminding me that this is just part of the process for me. They bring me cups of herby tea and say nice things, and the dogs curl up at my feet and I keep on typing and in the end another book is completed and all is well.

I love my writing room… it has all of my favourite things in it, and it’s where the magic happens.

Cathy Cassidy’s latest book, The Chocolate Box Girls: Fortune Cookie , is out now!