Where I Write: Separate Beds' Author Elizabeth Buchan

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In our new column, tastemakers invite us in to the most sacred area of their homes: Where they write or cook, paint or relax. Today, to celebrate the release of her new book "Separate Beds," Elizabeth Buchan draws us into the garden.

I am looking down into the (smallish) back garden of my London house which is a very important place for us as a family - we sit in it, we eat in it, we garden in it. It's a place where, weather permitting, we instinctively gather.

Despite being mid-winter -- and a bleak one at that -- there is plenty to look at. This is because even if it is one of the populous cities on earth, London's wildlife is thriving. And quite a lot of it appears to have made its way to our small plot of earth. During the span of typing out this sentence, two squirrels have chased each other along a fence, a fox loped onto a garden shed, one small bird and one large pigeon have fought to get at the bird feeder, and the local topcat -- a bully if ever there was one -- is sitting beneath the bird feeder. Hope springs eternal.

This garden theater is vital for me. Not only does it provide me with visual refreshment between bouts of wrestling with words on a computer screen, but it's also a timely reminder of what life is all about. All too easily garden theatre can turn to high drama if the cat gets a frog or the foxes turn nasty.

Danger, uncertainty, predatory behaviour...this is the stuff of novels, and it's being played out where I can observe it from my perch at the top of the house.

It took me ten years to claim a room of my own, and I hole up most days here without fail. If the garden provides a family room, my study is mine alone and I guard it jealously. When I first began writing, the house was filled with babies and a live-in nanny because I was still working full time. There was not a spare inch to be had, and I wrote my first three novels in a corner of the sitting room late at night after the children had been put to bed. Then my third novel, "Consider the Lily," was published, won a prize, sold brilliantly, and I decided to bite the bullet and write full-time. The corner of a room, where I had been writing, was no longer sufficient.

A game of musical chairs was set in motion. My son moved into the now departed nanny's old room. My daughter moved out of the minute room into which she had been squeezed and into my son's old room, and I -- oh joy -- moved my writing life into my daughter's room.

It has become the operations center for my life. It is small. It just about accommodates one desk, one bookshelf, a couple of filing cabinets and my chair. That is it. There is no room for grand gestures -- those take place on the screen -- or anything that doesn't have to do with writing. In the winter it is freezing (as I type this I am wrapped in a rug and have a hot-water bottle at my feet). In summer it boils. But, as so many women have yearned for in the past, it is a room of my own.

I painted it Chinese Imperial Yellow because the colour invigorates me and is suggestive of human history. On the walls, I hung pictures that I picked up over the years, a couple of needlework samplers (I love old needlework) and, just as prized, three Napoleon buttons (hastily manufactured when it was thought Napoleon would occupy the city), which I bought in New Orleans and had framed up on beige silk. Not so long ago, I picked up an antique mirror in the Georgian city of Bath. Unfortunately, the original bevelled glass had been replaced by a modern mirroring, but the midnight blue frame is original and decorated by small gold stucco stars and gold trefoils at the corners. I haven't hung it yet. But I will. I will.

All of this sounds as if I am in strict control of my writing environment. I have to confess this is not entirely the case. When I begin a book, my study is reasonably ordered because I use the interregnum between books to instigate a major clear-out. But, as I dive deeper and deeper into the novel, piles of books grow like high-rise buildings around my feet. Every so often, I reach down and pluck one from the pile in order to consult it. Invariably, it is replaced in a different mooring which results in chaos when I need it again.

On top of that, there is day-to-day stuff which I should have filed -- but, when I am writing, filing is the last straw. At the moment, I am staring at a sheath of stuff on top of which lies the annual demand from the Inland Revenue. That cannot be put off.

But I am very happy in this small kingdom of mine. I have a feeling it understands me, and I think - as far as one can understand buildings which have been around for a long time - I understand it. Anyway, it allows me to spin my stories, and I am deeply grateful. Because I am so happy in it, I know now that to try to write in a place which does not suit you is counter productive.

Meanwhile, as I plot out Chapter Ten of the work-in-progress, I notice with excitement that the hellebores under the lilac tree in the back garden are coming in to bud.

For more on Elizabeth, visit www.elizabethbuchan.com. Her latest novel, "Separate Beds," is publishing by Viking Penguin.

 

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