Mandy Hager – Where I Write
This week, I’m delighted to feature a guest blog from the award winning novelist Mandy Hager. [image error]She has written a number of novels for young adults, and a marvel of a book about a boy, a girl and a whale. Her latest novel is about Heloise, the 12th century intellectual.
Over to Mandy.
I’m very fortunate to have my own writing space, tucked away for my sole use. I love this room! It looks out onto our lush garden and courtyard, with windows on three sides. To see green from every window is calming indeed.
My writing room is the one place in the house where I can totally indulge my hoarding whims – and every wall is covered with either bookcases, photos, pictures or framed awards.
I find it comforting to have the wall filled with paintings and photos of my family at my back, as if they perch upon my shoulder to encourage me!
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And when I despair after an unsatisfactory day’s writing, I can comfort myself by gazing at my wall of awards to keep me on track! Because it’s not a public part of the house, I don’t need to feel embarrassed for showing them off – just a little private pick-me-up when I need it! The one that gives me the most pleasure is an award my daughter presented to my husband, announcing he had successfully completed his Advanced Course in Step-fathering Skills! It always makes me smile!
My desk was made for me by my husband, lovely and large so I can spread out my mess.
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It’s made from Kauri, a beautiful golden timber native to New Zealand.
I have a filing cabinet and file boxes hidden behind a Tibetan wall hanging and to keep me company I share my space with a blow-up version of Munch’s ‘Scream’, which I joke is the outward manifestation of what’s going on in my head! [image error]
My small grandson is fascinated by it – comes in and talks to it; knows it as ‘Scream’ (God only knows what I’m doing to his brain development and understanding of the world!)
The paintings include two oil portraits of my Austrian grandparents, the canvasses rolled up to transport when they and my father had to flee Vienna in 1937 to escape Hitler. Between them is a tinted photograph of my maternal grandfather, who worked as a doctor in East Africa from the 1930s to 1950s (my mother was born in Zanzibar!) Others are by my children over the years, and a rather strange one of a bear-like creature, holding a baby while overlooking a sailing ship approach, was painted by a friend. I love it, strange though it is; it makes me think of colonisation and how native populations were treated as animals by their colonisers, despite having all the same emotions and intellectual capacity as the new intruders (Who is the civilised one? Who is the Beast?) I’m not sure if that’s what she thought as she painted it, but I’ve spent a lot of time gazing at it, and this is what it says to me. Well, that, and perhaps that we all share the same traits, no matter where we come from or who/what we are.
The old gold corner suite is an original of the 1970s from my family home. I can remember when it first arrived – it seemed so modern and grand! It’s very comfortable for whiling away a brain-rest moment or two – or if I want to watch something via my computer. I can stretch out to relax and still see what’s on the screen. [image error]
There are boxes of work for my teaching job piled in one corner, mostly well organised! And beside them rests a hula hoop, in case I feel the need to move and stretch! The bookshelf to the left of my desk is filled with research and resource books for my writing and teaching, while the shelf to my right contains my children’s book collection, many from my own youth or my children’s, or from my primary school teaching days. It’s layered two books deep to fit them all in!
This is the room I love to work in, and when I’m away I miss it terribly. There really is something to Virginia’s Woolf’s need for ‘a room of one’s own.’ I feel very lucky to have somewhere that makes me feel embraced by those I love and feeds my somewhat quirky soul.
Heloise will be published on 15 May.
