My Writing Cave

For the past few weeks I’ve been in what I’ve taken to calling my “writing cave.” With all the craziness surrounding SOMETHING REAL, I knew I’d never meet my next few deadlines if I didn’t do something drastic. It was great fun ushering my debut novel out into the world (today is its one month anniversary!), but I missed the hard work of sitting down and writing for six to eight hours a day. That’s how I work and when I’m not doing that I’m a miserable person to be around.

 

So I created the writing cave, which is basically my office except I now call it a cave. This is very appropriate, because the book I’m currently knee-deep in is the second installment of the Dark Caravan trilogy, in which my heroine descends into an ancient cave to look for something that may or may not change the fate of the jinn race. My cave is a little different than the one Nalia must endure, though. For starters, it has an unlimited supply of coffee and Vitamin Water.

 

In my cave, there are twinkly white lights around the window to beat back the winter blues. There’s a bookcase full of inspiring books on writing. There are battle boards that help me plan my books, collages I made, notes of encouragement from friends. It smells like amber oil that I got in Morocco and burn when I need inspiration. It has a constant soundtrack of Ravi and Anoushka Shankar playing. It has a yoga mat for stretching, a jinni bottle…