A Creative Space

Before I became a writer I always found other ways to release my creative soul. While the children were little I poured myself into my home, sewing curtains, pelmets, cushions, tablecloths and painting every room in the house at various times. My passion for English country interiors found me scouring antique shops and craft markets, op shops and garage sales. I could pair a Dutch delft vase with a chinese grocery store bowl and visitors would comment on their complementary arrangement. The value was not in the cost, but in the aesthetics.


In between house decorating and renovations, when cleaning bricks and stippling stencils were set aside, I would draw and paint. But I never had a space, a special area set aside for my pencils and brushes, paints and paper. Until recently.

Now I have a room called 'Mum's Study'. It is central to the family, near the laundry for hanging out that quick load and the kitchen for the essential cuppa. And Mum's Study is probably the tidiest room in the house. This is most likely because I like to procrastinate by arranging and re-arranging my piles of books, notes and sketches.

But because you are visiting today my procrastination has been given a purpose, a writer's purpose. "It's for my blog," I say.


So this is my creative space, a small room with a large picture window overlooking the front paddock, a room that captures the morning sun and the afternoon breezes.

I love the new office chair that hubbie bought me for my first book contract. Note the apple, a mother's day gift from my daughter. The blue notes board is my plotting board for the novel I am working on.

Where I sit and read with feet up

My art desk and easels and a part finished portrait of my daughter for her 18th.

The reading and thinking couch bed, with my dad's 'tambourica' and my sister's resonator guitar (just visiting)

Recently other authors and artists have been posting about their creative spaces. Check out Sheryl Gwyther's , Katherine Battersby's and Jason Nahrung's blogs. Perhaps you'd also like to tell me about yours.