My desk tour.
Where I write, podcast, dream, and spiral.
Welcome to Desk Tour, a series where I interview creative folks about their desks and workspaces. In case you missed it: Annabel Monaghan’s Desk Tour from last time. You can also browse the entire catalog of Desk Tours.
Today, at long last, I am sharing my own office. The delay is because of many things. When my husband Jake started renovating this outbuilding into my office, we guessed it would take two months. It took five or six. When it was done, it was winter and took another two or three months to get the wood burning stove installed. Then, of course, was the inevitable and very-on-brand delay of me lamenting that it was not good enough yet. The art! The decor! The flowers outside weren’t even blooming yet! (Unthinkable). I wanted it to be just so. But, as you know, I’m trying to get better about that silly mindset. So today I come to you with the cottage as is.
I’s not completely done or perfect. My various laptop cords are always sprawled about (I could have hid them for the photos but I’m lazy). It’s prone to dust and occasional spiders. But it is a beautiful space that I love, and I’m excited to share it with you today. Also, as always, a shoutout to Jake, who did all of heavy lifting of making this space livable while also having a full-time job. He claims to enjoy all the projects, but still, I have absolutely no clue how I got so lucky. I ponder this daily. Anyway, here’s where I work and, as the subtitle points out (importantly), where I spiral. I would say the balance is 70% work, 25% spiraling, 5% listening to moody music and staring out the window, but we’re working on it.
Q: Describe your workspace.
A: I work in a small building behind our house. From what we learned about the history of our home (an 1863 Italianate farmhouse in the Hudson Valley), in past lives this outbuilding was: A smaller house, a summer kitchen, a chicken coop, a gardening shed, and a guest house. It includes a main floor with a wood-burning stove for heat (this is where I work), and a small set of stairs tucked into the corner which lead to a lofted area with old, thick floorboards that match the ones in our house. The exposed beams still have marks from lath, which means there was a real ceiling at some point. In other words, many, many decades ago, this was a house. The question is whether it was part of the main house at one point and eventually separated (a former owner told us something along these lines), or if it was the original house on the property, or some hodgepodge version of all of the above.
When my husband Jake and I were looking at houses, I had a dream of a separate workspace where I could write and be creative. As soon as we saw this house, I had visions of working in this building one day, even though it was a little bit rough-looking at the time. Over the course of almost a year, Jake renovated it into a space that was fit for an office. We call it the writing cottage. He built an L-shaped desk which I immediately crowded with books and journals and little bowls of random objects, and installed a window that overlooks our garden and patio. I’ve worked from home for six years now, and always in a guest room, which is a perfectly fine set up, but there is something really special about having a space that is only mine and mine alone. It is huge privilege, too, and I’m very grateful.
Q: What are your three favorite items on your desk right now?
A: On my windowsill are some tiny glass jars, most of which are items that we found when renovating the cottage. I love knowing that they belonged to people who lived here hundreds of years ago. It blows my mind. It’s also a great reminder of how rewarding it can be to slowly improve and restore an old home. One jar is a gift from a friend, though — an old ink jar he found when restoring his own old house.
My giant cork board is something I invested in when I moved my office into the cottage and though it was obscenely expensive (something like $70?), it has been worth every penny. I use it to keep track of ideas for whatever I’m writing, as well as to highlight ideas and phrases that are important to me in general. At the very top, I put the reminders of things that are the most important to me, and are always more important than any sort of work or any single project — a photo of my husband, a flashcard with a list of my core values, a note that says “I know who I am when I’m writing,’ and more (you can read/listen to me talk more about these reminders here). The majority of the board is reserved for notes on my current WIP, everything from bits of research to song lyrics (so many song lyrics), plot ideas, timelines, and more. In the bottom right I keep track of more general goals, daily reminders, and other notes. Everyone should have a bulletin board like this. Just this week I took it down to rearrange some things. I had finally decided to move forward with one of the two WIPs I had been playing around with, so I took down all of the now irrelevant flashcards and I made room for the more important one and gosh… it just felt good.
Finally, I bought this candle on a whim and it is just the best thing I have ever smelled. I love it. Everyone who comes in the cottage says, “It smells so good in here,” even when it’s not lit, and I swear it’s because of this one small candle.
Q: Do you keep anything specific at your desk that you use as inspiration to stay creative or positive?
A: In addition to my bulletin board, I have a stack of journals that I write in nearly every day. I love my five year journal for reflection, but it’s my writing journal that keeps me afloat. Every day before I write, I journal about how I’m feeling about work or creativity or life or myself or anything at all. It has single-handedly made my life better to have a daily, in-depth journaling process. I think it’s made my writing better too, and I like knowing that I will have a record of all the (many) highs and lows of writing books and living life.
I also have an empty bottle of champagne sitting in the corner of my desk that I sometimes forget about, but has been with me for some years now. I wrote ‘sell my book’ on the side of it and stuck it in the fridge sometime after I started writing Little One in 2020. I could have popped it when I sold my first novel, Such A Bad Influence, but I brought out a different bottle of champagne for that one and kept the first one where it was. When we moved to New York from Philly, I brought it along. Almost two years after that move, and more than four years after I started writing Little One, I sold that book and finally got to pop the champagne. There are few things that have felt better. I’ll write more about it someday. Anyway, I drank the champagne and then kept the bottle. I’m naturally inclined toward self-doubt, but it makes me feel proud, so I keep it around.
Q: Is there anything you absolutely HAVE to have at your desk/workspace or you can't be productive?
A: I find it really hard to work (i.e. sit at my laptop and write or record) without coffee and a pen and paper nearby. I can work without either of these things, but it feels off. For the past six months or so I’ve been using flashcards in place of a larger notebook or sheet of paper. I’m editing right now, so I have flashcards dedicated to words that I notice myself repeating, and flashcards for bigger reminders, too. I jot down random thoughts and phrases and reminders as I type, and it’s almost always helpful. Notably, I also use these as coasters quite often.
Q: Is there anything you'd change about your workspace? If so, what?
A: I haven’t experienced a summer in the writing cottage yet, but I’m just going to go ahead and preemptively say adding air conditioning would be nice. Also, some sort of metaphysical barrier that meant snakes, mice, spiders, and other creatures stayed happily outside instead of making their way inside. That would be cool.
Eventually, I also want to continue to add art work all along the walls so it all looks cluttered and happy and a bit chaotic, but I am trying not to rush myself to fill every available corner immediately. I really want this space to house the very many weird things I enjoy (see: the carved wooden seal I use as a doorstopper), a kind of ode to collecting and art and strangeness and creativity. I look forward to seeing it get weirder and weirder.
Q: Describe your ideal work day at your desk.
A: I sit down between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning with my second cup of coffee. I’ve already eaten breakfast, had coffee #1, and spent some time reading. It’s a sunny day with a cool breeze, so I open all the windows, light a candle, and turn on some relaxing music. I have already written my to-do list the evening before, so I spend a few minutes reviewing that and breaking the tasks down into time blocks before I move onto journaling. I don’t browse Substack or email yet1. I do my five-year journal first, jotting down brief thoughts before moving onto my writing journal, where I spend 20-30 minutes outlining my current work goals, mood, and more. Afterwards, I tackle the biggest creative work of the day, usually revising, drafting, or (sometimes) a combination of both. If drafting, I write at least one sentence that makes me want to fist-pump the air. If revising, I edit or fix one scene in a way that makes me breathe a huge sigh of relief and say, “Yes. That’s it. Much better.” I do this until about noon or so, when I break for a quick workout.
I put a good workout playlist on the speaker and do a 30-minute workout that is some combination of cardio and strength, depending on my mood. It’s not buggy so I can open all the doors and let a breeze float through the office. The perfect songs keep coming on. I don’t think about my body. I feel strong. I spend some of the workout dreaming of writing ideas, puzzling through plot problems without feeling overwhelmed by them. I take the next two hours off for lunch, a walk with Winnie and Jake, and to shower/get changed. I put on an outfit that feels exactly like me.
After that, I’m back at my desk around 2 maybe. I spend the rest of the afternoon drafting something I’m excited about for Substack and I end the day with enough time to reply to emails, schedule the next day’s tasks, and maybe work on something creative (more journaling, adding to my bulletin board, readings something, etc.) while my current hyper fixation playlist blasts.
Bonuses: At some point, a song so perfect comes on that I simply have to stop what I’m doing and turn it up, then dance around the cottage for a second or two. Jake surprises me with a Dunkin’ run and picks up a large iced coffee (2 creams, 2 butter pecan). I get an exciting email with book news. I feel more grateful than I feel insecure. My nails are the perfect shade of red. The tree peonies outside my window are blooming. My friends or family keep texting me things that make me laugh out loud. I write a thank you note to someone just because. I spend more time being creative than I do scrolling.
Q: What books are on your desk right now?
A: I have a copy of Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, which is one of my very favorite books and a guiding light for my current WIP. I also have a copy of The God of The Woods by Liz Moore, who is a constant inspiration to me. On the other side of my desk, I have a small stack of copies of Such A Bad Influence that sit beneath a bronze unicorn figurine that my husband calls “Timothee Chalahorn.”
Behind me, I also have a small stack of books next to my big reading chair with some of my favorite reads of the year so far: Isola, Godshot, Rainbow Black, Wild Dark Shore… and then a copy Virginia Woolf’s Writer’s Diary that I am very slowly paging through.
Q: Where can people find you on the internet?
A: There are new episodes of Bad on Paper each Wednesday, and I send out weekly newsletters on Substack every Friday. I am also on Instagram most days.
Before I go…
Some other writing cottage fun facts and FAQs, if you’re curious:
Randomly, Drew Barrymore’s meditation room (below) was one of my main bits of inspiration when “designing” (generous word) the cottage. I love the feeling of a room like this.
Jake did all the new brick work for the hearth himself. As you can tell in the before photos, the bricks were just… sitting there. No mortar. Not great. He used various bricks we had around the property to do the work, and in the process he found the below brick, with a microscopic pair of paw prints on it. We assumed they were from a kitten. And thus, Kitten Brick Cottage was born. We don’t actively call it that in conversation but you can’t tell me it isn’t an excellent name. The brick always makes me smile.
When clearing out the cottage, we found newspaper print glued to the back of boards that dated back to the 1800s. We also found an old Vaseline bottle and an iron that were about the same age.
The only thing beneath these floorboards, originally, was dirt, so Jake had to take them all out and install a moisture barrier. I don’t want to talk about the spiders he encountered in this process.
Pretty much every piece of furniture or decor other than the desk is secondhand, everything from the lamp to the chairs to the art to the rug.
Not secondhand, but I love my wireless keyboard. Love. I can’t recommend it more.
Thank you for letting me share my space and all the many things I love. As always, it’s a pleasure and I am so grateful you’re here.
Olivia
Be sure to check out all the past editions of Desk Tour!
PS: One last thing before I go… you can order my first novel NOW! If you’ve already read and enjoyed, I would be honored if you would leave a kind review or rating on Goodreads or Amazon. It makes a world of difference. I appreciate your consideration, time, and support immensely.
A portion of May’s subscriber proceeds will go toward the Emily’s List, an organization that trains Democratic women (who are pro-choice) in the basics of running for office, from school board to senator.
This part rarely happens, but hey this is the ideal right?
This is such a beautiful space. The way you live your life is very inspiring to me. You seem to know what you want, and you put in the effort to make it happen (& make it beautiful). 💗
It’s a magical space that you and Jake have resurrected and created with
Jake’s physical labor ( and talent) and your creative input. It looks cozy and lovely. I know many great books will be written there! Looking forward to them!