Adrian Markle’s Writing Space
I’m bad at working from home. I waste a lot of time. I find it hard to get myself into a “work” headspace in a place where most of the time I’m doing “rest.” It’s not that I produce nothing at all, just that the percentage of the day I actually spend writing is smaller if I’m trying to do it from home—there are too many other things competing for my attention. Some of them are great: napping, food. Others, less so: dishes, vacuuming. It’s hard to focus. My partner and I have recently moved, and there’s a little room on the ground floor we’ve turned into an office. There’s a desk with a laptop stand and an extra monitor, and the rest of the room is books and shoes. Sometimes we keep a bike in there. The closet is filled with wetsuits, tents, outdoor gear. That has helped a bit, as the only thing I ever do in that room is write, so it’s easier for me to focus when I go in.
But for this story, which was written a while ago, I did a lot of it in my office at work. I teach on an “urban” campus, though urban in this case means a remote seaside town of about twenty thousand people. That campus is largely made up of old houses re-purposed to work as classrooms, offices, etc. Writing and Journalism is located in a three-story Georgian (I think? I’m not that interested in historical buildings) house. The ground floor is studio space for students, and the next two floors are staff and PhD student offices. I’m in the attic. Technically there are other desks there for other members of staff, but luckily most of my colleagues prefer to work remotely, so I usually haunt the building alone. I come in before class, or stay later, or come in on non-teaching days and just do my own work there. I feel like that separation helps to keep my home feeling like my home and my work like my work, and it’s cheaper than having to spend the entire day in a café or pub. And healthier.
Adrian Markle is the author of the novel Bruise. He has numerous short stories in magazines and anthologies around the world, including EVENT, Queen’s Quarterly, and Pithead Chapel. He has a PhD from the University of Exeter and teaches at Falmouth University in Cornwall, UK, where he lives with his partner, the writer Eleanor Walsh.