Hollay Ghadery’s Writing Space

Where do I write?

You name it! The kitchen table, the bed, the bath, on walks or runs, riding shotgun in the car on the way to swimming or piano or drama lessons, or in my actual office: there’s no place I don’t write, which isn’t to say I don’t have favourite places to write (snuggled on the couch with the dogs or in the sunroom, for the record).

Having four young kids has forced me not to be precious about writing time or spaces—and I used to be debilitatingly precious about it, expecting the words to come only when I had set aside time for quiet and calm. So for many years, I wrote little. It took me a decade to crank out my first book and this taught me a lot about the grind of writing. Writing takes time, yes, but after a certain point, the only person not doing the work was me.

Eventually, I learned to stop romanticizing the writing process. Those thrilling flashes of verse and vision that proceed the physical act of writing can be quite romantic, but for me, the stringing together of many coherent words on a screen or page is…less magical—but not any less fulfilling. In fact, I’ve found taking the writing process out of the clouds and grounding it with me, wherever I am, makes it much more real, and the results, more attainable. It may have taken me 10 years to write my first book, but I finished my second and third in three years.