Archive for the ‘New York City’ Category

My studio is about 400 square feet and came with a locked safe about as big a refrigerator, probably because the building originally housed jewelers. Sometime in the late 90s I decided to have the safe picked because I needed the space. I was hoping there might be something special inside or maybe something spooky, but it was empty.

“There’s a desk in my studio somewhere–probably under all the crumpled up balls of shitty writing and sundry other forms of refuse–but I’ve stopped using it altogether in the last year or so. I now generally write with my laptop on my knees, sitting or lying on one of the two sofas, which works pretty well until I fall asleep.”

“I don’t know if it’s visible in the photograph, but I stuck the cover letter to my first contract with Bloomsbury in London to the wall against which my desk is set. I stuck it there with Scotch tape. It’s there to remind me that I am, in a way, a writer: I must be, in a way; there’s the physical proof. It’s got my name on it. So surely, then, I have permission to at least try to write.”

“My workspace is a mess! Part of this must be because I am scattered and confused all day long, and my external world mirrors my internal pretty closely. In my defense, I have to work on a hundred projects at once – writing new pieces and articles, editing old ones, researching projects I have to fundraise for now but won’t write for years.”

“I used to stumble across some beautiful work desks as I wandered the city, and I’d make a mental note of the location and return in a day or two with a tripod. I didn’t want to call ahead because I wanted to capture the spaces as they were — cluttered, not cleaned up and neatened.”

“Regardless of the medium, I start with an inspiration board. I have a magnetic wall in my office that I use to hang images. I pull a lot of film stills, images from the library’s picture collection and scans from my books.”