Author Kitty Murphy on her Writing Room: ‘a small room looking out over the garden, and the Burren beyond . . .’
Virginia Woolf said, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
I question the importance of anything other than the keys under my fingers and the words that take shape on the page, but writing books has become so much a part of my life, I can’t imagine being without it, with or without money or a room.
I think through writing, I feel through writing.
I sometimes wonder if I live through writing.
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I write murder mysteries as Kitty Murphy and darker, literary fiction as C L Murphy. I love working on non-fiction and book reviews and, when pushed, I draw cartoons. Between that, I talk to my dog and I play with Lego minifigures, and I spend far too much time on Instagram.
I also read a lot.
My work space is a small room looking out over the garden, and the Burren beyond. The walls are lined with books. Stacks more wait for my attention, for shelf space or for reading. There’s fiction and non-fiction, research and pleasure; I get through three or four books a week, a blessing from having rubbish health that keeps me in one place a lot of the time. I file each by order and category and I find comfort in the companionship of so many stories. I keep very few unread books and I donate anything I didn’t enjoy, so the characters who look down to me from their seats are those I know well and trust.
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I write every day possible. I work between ten and two, often staring out of the window or doodling between paragraphs. Somewhere along the line, I manage between 1500 words and 3000 words depending where I am in a book.
The room is warm. There are chairs for me and for my dog and I have three little desks wedged into an L shape. I use each in a different way:
My main desk was from Argos, bought in a Stephen’s Day sale nearly two decades back, a melamine atrocity built neither for function nor beauty. The drawer doesn’t open properly and refuses to give me back anything I keep there and the cupboard below spills my possessions onto the floor at any opportunity, often to the irritation of my dog.
My computer sits on the desk top with a huge monitor displaying three pages, and I have a soft touch keyboard as the arthritis in my hands makes my fingers a little sore when I’m typing. This desk is where I write the stories not yet ready for someone else’s eyes. New books live here, ideas, short stories, articles in different stages. I write freely with no judgement.
Alongside this and set at right-angles, is a Victorian desk that my mum got for a tenner from a junk seller. A ton of wax has brought out the sweetness in the wood but I love the damage on the leather and the mug marks and the tears around it, the little scrapes of life. My laptop is here with a messy stack of plot notes, and my favourite pencil clips and post-it notes. This is a space for editing and writing non-fiction, and reviews. Deadlines live here. This is where my brain must be ordered.
Lastly, fitting the tip of the L shape, is a wobbly, broken Davenport, once my Granny’s. This is where my diary and my life-lists live. Once posh, the carved bits have long since snapped and the key is lost for most of the drawers. One twisted leg rests on a large wooden block and a thick 70s sci fi paperback for balance. It now resembles a slightly shabby school desk.
I’ve known this desk since I was a child; sometimes, I think it feels more like Family to me than the original owner.
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I often think about Virginia Woolf.
She lived in a time when Having Money meant never having to worry about bills, or about anything much in that respect. She was born into a state of privilege I can’t imagine, but then she came from a place in history without the freedoms I’ve known, to be myself.
For all her fancy rooms, I wouldn’t swap.
I like my tatty desks and my stack of notes, and my computer that forgets it has Word on it and seems to take pleasure in freaking me out and pretending it doesn’t remember where it put my files.
I like my books.
My own publications are there too, some under different names, some my own. I’m immensely proud of each one and I love them all equally, from my murder mysteries set in a fictional Dublin drag scene, to the literary short stories that won me prizes, to the romantic suspense and the poetry, and the cutting queer comedy.
As with my desks, my books are a part of me. What better way than to live in freedom?
(c) Kitty Murphy
Read more from Kitty Murphy on Writing.ie here.
About Death in the Holidays by Kitty Murphy:
It’s Christmas in Dublin – the festive lights are on, shops are stacked with shiny things, it’s pouring with rain, and there are three furious drag queens and one divinely handsome drag king storming the gates of TRASH, the city’s third-rate drag club.
When Carol Singer, the visiting Welsh performer, is brutally murdered in the middle of the stage, Fi and her friends, Mae B, Del, Miss Merkin, Thora Point and Stan the Man, must stop feuding and work together to unmask the pantomime villain before another queen falls. The tinsel lines have been drawn but as Fi’s own world crashes around her, time is running out for everyone.
Camp, dark, and brutally murdery, DEATH IN THE HOLIDAYS goes to places other mysteries just wouldn’t dare: backstage!
Order your copy of Death in the Holidays by Kitty Murphy online here.
