Well, the month-long experiment is over. We ended up with sixteen creative spaces from a variety of different people, with some very interesting ones included (like Kyla Ward's mirror room, and Damien Kane's mobile office!). Thanks so much to everyone here who contributed, it was a heap of fun to do, and there's now a website as promised containing them all. The URL is:

http://creativespace.martinlivings.com/

Cheers, and thanks again!

Martin
31-10-07

Creative Space
Grant Watson

Ok, so this is the view of my creative process: I don't write too much on paper any more, except for vague story or scene ideas that I get while on public transport, the occassional snatch of good dialogue I'll think up. That sort of thing.

If I'm knee-deep in writing a script I have to have music filling the silence up, but it can't have lyrics that otherwise distract me, so hence the big collection of movie soundtracks above and to the right of the monitor. The speakers for my computer died recently, hence the old set of headphones next to the mouse.

Above the shelving unit is (in various locations):

- A Balinese monkey mask I got when I was seven years old. I have cautiously avoided asking what animal the fur on it comes from for my entire life.

- My wife's collection of different dolls from around the world from her childhood.

- The "Pigs in Space" set from The Muppet Show, currently piloted by Miss Piggy and an unfortunately designed X-Men Cyclops figure where if you press a button on his back he whips his arm up to his visor... unless you only half-bend the arm at the elbow, in which case he gives you the finger... unless you don't bend the arm at all, in which case he gives a Nazi salute. Disturbing.

- Lots of collectible figurines from those little Japanese toy
capsules: Disney princesses, Spider-Man and his enemies, Megaman, some Pokemon.

- A Dr Elefun statue in a little case.

- The collected cast of The Tick in plastic form.

- A six-piece photo frame set containing every surviving photo from my honeymoon. We took a camera with us that turned out to be broken, and these were the only images we managed to get out of it.

Making up the room behind me is a black couch that folds into a bed, a Ferris Bueller's Day Off lobby card, and two shelves filled primarily with play and film scripts.

Grant Watson

Grant Watson is a play, comic and television script writer. His plays include Degree Absolute and Serpentine, his comics include The Angriest Video Store Clerk in the World and Henry & Gil vs the Infinity Engine and his TV includes several failed projects that died before broadcast and something for the ABC he can't talk about yet.

http://angriest.livejournal.com

Creative Space
Nick Evans

A journalist's working space, complete with working journalist.

Nick Evans is a lazy bum who never responded to my request for a description and bio for his photo, so I did some research on Wikipedia instead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Evans_%28disambiguation%29

Nick Evans is the name of several notable people:

• Nick Evans (born 14 August 1980), a New Zealand rugby union footballer
  
• Nick Evans (trombonist), a British jazz trombonist of e.g. The Keith Tippett Group, Soft Machine
  
• Nick Evans (linguist), an Australian linguist specialising in Indigenous Australian languages.

I don’t think our Nick is any of these. Therefore he’s not a notable person. So why are we showing his photo here? I don’t know.

Oh, all right, fine, here you go...

Nick Evans is one of only a few journalists in Australia dedicated to the biotechnology field. Over the course of his career he has worked as a barman, a Research Officer to a politician, a Trade Union official, and as the Media Officer for a local government authority. He is not planning on giving up his day job. Most recently he co-edited The Workers Paradise for Ticonderoga Publications.

http://ticonderogaonline.org/publications/workersparadise.html
http://crankynick.livejournal.com

Hi all,

I'm starting to run out of photos for my Creative Space project. If anyone else is going to send me a photo, description and short bio, you'd better do it soon, because once I run out, that's it!

Email me at creativespace@martinlivings.com if you want your photo and description up here. It's been great thus far, and I'd hate it to die an early death (ie, before the end of October!).

Creative Space
Robert Hood

My "creative space" is smallish -- what you see here is pretty much what you get. As I have a daytime job, I only spend time in it a few hours in the morning and (sometimes) at night, and at weekends and on holidays. Basically it serves two functions: drop-in, sit-down and write, and keep track of the business side (which I'm much worse at than I am at the writing bit). Hence the cupboards and filing cabinets. Creative meditation takes place elsewhere in the house. The fourth wall behind the POV is a wall-to-ceiling inbuilt cupboard, with mirrors as doors. As I'd rather look at monsters than myself, these doors are covered in movie posters -- "Godzilla", "Them" and "Tarantula!" at the moment. In the inbuilt is... more stuff, mostly books. Off-screen on the right is a large sliding-door and window, but I rarely pull back the blinds as all it looks out upon is a fence and the side wall of the neighbour's house.

The visible shelving (in front and above the desk) is mainly a repository for reference books, but there's also piles of unsorted papers, graphic novels, notes, CDs and DVDs and books for review or other purposes (I recently organised the film festival stream of Conflux 4, so the residue of that is still in evidence). I only use a laptop in this room as all I do is write on it. Graphic work takes place in my uni office or in Cat's room (where there is a big desktop Mac). The statue of the skeletal warrior came from a bookshop in Leura. It and the gargoyle serve as silent sounding boards for ideas. The painting on the left is a Shaun Tan original of a cover for one of my children's books.

Also of note is the iPod, which has become a constant companion and is full of music that Cat hates (Hawkwind, Jethro Tull, etc.); but I tend to only listen to it when I'm doing business as I'm finding music too distracting to listen to while writing these days. The pile of crap on the right of the table top are notes on stories, print-outs of research material, manuscripts that need reading, issues of "Fortean Times" and unpaid bills. If the picture was higher resolution, you'd no doubt be able to see all the cat hair that gets left behind by visitors...

Robert Hood

Though best known for his horror stories, Robert Hood also writes fantasy, SF, crime and various other mutated forms. His books include Immaterial: Ghost Stories, Backstreets and the Shades series of supernatural thrillers. He writes film commentary and occasionally edits anthologies -- such as the award- winning Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales, which he co-edited with Robin Pen, and its two follow-up volumes.

Corralling giant monsters, zombies, ghosts and madmen: that's why his room is such as mess!

http://www.roberthood.net

Creative Space
Stephanie Gunn

My writing "room" consists of one fixed object - the laptop. I've always preferred writing fiction on a laptop rather than a desktop. I suspect a lot of that comes from the fact that I wrote a PhD thesis on a desktop. Arthritis makes it difficult for me to sit at a desk for hours on end, so the couch is a comfortable compromise.

Note also the ugg boots underneath the coffee table and the blanket - both essential in the cooler weather. On most days the laptop would also be joined by a mug of tea or bottle of water. Note also the (semi) optional cat, who is usually trying to get onto my lap (even though the laptop is already there) or smooching up and distracting me.

Not visible is the television and DVD shelves. I like to write to visuals as well as music sometimes - at the moment, writing is being accompanied by "The X Files" or "Battlestar Galactica".

I'll be moving to a larger home soon and am looking forward to setting up a more permanent writing area. Knowing me, the laptop will probably end up exactly where it is here again.

Stephanie Gunn

Stephanie Gunn has a PhD in genetics and immunology and therefore choose to write dark urban fantasy. She has had short stories published in the likes of Shadowed Realms and is currently at work on a novel, Thought and Memory. She also reviews for Horrorscope.

http://www.stephaniegunn.com/

Creative Space
Damien Kane

I see so much on my train ride home
In this diverse culture of ours.
From people who kiss and caress each other
To the ones who are silent for hours.
But do you look upon their faces
As they sit down near to you?
They look different and interesting
Like me, they're just passing through.

They are the personality of my novels
With their funny airs and graces,
The drinker's tattoo, the old hag's hair
The young girl with twisted braces.
How can I not love to write
With so many people to write about
They each have many stories:
I just ask and they come out.

For me, I love the silence
So I can write up my next story
About a blade, a man and a monster or two:
Yes. Something that has to be gory.
I use the people around me;
My characters are born from the train
I don't understand these people
And tomorrow, I'll see them again.

I love to write on the train:
It's my personal writing room.
I can write anything I desire:
From romance to impending doom.

Damien Kane

Damien Kane lives in Brisbane Australia with his wife and three kids, a dog, two budgies, four fish and two snails. He met his wife on the internet about 10 years ago when living in England. He currently suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, sleeps a lot, and gets on the wife's nerves. He's written hundreds of short stories and poems and has around 12 novels in first draft and another four on the way.

http://www.damienkane.com

Creative Space
Trent Jamieson

This is my writing room/study. I started using an exercise ball instead of a chair about two years ago, and find it much more comfortable. I generally write about 1000 to 3000 words a day, staring up at that wall, and it stares back. It's all very serious, the only thing that winks is my slowly dying laptop and, as far as I'm concerned, there's a hell of a lot of pathos in that winking. There are three whiteboards on the wall, on which I always intend to write notes, but rarely do. This room also contains four more bookshelves, a big comfy black leather chair, an old travelling chest, a cat and an opium pipe – the latter of which I would use, if I smoked opium, the cat, of course, does and is even now riding the dragon, I just wish he wouldn't wear my red velvet smoking jacket.

Trent Jamieson

SF writer and Silent Motion Picture Actor, Trent Jamieson should be 106 years old, but is only 34 on account of TEMPORAL RADIATION. He lives in Brisbane with his wife, Diana, and won the 2005 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story. He is currently working on a novel called "Roil". His short story collection, Reserved for Travelling Shows, is available from Prime Books.

http://trentonomicon.blogspot.com/

Creative Space
Stephen Dedman

Because of the shape of my study, it's difficult to capture all of it with one photo even on wide-angle: door in one corner, desk in another, the other end of the room dominated by bookshelves. The picture of the floor is probably the most representative of my organisational skills.

The desk is relatively new: my old desk had survived nearly 40 years before being damaged in the last move. Most of the surface is dominated by the laptop and peripherals - and, of course, a very large mug of tea and a dinosaur tooth. Two drawers contain printer paper, envelopes, and other stationery for the odd occasion when I need to send off a hardcopy; the other is filled with old photos, fossils too small for the shelves, old letters, and other mementos. Most of the books in this room are non-fiction, yet to be sorted into any system; the shelves are also a home to action figures of some of my literary heroes (Shakespeare, Poe, Wilde, and a dodo standing in for Lewis Carroll), as well as other influences on my writing.

Stephen Dedman

Stephen Dedman says: I’m a writer: author of four novels, a non-fiction book and more than 100 short stories, plus reviews, role-playing games, stageplays, essays and editorials. Most of the fiction I’ve written has been speculative, fantastic, or just plain weird, but I’ve also written thrillers, erotica, and westerns. Sometimes all at the same time.

http://www.stephendedman.com

Creative Space
Sean Williams

The picture is in soft focus, which is how I mostly see the space while I'm working in it--through peripheral vision. The desk used to belong to my grandfather, Harry Schiller, who always wanted to be a writer but ended up being a farmer instead (and discovered the massive Cowell Jade Province in South Australia, but that's another story). Above my monitor is a stunning work by Art Vanderbyl that's been in my family ever since it was painted in 1976. The wooden desk and the painting's muted tones balance the harsh, high-tech light I work under every day, and gives my study a warm ambience--or so it feels to me, anyway. The room is dark, but it's actually brighter than I would normally keep it. I like to mushroom all day with the stereo (positioned directly behind the chair) burbling innocuously away in the background, no matter what the weather is like outside.

I doubt there's much here that isn't in most other writers' studies: the dictionaries and other reference works within easy reach; the photos of family and loved ones; the disorderly pile of books waiting to be read; bragshelf and awards to the very right of the picture; even a token dumbbell or two, indicating an awareness of one's sedentary lifestyle, even if that doesn't extend to actually exercising very often. But there are unique details: the sonic screwdriver Danny Oz sent me a couple of years ago; a beautiful green box I've kept from the wedding present Deb Biancotti gave Amanda and I earlier this year; a wooden "drum" given to me by the Writers on the Edge writing group in thanks for taking a retreat with them in 2005; the carved wooden lizard given to my father when he was working for with communities in the North Territory when we lived up there in the 1970s. Touches like these -- along with the desk, the painting, and others you can't see -- make the space mine, and make the words written here all that more
special to me.

Sean Williams

Sean Williams is the author of over sixty published short stories and twenty-two novels, including the Books of the Cataclysm and The Resurrected Man. His work has been published around the world in numerous languages, on-line, and in spoken word editions. His current projects include Astropolis, a gothic-noir gender-bending space opera trilogy, and The Broken Land, a dark fantasy series for children. He is also writing the novelisation of the forthcoming Star Wars computer game, The Force Unleashed.

http://www.seanwilliams.com