Come check out Janice MacDonald's studio! She is the author of the Imogene Durant Mysteries series.
The window faces west, which is vital, because that is where most of our weather comes from. And as Margaret Atwood once answered someone wondering why Canadian fiction was so often focused on the weather conditions, it’s because here the weather can kill you. I am, of course, usually trying to 
pin it on someone else.
Calling it an office or a studio is a bit of an overstatement. It’s really just a corner of the long living room of my small apartment, where my white IKEA desk sits right under the window from which I can see the river, a view I never grow tired of. On the desk is my laptop, a couple of organizers I occasionally sift through, a ceramic pot my mother made full of pens, pencils, scissors, two letter openers, and, for some reason a pair of chopsticks. My working notebook is usually there, too, and a pile of reference books, and the mini shrine to whatever writer my detective Imogene is reading at the time.
I live alone in a relatively serene area of my city, so aside from the occasional fire engine siren going by below, or the neighbour above me (who I swear is building Rube Goldberg machines involving ping pong balls and cascading dominos), I have no reason to hightail it out of here to some woodland retreat. When I do travel, it’s for research and to tap into the “fish out of water” essence that my main character feels as she reads her way about the world. Whenever I am away, I seem to be set up at the kitchen table, because very few furnished apartments I have found extend to having a desk or office space. I grin and bear it.
When at home, which is eleven months of the year, I do my crossword and word games at the kitchen table while eating breakfast, and then work at my desk every morning till I’ve completed at least five pages of whatever draft I am working on and then I am free to play, read on the balcony, visit with friends (or do chores) the rest of the day. Even if I’m crunching a deadline and working flat out, I tend not to write after five pm. For one thing, the sun comes directly in the window and into my eyes around then. For another, well, it’s not as if I’m racing against the clock to eradicate world hunger, now is it?
To my left is a wall of bookcases that runs all the way back to where the “dining room” portion of the room lies. At this end, the books are double stacked. There is a shelf of Irish books, another of Italian and yet another of Czech books—novels, short stories, guide books, poetry, dictionaries. The Paris books have been re-shelved further along, no longer needed within arm’s reach. The lower two shelves of this last bookcase hold boxes and filing baskets of stationery, paper, envelopes, maps, and notebooks. Some of this stuff has spilled out into piles on the floor in front of it, which annoys me, but apparently not enough to do anything about it.
Interesting tidbit: I bought my chair at a discount furniture store, and it’s very comfortable. What is more, it’s famous. I see it constantly on television shows, in office and boardroom settings. Mine is white with chrome details (like, for instance, on the set of Younger). It also comes in black (The Good Wife).
Books in the Imogene Durant mystery series
Turnstone Press Ltd.
