I think it’s safe to say it’s been a year like no other. Since the start of the new decade, I’ve worked in four different places around my house. I started off 2020 at my usual desk in our bedroom. When child number three came along, we moved our study to our bedroom so it’s been my work space for quite a long time. But I dreamed about a cabin in the garden. We even got as far as checking out a company but it was quite a lot of money, plus it made sense to do the whole garden at the same time. We would need to save for a while longer.

Then lockdown hit in March 2020 in the UK. At this point, writing books was still a hobby despite my best efforts to get an agent. So, reluctantly, I gave up my desk for my husband and moved to the dining room table. My older two children were supposed to do final school exams that year but they were cancelled. My youngest had minimal work to do, so he did it as fast as he could sitting on the sofa.

In the summer of 2020, two amazing things happened – I got an agent and a publisher! So I spent the autumn editing my debut novel at the dining room table. To quote the wonderful A.S. Byatt in The Children’s Book – ‘Writing stories, writing books, is fiercely solitary, even if done by housewives in snatched moments at the edge of the dining room table.’

Then disaster struck. Increased Covid cases at my youngest’s school meant he had to go back to home-learning from December 1st. Initially it wasn’t too bad as eldest son was at university and little brother was using his room. But then he came home for the holidays and youngest needed somewhere else to work (he has the box room and therefore no space for a desk). Fortunately, I was almost finished with the editing and would ‘snatch my moments at the dining room table’ at the end of the school day.

2021 brought another lockdown and once more, all five of us were at home and all needed to work. I was editing book two and it didn’t take much Maths skill to realise I had nowhere to write. By now, we had managed to save enough to have our garden landscaped but the cabin couldn’t be built until March. In the meantime, I moved into the conservatory with an improvised desk of two cabinets with two shelves laid across. It was far from ideal. I’d rescued the cabinets when we cleared out our old shed. They’d belonged to the very first owner of our house and were originally from a bank. I don’t claim to have restored them particularly well but they’re a lot better than they were!

So I edited book 2 during the spring, in between making cups of tea for the gardeners and making sure everyone else was OK. Then in March, the cabin arrived. It only took three days to build but it’s taken a lot longer to paint! The plan was to move my things into the cabin over the school break but fate intervened in the form of my editor who wanted me to rewrite part of my book – well, half of it in reality. That meant writing during the holidays so it was a swift move into my new office at the end of the garden. And I have not looked back!

I love having my own space again and my dream of a cabin in the garden is even better than expected. I have a much bigger desk top for my cabinets, a comfortable to chair to sit on and there’s space on my bookshelves for lots more books. What more could an author want?


Joy Kluver has been an avid reader and writer since childhood. More recently she’s been escaping the madness of motherhood by turning her hand to crime novels. A book blogger, she’s also part of the First Monday Crime team and if you’ve been to any of their events it’s likely you’ve eaten one of her cookies. She also organises author talks for her local library. Joy lives in SW London with her husband and three children. ‘Last Seen’ is her debut novel and the first book in the DI Bernadette Noel series.