Tour my Home Office
art + books + postcards from my heroes
I’m so happy to see you! How to Build a Life is a newsletter by me, bestselling author of 12 (!!) books Laura Jane Williams, going out to thousands of readers bang in the thick of life’s mess and mayhem… who are still trying to find the magic. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, decorate my house like a tart’s boudoir, and lift very heavy weights. Those four things are my entire personality. Oh! And so is my new writing course for 2025! Get involved! Anyway. I really love writing to you here. Hi.
First thing is first: the hill I will die on is that you don’t hate your home working space, what you hate is facing a wall.
The most frustrated I have ever felt is when we moved house and I got a whole room to create in and no configuration of office furniture seemed to work.
The cleverest I have ever felt is when I tried the desk in the middle of the room instead of facing a wall and suddenly, years of disliking home-desk-working made sense: why did I always prefer the sofa, or kitchen table, or Starbucks? Because I got to look out over the whole cafe! Or the whole living room! Or out of a window! There was suddenly space before my eyes for my thoughts!
In contrast, even when I had a cute office nook in my old living room, why did I dislike working in it? Because I was looking at a wall, my imagination having no room to run free - literally, my eyes were a foot from the wall.
So that’s the thing I love most about my new office. The desk is in the middle. I have room for my ideas. It’s helped!
The second thing I love about my office is the gallery wall.
I wasn’t going to have a gallery wall, I was going to be tasteful and considered and restrained, even though those three adjectives have never knowingly been used in relation to me or my aesthetic ever. Once the wallpaper was up, though, it felt imperative to cover the biggest wall with all my favourite images, so they can remind me of who I am.
I’d love a budget for original photography in proper glass frames, or a massive canvas that will one day be worth £50k, but instead I’ve got the first painting me and my kid ever did in a frame I (badly) painted with leftover sample pots. That’s a different kind of valuable.
I also painted the mount for this Penguin Classics cover with the dregs left over from the front door. Full disclosure: I have never read any Virginia Woolf (does loving The Hours count?) but I am aware that this quote is from the text, and I hold it dear: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I find it to be true.
Finally, I also painted the mount in the last image as well. It’s a birthday card from my Auntie Rose (remember her?) that is twenty years old. She got it me because she said that’s how she thought of me, impractically dressed, doing the jobs myself, a partner only in the background. Also: tits out??
Some other things I have on my gallery wall include:
