The best-selling novelist in history never had a proper writing room. She plotted while washing dishes and eating apples in the bath, kept about seventy messy notebooks, and typed on any steady table. Here is her imagined day.
Her own words: all you need is a steady table and a typewriter. No dedicated office, no ritual desk, no excuses. If the best-selling novelist ever could work anywhere, your setup is already good enough.
She said the best time to plan a book is while doing the dishes. Simple hands-busy tasks set the mind loose. Keep the Brain Dump close, because the ideas arrive at the sink, not the desk.
About seventy of her notebooks survive — plots, names and clues scattered in no order. The mess did not stop her; capturing everything is what mattered. Capture first, organize later.
Her pharmacy work in the war gave her the poison knowledge that filled the novels. Your ordinary work experience is unusual material to someone else. Write it down before you forget it.
Sources: her autobiography and the surviving plotting notebooks (studied in John Curran's Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks). Details are simplified for illustration.
One click adds this starter plan to your own Brain Dump. Free, no card needed.