It’s a rare author who can sit down and bang out several pages without becoming distracted. When your 9-to-5 consists of writing by yourself, just about anything can be an excuse to procrastinate. Does that countertop need cleaning? Of course it does, it’s filthy. And what about that leaky faucet? It needs to be fixed now, before any more water gets lost. Wonder what’s on Buzzfeed right now…
To get any work done, it helps to have a quiet, simple study, which is why so many writers seek country solitude. But how do city writers find their zen? For one anonymous author/illustrator, it meant hiring British architecture firm Weston, Surman & Deane, who designed this workspace — based on their client’s love of children’s literature and mythology — in Hackney, London, on a budget of $51,000, according to Dezeen magazine. The space falls into a long tradition of small, well-designed studios, like Roald Dahl’s Buckinghamshire Writing Hut, George Bernard Shaw’s Rotating Shed, and the Gazebo that Mark Twain built on his sister’s Elmira, New York property. We don’t know who owns the shed (though our first guess would be Mrs. Rowling), but whoever it is has big shoes to fill.