An Aussie writer stumbles around Sweden, part 4

Hanging out in the writerly corners of Stockholm

Hello, in case you’ve missed the previous instalments in this series, I’m visiting Sweden for the first time. : ) We’re here for basically the whole of September and are therefore now in our final week before we fly home. I thought I’d give a little update on how my writing is going while my fella works his 9-5 job during the week.

The apartment we’re staying in here in Stockholm is a 20-minute train ride to the city centre in a suburb that’s, I guess, like this city’s answer to Silicon Valley. There are plenty of shiny corporate buildings for companies like Ericsson and IBM. We have a shopping centre 10 minutes’ walk away that’s like a Westfield. Inside lies the city’s second-largest library. It’s vibrant, multi-lingual, and has plenty of options for nooks in which to write – rounded chairs to sink into, private study rooms, metal picnic-table-looking set-ups, and more.

My preferred spot in the Gateau coffee shop.

Most weekdays, my routine has been to go to a café called Gateau for a cinnamon bun, savoury breakfast bun, or avocado on hummus and fruit toast, along with an iced latte, and start my morning’s writing. I’ll send out a couple of flash fictions to literary journals, reply to emails, and post on social media – that sort of thing.

Tasties in the Gateau display case — the best are probably the pistachio buns towards the top right. They’re all ace, though.

My next stop will generally be the library, where I’ll switch up what I’m working on – this is when I’ll likely be drafting up this Substack post, updating my website, or doing the homework my mentor has given me on my crime fiction novel manuscript for while I’m away. She’s given me several questions to answer about the motivations of my characters for committing murder and how suspicions of these can be weaved into the plot, particularly in the latter half of the novel. After lunch, I’ll come back to the apartment and continue plugging away at these tasks.

Of course, some days I’ve strayed from this formula. Tuesday last week, for example, I had a Zoom meeting in the morning with my writing group and we gave feedback on each other’s monthly submissions.

Our weekends have been reserved for sightseeing downtown and going on day trips to nearby cities. So far, I’ve quite strictly kept them to leisure time rather than squeezing in further writing. It’s been a nice mental break, although for my legs, not so much. We’ve gotten to around 20,000 steps each on those sightseeing days.

Reading Vogue on the train.

Actually, it’s not quite true that my weekends have been completely writing-free. Yesterday, coming back on a loooooonnnnggg train ride from Gothenburg (a 4.5-hour trip), I read the August/September issue of Vogue Scandinavia. On the ride to Gothenburg, I’d listened to the Scarlet Stiletto Bites podcast, which reads out one crime short story per episode, all winners of a prize in the yearly Scarlet Stiletto Awards at some stage during the 30-year history of the Awards. I mean, technically I wasn’t writing, but they were writing-adjacent activities. It was more to pass the travelling time than because I felt compelled to do them, though, which was nice.

Vogue Scandinavia had an article about surströmming, which regular readers will remember is the terribly smelly fermented fish I tried a couple of weeks back. Now I feel so chic knowing it was mentioned in Vogue, haha.

The magazine selection at the Pressbyrån convenience store in the central train station.

Anyway, it’s heartening to see how popular magazines are here. The Vogue I bought is in English, though many of the other mags aren’t, so I can’t quite go on a magazine-buying spree with my level of proficiency in the language unless I’m, er, buying them for the pictures. The mag scene might not be looking so healthy in Australia, but there are racks and racks of them here in delis and various other stores. Hooray for Sweden!