Better Bed in

Feeling like you want to hide away and hibernate? Here, celebrated author and Women's Prize for Fiction V.V. GANESHANANTHAN reflects on the radical joy of duvet days.

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Some people like the lines between their work and rest brightly drawn. Not me: I've always thought of going to work as going to bed. In winter, especially, this is convenient; if set up properly, what is a bed if not the very puffiest of coats? These days, I live in one of America's coldest places, Minneapolis, where the winter is its very wintriest. I work and write, and hibernate in bed, a cosy habit I have cultivated since childhood.

My first office was a single bed. Four-poster, white and flowered, with a pink canopy, it had matching pink sheets and a quilt, and was surrounded by the pink wallpaper I chose at five and lived with until 18, long before I was published as VV, back when I was just called Sugi. The bed had a matching white desk, which I used for studying the subjects I didn't mind, but also didn't love. That work was often fuelled by candy. Food was not allowed in bed, unless you were sick. This was not my parents' rule, but mine: Bed was for books, and therefore sacred. No crumbs allowed.

Because I preferred to read lying down, when I began to write, I also wrote lying down, propped up on my elbows and warm under the covers. On weekend mornings, when everyone else was still asleep, I exited my office, shivering, to retrieve an exercise book, before scurrying back to safety. If I got stuck in my story, I put my head down on the pillow and dozed or not-and when I lifted it again, most of the time, the problem was solved, or had become more interesting in a way that allowed me to move forward.