Writer's unblock

A home in California opens its doors to artists and authors, providing them with the setting that inspires themes and words.

Andrew Winer has characters and dialogues and plot lines in his head that get drowned out by the distractions at home. So each weekday afternoon, the author of the coming-of-age best-seller, The Color Midnight Made, bundles up his laptop and notes for a second novel and drives to a place where he can conjure an imaginary world.

Winer has found that he prefers the foreign silence and solitude of someone else's house to get the job done - a fact he has discovered as the first person to be invited by author Adeline Yen Mah and her husband, Bob, to use their weekend residence in Laguna Beach, California, as a writer's retreat. No cost, no interruptions, no time limit.

When Winer finishes his book, the Mahs plan to open the six-bedroom dwelling to other writers. For the couple, who had lucrative careers in science before retiring, the gifted space fulfils their dream of supporting emerging and established writers. In their starkly modern retreat, Winer has found a place where he can compose and revise his complicated story about art, marriage, religion and false identity set in Vienna, Austria, during the Second World War. He credits an increased flow of prose to working in this expansive, almost empty place that lets his creativity roam.

Inspiring angles

"It's quiet here and the angles of the house draw me out into the canyon, air and space. I feel as if I'm floating on the edge of something and there is a sense of limitlessness and potential."

Winer likes to work at a table in the dining room, facing a wall of glass, but after a while he's transported into whatever scene he's constructing.

"I have New York agents who ask, 'How do you ever get anything done in California? You just want to surf'." says Winer. "I tell them that I don't want anything to affect whatever emotion is called for, but I don't believe that a writer has to be in a banal or ugly place to work."

Privacy and community

The house, as Adeline envisioned it, needed privacy and a sense of community, where storytellers could gather and share their struggle of capturing the right words on a page.

"Writing is a solitary experience and although writers are not all alike, I think many of us would like to have a serene environment," says Adeline, 68, who spent decades scribbling thoughts in hospital dining halls before quitting medicine to complete Falling Leaves, her 1997 million-selling memoir about growing up in China, unwanted by her family. "For myself, I also need the company of interesting people for intellectual stimulation between bouts of writing."

The couple bought this contemporary house from a developer before it was completed in 2004, with the intention of making it a writers' retreat. They spent a year redesigning it with architect David M. Parker.

A retreat rises

The floors are polished concrete, the Modernist furnishings selected by Adeline. On the walls are abstract paintings by Bob, 73, a University of California, Los Angeles, microbiology professor who started painting after he retired. Instead of showy furnishings and finishes, this house shines with its unpredictable architectural lines.

The galvanised-iron roof rises and falls in seemingly random fashion. The largest window in front is an angular oddity, slanted at one end and wedged into place like a geometric jigsaw puzzle piece. Inside, steel supports lean at 45 degrees, corridors jig and jag, and railings bow like actors after a performance.

The couple liked the galley kitchen's asymmetrical walls but thought the centre island took up too much space. It was removed to make room for a built-in banquette.

It's Saturday night and the Mahs have invited a group of writers to dinner. The conversation circles around books, art, cinema and politics. Winer is there - comparing the Mahs' house to the Newport Beach, California, Public Library.