I’ve always had a complicated relationship with writing desks. It seems absurd to say such a thing, because a writing desk is an inanimate object and therefore indifferent, which should make having a relationship with it anything but complicated.
But, for writers, or anyone who spends several hours creating at a desk every day, that relationship is important. You have to be able to live together in harmony. Perhaps it’s this way with a musician and their instrument. Maybe even more so for them, as they tend to travel with the inanimate object they’re having a relationship with, and I generally do not lug my desk along when I travel. Sure, I’m bogged down with pens, notebooks, and tablet, but that’s another story altogether.
Where I get my real writing done, my final drafts, submissions, blogging, publishing, all happens here, at my very small, very cheap, and very reliable little desk. But it wasn’t always this way.
My first desk was a thing of beauty.
Oh, shit. Wait. Too far back. My first real desk, I mean.
I hated my bedroom. My mother and I moved into the home of a guy she’d recently started dating when I was 9 years old. Suddenly, I was sleeping in a strange bedroom that was not mine. It contained a bed and a small dresser that didn’t belong to me, and hideous wallpaper printed with little girls and puppy dogs that was better suited for a baby nursery than a weird kid who played Atari and was getting into The Doors and Stephen King. The wonky door didn’t close all the way. This bedroom wasn’t a sanctuary. It was ugly, and I felt like an interloper. It had been decorated for two baby girls from this man’s previous marriage, who now lived in another state with their mother.
But, this room had a tiny alcove with nothing occupying it. It was painted light mint green with no baby wallpaper. I envisioned myself in that space, sitting at a fancy roll-top desk, scribbling in my yellow legal pad, or banging away on a typewriter. After months of begging and pleading, my mom picked up a little pine desk from a discount naked furniture store. I lobbied for a matching chair, but had to settle for a folding metal chair from the basement. The desk, while far from magnificent, was the only stick of furniture in this bedroom that belonged to me. It buzzed with potential in the tiny green alcove and it was mine. That felt like powerful magic. However, because it was unfinished wood, I was not allowed to sit at it, or touch it with my grubby kid hands until Mom stained it, which took a few more months of patience.
Finally, when I was 11 years old, I sat down at my newly varnished desk with my yellow legal pad and set to work on continuing my horror story about some dude, who murdered another dude, who came back to life to wreak havoc. Not very original, I know. But, it was the mid-80s and I was reading a lot of Stephen King and renting a lot of B movies like Basket Case, Sleepaway Camp, and Mountaintop Motel Massacre. I didn’t care about originality. I didn’t concern myself with writing a perfect story. I had a desk. I was writing. I felt like a real writer.
Before long, the spell was broken. I’ve never been good at math. I have a tendency to zone out and daydream whenever the subject comes up. If you try to discuss economics or numbers with me, I won’t be able to follow along. I will mentally float off somewhere else. So it was in school. My desk became a place of punishment. No more yellow legal pad. No more stories about vengeful reanimated corpses. Just me with a pile of shitty math workbooks that Mom picked up from fucking Kmart. The desk became less magical, and when I turned 18, my mom threw it in the front yard with the rest of my meager belongings, like Henry Chinaski’s father in Ham on Rye, and I left it with a good home before moving out of state.
After a series of adventures and wandering, I became an adult with a job and a live-in boyfriend. I bought a car and a house and a computer. I sat at my kitchen table, listening to that screechy dial-up making a connection so I could fuck around on AOL and Napster. Boyfriend bought a used metal desk that he apparently acquired by time traveling back to an office building in the 1970s. I moved the computer from the kitchen table and proceeded to work on some goofy short stories about Greek Gods and King Arthur. Don’t ask. It was a phase I was going through.
When I left boyfriend a few years later, I left him the house… and the dented, oversized, 1970s desk. I went to a furniture store and picked out a heavy oak computer desk. It was more than I needed, but I loved it, and once again, it was something that was all mine.
I spent countless hours at that desk. I stayed up all night smoking cigarettes and drinking Guinness or absinthe while typing out nonsense and making friends in far off places. I built my first website to show off my writing. I did bong hits and played hours and hours of Sid Meier’s Civilization. I started emailing some French dude who would later become my husband. I wrote a lot at that desk, and passed more time there than in my bed or on my couch. The last night I spent in my Colorado apartment before moving to France, all my furniture was gone, except for that desk. I sat on the floor with my cat, eating a TV dinner while watching movies on my computer.
Then once again, I left my desk with a good home before running away to live in Paris.
Our tiny flat in Paris brought with it a new desk. A small, white desk made of heavy particle board. It had been my husband’s desk since he was a kid. I hated it. “How can I work like this?” I threw my hands in the air, the classic gesture of an artist’s righteous indignation. “I can’t write like this. I need a proper desk.”
Well… for the next few years, I wrote at that goofy little desk. I wrote several short stories, dozens of blog posts, and my first book, Human Detritus. Turns out, I could write like that once I got over myself and got the fuck to work. You’d think by this time, I would’ve learned that it wasn’t about the fucking desk. But, no. We went to IKEA and bought an insanely long and heavy desk that we installed under the eave in a corner of a big, cold, upstairs room.
I felt isolated and far away from the snacks in the kitchen. I couldn’t see out the window. The room had an echo. I managed to finish my second book, Broken Abroad, though it took a couple of years longer than I’d planned. I didn’t enjoy writing in that space, and found it nigh impossible to get my ass in the chair every day, so most days, I didn’t. I started writing at the dining room table on my iPad, or longhand in a notebook. I abandoned my writing desk once again.
I guess the desk didn’t care much for me, either. When we moved to the UK, only bits and pieces made it across the Channel. When our weirdo neighbor decided to remove part of the fence one day without warning, we used the remaining desk slabs to keep our dog safely enclosed in our yard. It seemed like the time had finally come to give up on finding the perfect writing desk. It was an impossible task, and even when I can find an amazing writing desk, I don’t stay put long enough to building a lasting relationship with it.
So, I ordered a tiny cheap desk from Amazon. It has no beautiful design. It is not constructed of golden, glowing oak, or clean-smelling pine. It takes up very little space and is too small to be scattered with objects. It has no drawers to be rifled through. I put it in the corner of my room, and have been more productive here than at any other desk I’ve owned.
Now I get it. Several years ago, I read Stephen King’s On Writing for the first time, and several fragments of the book stuck with me over the years. One of which is the bit where he talks about his desk. He dreamed of a massive oak desk, but when he finally got it, he discovered that it didn’t serve him well, and ended up with a smaller desk tucked in a corner.
All these years later, after my flings and break-ups with various writing desks, and multiple readings of On Writing, I remember that I started doing this before I ever had any desk at all. I’d sit on my bed and write my stories with my yellow legal pad held on my lap. It was never about the desk. It was about excuses, procrastination, and thinking that I had to have some sort of writer’s sanctuary in order to create. But, that’s bullshit. A writer isn’t someone with the right desk. They’re just a person writing down a story and sharing it with other people. And often, they’re a person who’s quite good at making things too damn hard on themselves.
Thirty-five years later, Stephen King is still teaching me about being a writer. Thanks, Mr. King.
