Lately I’ve been afflicted with the most gruesome of obsessions: finding THE one.
Desk, that is.
Plagued by the daily (sometimes, hourly) updates from Apartment Therapy and in the same vein as my rearranging/reinvention stint, I’ve been hunting for desks and other furniture for five weeks now. It is exhausting to find the right desk. I’m of the opinion that if you have a decent desk, writing will be easier and the daily exercise just might produce some good work. Something about the smell of particle board just tells me that new, exciting things are abound.
What I’m starting to realize now, however, and at a bad time, is that most of my writing comes when I’m not trying to write. Ironic, I know. And I really should have known this was going to happen.
I realize that I do a lot of writing in my head while I’m walking the dog, waiting in line at a coffee shop, looking for desks online, in the shower, or when I’m on the phone with friends. Sometimes I consult the many mini-notebooks that have fallen victim to half sentences scribbled in bad pens (sometimes stubby pencils). The time I spend writing at a desk is when I flesh it all out and tease the words out of my brain. Then, I suppose any old desk would do.
I guess it’s not the desk that you need, or a new laptop, new pens, or leather-bound notebooks, to write (though they certainly help). Sometimes all you really need is a space that is yours and time selfishly devoted to committing your thoughts to paper. So until I get my own little writing nook or a small cottage out in the woods to write, I’ll focus on making my space as conducive to writing as possible. And guard my writing time against the hawks of distraction: Facebook, email, and web episodes of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
