The Writer’s Den
Tara Moss is running a series of posts over on her blog on writers’ desks and what they look like. So I took a snapshot of my own, to see what it might reveal about me. Well, what do you think?
It was the maid's day off.
Looking at it with an outsider’s eye, I suppose it looks rather scruffy. Even looking at it with my own eye, it looks that way. Well, if I’d have known you were coming…
Just out of shot on the left is a filing cabinet so full I can’t get another sheet of paper in it – yet I can’t bear to throw out any of the junk it contains, which I never look at. Over on the right, again out of shot, is a bookcase and some drawers. The drawers are full of rubbish and the bookcase is full of books, CDs (mostly software), souvenirs, and a collection of mugs, each of which has its own story.
Left to right on the desktop are:
- Some unattended admin (receipts, letters, etc.)
- My pens, pencils , post-its and what have you
- My notebook (with the only pencil I actually use lying on top of it – a beautiful, lacquered, Waterman propelling pencil that my wife gave me over 20 years ago)
- A small weather station, ironically placed right in front of the window (shades of Subterranean Homesick Blues) The window, by the way, has a fabulous view across hills and forests.
- My Asus EeePC netbook, with a music CD lying open on top of it (a Christmas-themed collection of rock songs, compiled by a friend in Switzerland.)
- Tissues, spare ink cartridge, printer…
- The round white thing is a Stargate Atlantis coffee warming pad. It is, perhaps, the most useless thing I own (my Airedale excepted), but it lights up in neon blue when you switch it on and looks cool.
- Behind the coffee warmer is a collection of family photos (so I don’t forget who they are), a tray filled with flash memory sticks, acquired here and there, a phone and, out of sight, a bunch of chargers, USB hubs, transformers, and such. I actually have the wiring for 13 electronic devices on this desk. You can see some of it dangling attractively down the back.
- Then there’s my external hard disc drive (for backups)
- My dear old computer (actually, my original dear old computer died a few months ago but I got a new dear old computer with the exact same specification for $300 on eBay)
- To the right of the computer is a hideous but extremely reliable and accurate clock
- Another USB hub and an MP3 player
- A copy of Advice to Writers by Jon Winokur, which I won recently in a competition and which I dip into while my machine is booting, or I’m waiting for software updates, or whatever.
- Just visible at the top right is the corner of my whiteboard. This has the ranges of various instruments and voices written on musical staves, phone numbers, passwords, and Linux shell commands.
Just to complete the picture, the room also contains the gutted remains of my original dear old computer on the floor, a guest chair, a pile of wires of various kinds, pictures around the walls that are mostly from work-related events, a small collection of poker dice, a box full of music CDs I keep meaning to give away, and my guitar.
If you can imagine me slumped in that big, black chair, typing with three fingers at this blog post, you pretty much have my working life in a nutshell. It’s a good room and, I have to say, a good life.
What’s that desk space doing with nothing on it? I think you should go to your filing cabinet and get out some of its files and fling then about, and then go to the book shelves and pull out a few books and stack them so they’re just about falling over. And there’s empty wall space too. Stick some of these filing cabinet articles up on the wall. I think you tidied the place up before you took the photo, removing the empty coffee mugs, the full ash tray, the crumpled up failed attempts, the hole in the wall from a frustrated punch, the empty beer bottles.
LoL. Cleanups happen every six months – whether it needs them or not. You see it at the 3 month stage. As for the missing rubbish, I have a big waste paper basket standing on my desktop – just like Microsoft Windows! (out of shot to the left) This is where the crumpled up failed attempts live.
OMG you have an Airedale? Gorgeous!
Your workstation looks pretty much like hubby’s desk, right down to the many cables for computer add-on bits.
Mine is mostly paper.
Yep, the Airedale (called Bertie, after Bertrand Russell) is painfully gorgeous. It’s all that keeps him alive sometimes.
I suppose my desk is fifty-fifty paper and electronic junk – a real Twenty-First Century boy. I expect the paper will be down to about 25% in the Twenty-Second Century, reducing century by century until in 3010, the equivalent of me will live in a purely virtual world except for his body in its nutrient tank, jacked into the Net, with a single post-it note on it saying. “Do not unplug.”
Hi Graham – Happy New Year!
I like organised chaos as well!
I did a similar post a while back inspired by the Guardian series on writer’s rooms
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/writersrooms
and here’s mine!
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2009/03/15/my-writing-room/
Thanks, Joanna
Happy New Year to you too, Joanna.
I’ve just been over to look at your room and I can see some similarities – a certain degree of organisation without being anal about it.
I very much resonated with your comment about not separating life and work any more – and the sign of that being how you use your notebooks. This happened to me nearly three years ago – suddenly one notebook was all I needed for everything I did.
I love looking at author’s desks. Always interesting.
I do have to admit, your desk does look a little messy… yet at the same time organised. Some method to that madness?
Can I assume that you’ve read some of Tara Moss? Are her books interesting? I plan on buying one next time I’m out shopping
Hi Scribs. The method to the madness is this, I daren’t let it get too far out of hand or I’d never find anything!
Tara’s books are fast-paced crime stories. If you like suspense, you’ll enjoy them. She’s famous for the quality of her research – she likes to get first-hand experience of the things she writes about – which is a great way to have fun and claim it as a tax allowance now that I think about it.
it’s obvious that lots of work goes on here! your assessment of your filing cabinet and draws sounds strangely familiar…
Ha! Fooled you! It may look like lots of work goes on there but that’s just prestidigitation. (If I’d used Photoshop, it would have been prestidigitalisation.)
I suppose I need to take that filing cabinet out to the shed one day and get myself a new, empty one. When the shed’s full of filing cabinets, I’ll just get a new shed.
Great desk, and where can I get me one of them Stargate Atlantis thingys?
terry
Hey Graham
Just saw your ‘micro-site’ for TimeSplash, very impressive mate. Loved your video preview too.
It’s funny, but weren’t you the one Orbiteer who was unsure about having a blog, website, going online etc? You’re putting us all to shame!
Oh, and your writing desk is very…desky. Big fan of the Stargate Atlantis coffee warming pad. Where do you get those wonderful toys…?
Terry, Luke, the Stargate Atlantis coffee warming pad came as a free gift with one of the SGA series DVD sets (series four, perhaps). I also have a very cool Stargate flexible keyboard (that you can roll up!) which is also useless, and an amazing Stargate Atlantis miniature mouse, which is fully functional but too small to use comfortably. Both came as free gifts with boxed sets of DVDs. I am the uber sci-fi geek! If only my Baen’s Universe coffee mug had been in the photo, my uberness would have been incontrovertible.
I’m glad you liked the TimeSplash site, Luke. Yours was the one I was aspiring to when I put it together, but that kind of pazzazz is way beyond me. I’ll let you know if all that effort was worth it when the sales figures come in…
Better than mine – I do all my work on the laptop, so my “working space” is the couch in front of the telly.
Ha, ha! You mean THE couch in front of the telly. The most famous couch on the Internet. That couch.
Tell me, is it as good for working as it is for playing with?
Well, it is ridiculously comfortable, but it’s way more useful in the reading lounge form than the couch form. I’m thinking of building a mk2 version this year that can transform into a full size king-double mattress.
If the Mk II had a kitchenette and a bathroom, you’d never need to get off your couch for any reason at all!
My… my GOD, you’re right! You’re a genius!
These days I’m either at the kitchen table handwriting with a stack of filled fountain pens and a pot of coffee by my side, or laptopping on the couch with headphones and voice recognition.
When we have a bigger house I will have two writing rooms to reflect this dual personality. One will have a gorgeous antique desk with inlaid leather blotter, for handwriting, plus a chaise-longue in front of the fabulous view, for just thinking. The other will be ultra-cool, modern and sleek, perfect for business meetings and reading through lucrative contracts, and will be where all the technology lives. And I’ll still prob’ly sit on the couch with my laptop.
If I’m gonna daydream, I’m gonna take it way beyond the pages of the current work-in-progress.
Well, if you absolutely must sit on the couch, you’d better get the plans for a really versatile one from Ruzkin.
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