A Desk of One's Own

We write on laptops, most of us. I still prefer to write down ideas on paper first, but most of my writing is typing, still. There's nothing magical about having a flat, elbow-height surface to prop your work on, preferably in front of a window with a view just inspiring enough yet not too distracting. Others make do with a blank wall. I flip-flop between the two.

But the desk is the important part. Unlike a chair, which has to support every part of you independently or else induce aches and pains, a desk is a simple creature, and tame as a cat. It only needs to support you from the wrist down.

I'm home again and sharing a room, which is nice in its own ways. My things on one side, yours on the other. No need to draw a line down the middle. Being a writer means learning to share even when you don't want to, until it becomes instinct. Finished a poem? Screenshot and share it with my poet friends. Don't know which version of a paragraph sounds better? Read it out loud! More often than not, a reader has to step in to do a writer's job, because writers don't write for other writers. It's a really selfless act most of the time.

But the desk.

The room's too small for a second desk. I work on a technicality: it was mine first. Those are my scratches and my wax drops and my ink stains. Five years ago I picked it in IKEA because it looked refined with its little drawer in front. But that was five years ago, you remind me. For the past three, it's been mine.

Have it your way, I say, but we have to share. You're at school most of the day so I have it until four. But there's a catch, as usual. I can't write in the daytime.

So really a desk is a much more complicated thing, because this desk only becomes a desk I can use once the sun goes down. Coincidentally, that's when you get home, with bags of homework and flash cards. What do I say to that? I've had my fill of revising in the dead of night at that desk, and it's served me well. I'm done with all my schooling, graduated from desk to desk and came back home.

I leave you alone. I go downstairs, plop my laptop on the biggest book I can find, but it slides off onto my lap. I'm reminded of King Lear:

I don't need a desk. My laptop keeps my lap warm and I can still write on paper, too, when I can prop it comfortably on my knees. I won't stop writing without a desk. Don't be dramatic.

There are very few things you need to call yourself a writer. That being an imagination, and the boldness to call yourself a writer in the first place. What comes after if simply consequence. I write because I have to, desk or not. I'll write in chalk on the side of a wall if I had no paper.

Man's life is cheap as beast's, that's true. Stripped down, almost all is excess.

But, damn it, I am a writer and I want a desk to write on. Not just the wooden structure but the entirety of it, all. For me, a desk is a time between 7 PM and 2 AM, a slightly hungry feeling in my belly, cold feet tucked under myself, and the beginning of a headache. And a desk to lean against. Maybe I am picky. Maybe writers are less like the hardy weed and more like houseplants, that can only survive under constant perfect conditions, and even then wilt without explanation.

We write, nevertheless, but we're not going to be happy about it.