The Desk

I am fascinated by the rituals and good luck charms a writer must have to get work up and running or to finish work by. I am also interested in the things a writer absolutely must have to get work done. That might be as significant as a room of one’s own or as old school as a notebook and pencil. It might be a soft, silky scrunchy to keep an unruly fringe off of your face whilst slaving over the keyboard, or a doughy lump of soft slime used as a stress ball as you search for the perfect word or line of dialogue.

All of these things can be a vital necessity but they can also be a diversionary tactic. An objet du procrastination. In my case they might be the latter.

I’ve spent too long mulling over what I need to get my elusive work underway. I can’t possibly complete this play/novel until I have a proper place to write or a useful ‘thing’. Until I have it, I won’t/can’t write.

First it was a shed, preferably a Shepherd’s Hut type one but then David Cameron stole that dream from me, just like every fucking Tory does. Nevermind, I knew it was completely out of my league. Plus I live in a metropolis, which is a central part of my identity as a person and as a writer. What the hell would I really do in a Shepherd’s Hut?

I realised I needed to stop thinking about luxe and bohemian things and just think practical. What magic thing can I have that will give me space to write, that is spartan and fit for grafting? I lowered my expectations and trawled the web for a basic shed with a door and a big window, which I could then customise and decorate. But life plans got in the way and we spent any money we had spare on doing up our kitchen, usurping the shed dream. I resorted to buying a book about how to build your own shed. Literally everyone I know laughed at me. ‘As if’, they cried. ‘You can’t even make a sandwich.’ I laughed along but thought I could probably do it. I grew and birthed a child. Surely I could build a shed? Ten million glasses of wine later and laughing/crying at myself in the garden while I had a sneaky fag, I looked ahead at the spare piece of patio at the back of the garden and couldn’t see a shed being there at all, self build or not. How sad and disappointing life can be literally all the time.

With my dreams crushed, instead of writing, I spent more procrastinating hours on Facebook. Everyone was shouting about Brexit. My feed was full of racists and fascists and the Righteous trying to take down the R’s and F’s. It was hell. Even the ‘Have you seen my cat, he hardly ever stays out all night but he hasn’t been home for two days’ posts got sinister and dark. I thought that I would never get this writing off the ground. And what’s the point of writing anyway if there is an apocalypse on the way and everyone hates each eachother?

But then, like a nod from the Gods, a sign from the divine, I saw a post on a local marketplace board offering a desk and chair for sale. It spoke to me. It glowed orange with a matching chair, for God’s sake. It was wide enough for me to lay my head in my arms and cry on if I wanted. I could probably climb on to it and go all foetal on it too. I could dance on it. I messaged the seller immediately. She replied immediately. It was still available. She lived a few streets away from me. Cosmic. Witchy. A sign. I arranged to go and view it the next day.

The seller was a writer, a song writer, an artist. She was moving back to Ireland and felt it was time to let the desk go. She had owned it since university, bought it in a second hand shop and it had served her well. It was time to pass it on. I said to her that this was an auspicious sign. One artist passing on a wonderful object of ritual and a good omen to another artist, carrying all its history of whomever had owned it before her. It was an exchange of art and kindness and divine inspiration. In the midst of my psycho babbling the seller climbed on top of the desk to show me how sturdy and multi purpose this desk could be. Reader, I emptied my purse without measuring the desk, without even wondering if it would get it up my stairs and into the spare room. Reader, that is a story for another time.

In short, I got my ritual. I got my thing. I got my desk. It has turned out to be not as procrastinatory as I would imagine. I have written more and even started doing sensible things like plotting my play and thinking about proper structure, and sticking notecards above my desk to keep me writing. I’ve also done luxe and bohemian things and inhabited it with objects to keep me motivated. I’ve surrounded myself with everything I love and what inspires me to write and write better and be at one with my bad self.

It’s my desk and I love it.

What’s your desk, literal or not? What’s that thing you must have that floats your writing boat? Let me know. And tell your artist writer friends to let me know too. Let’s talk.

After thought:

I have an inventory of the things on my desk. I will save that for a later post if there is interest. Let me know if this is something you want to see.