Mark's Cafe Moi: Why desks matter

I’ve been writing for many, many years. See my bio on the sidebar if you’re interested. Short stories from the time I was, oh, ten or so. Plays, plays, and more plays. Articles, book reviews, TV scripts, and full circle back to short stories (with a couple unpublished novels along the way, though eBook publishing may yet see one of them in the marketplace of so-so ideas). My keyboard and writing space have always been my instruments, much like a musician has her instrument. It’s one thing to sit at a table somewhere with a laptop, and quite another to sit at that one magic place where it all happens. Comforting, familiar, settled into and melded to the contours of my body and my mind. It needs to be just right. Since I moved in with Frank four years ago I’ve been using a small desk with shelves on each side that forced me to keep my knees almost together in order to sit there. The big spacious desk I had in Astoria got left behind – there was no room for it. I have one at the house that works very well, but this desk in our Manhattan apartment, while having sentimental value for me (it’s going in our attic room at the house now), sucked as a work space. I noticed it especially when I decided to really (really, honestly) get back to my short stories. That whole Kindle eBook thing has me intrigued. I noticed that when I’m writing fiction I need to be expansive, and my body wanted to open up along with my mind. But I couldn’t! The desk was too confining. I finally had to do something about it and, there as if by magic at Housing Works a block from the apartment, was a “small farm table” that is terrific as a desk. No drawers, but just enough bigger and with endless leg room. It’s all set up and I’m ready to go. Desks matter. Keyboards matter. Routine matters. Blank pages matter. All in the name of making something from nothing and marveling at what comes out.]]>