Starting as I mean to go on, I’ll continue today writing about writing. It’s quite simply the thing I’m finding it smoothest to write about at the moment. On my mind today: How can I create my very own writer’s desk?
I pride myself on my room’s aesthetic, primarily as it’s caked in as many house plants as I can get my grubby little green thumbs on. My desk, as it is presently, is home to three houseplants (and the airspace of another, which overhangs it.) Right in the corner I also have a fake one – I still wanted the colour without subjecting a living being to surviving in those conditions.
A Writer’s Desk: Myth or Fact?
Like anybody online interested in writing, blogging, and general online content creation, there comes a time when we get curious about the realities of like-minded others.
When I was younger and was interested in being a YouTuber, I spent hours watching set-up videos and equipment hauls, just so I knew what I needed to become a YouTuber myself.
My present day equivalent is reading blogs on what people’s desks look like.
And I don’t yet feel qualified is toss my hat in to this proverbial content ring (in a few years, perhaps.) For me now, creating a writer’s desk is a much more spiritual act.
A (Higher) Purpose
Wherever your “desk” may be, what do you do while you’re there? If your desk is your blanket in the park, what else are you doing there? If it’s your actual desk at home, what are you doing there?
Answering that question myself, my desk at home is far more than just a desk. As mentioned previously, it’s home to several plants. It’s my charging station, where I play Football Manager, where I watch YouTube and hours of football each week. I also write my blog here sometimes. This qualifies it as my writer’s desk.
Your desk could be anywhere – your local Café, your mobile phone on the way to work – think of it more abstractly, and simply think what else you do there/with that thing.
Next, ask yourself this: Given the amount of writing I’m actually doing here, am I qualified to call it a writer’s desk?
A bit of self-reflection never goes amiss. As I hinted at above, not a whole lot of writing has been done at my “writer’s desk” of late, so I know where my efforts should be next: purifying the purpose.
Like with philosophy, being a writer is in the practice (rather than the proof, or the pudding). If you practice writing at your writer’s desk often enough, then hurrah! All your boxes are ticked, come on through to the official writer’s club.
Isn’t a “Writer’s Desk” just arbitrary?
Maybe, yes. What’s a writer, and what’s a desk? I said before a blanket in a park or a mobile phone could be desks. So, what actually is it? And why am I writing about it?
For me, applying these “arbitrary” concepts makes working on the things I’m passionate about much easier. It works in a similar way of working on your life by being your own president.
If I romanticise sitting down and actually getting some writing done, and that leads me to sitting down and writing, then what is there to be ashamed of?
Creating these concepts, narratives and storylines (fantasies, if you will) makes boring and mundane, repetitive things exciting again. They don’t cost anything other than your own brain’s buy-in, and the return – if it’s for you – could be massive. This is what I’ve found.
I come in from a long day at my full-time retail job, I get a hot, steamy cup of decaffeinated coffee, and just for those hours I am a writer. I am going to work as a writer. Fulfilling a fantastical narrative in my head? Yes, absolutely. But am I actually writing, being a writer at my proverbial writer’s desk? Yes to that too.
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