My desk last summer, it has gotten so much worse!
I was fascinated by this collection of photos. Writers at their work stations; creating, pondering, posing and working.
The creative process in others has always held my interest, no matter the art. I am a terrible cook, but love to sit, glass of wine in hand, and watch my husband create magic in the kitchen from raw materials. I am in awe of people who can knit and/or design clothing. I can carry a tune but would flounder immediately if you asked me to create music. I cannot paint, but love to look at art.
But write? Write I can do, and have long loved this personal slice of creation pie. I am happiest at my desk, coffee to my right, a cat sprawled to my left. I realised recently that I spend more time here per day than I do sleeping.
Looking over the photos in the collection above the image that connected fully with me was that of Tennessee Williams. His scattergun desk closely resembles mine; cluttered, covered in books, a mess of creation. How on earth everyone else works from serene tidiness is beyond my ken. Where is their…stuff?
Let me give you a run down of my desk right this second.
Aside from my computer there are many books, some open, some stacked precariously, there’s the wine glass from last night as I worked over edits and beside that a cup stuffed with pens and pencils; most of the pens don’t work (why the heck don’t I throw them out?), a pack of tissues, junk jewelry, a paperweight, a tin of paint ( cookie dough) a manuscript belonging to Declan Burke (new book, dark and entertaining), a silver carriage clock, a lamp festooned with earrings, notebooks – most open onto pages covered in my indecipherable scrawling handwriting, dog nail clippers, two speakers, a cardboard tube containing the blown up cover of Missing Presumed Dead, a small feather duster I use to play chase with Bill the Cat, a stack of plastic files, a kit-kat wrapper, a page of reader’s notes, sunglasses and finally, a letter my daughter wrote to ‘sunta’ aged six where she asks for ‘a rising track and woky tacky’ and informs him she had been ‘very good’ as she ‘fond 20 pond’s’ and gave it ‘to the man in the shop.’
So what about it? Are you a Williams or a Christie? Neat or threatened by teetering piles? Can you work from your lap like one person I know (impossible, I don’t know how he does it!)? Or do you need space and order to write and think?
This is realy interesting thing, places of work some of artistic souls! I see that each have some arrangement and people around think that is some mess but owner know exactly where he/she can find everything what is needed, great post!
If I tried to write down all the things accumulated on and in my desk, I could not, in the amount of space we have here to comment. That being said, before I write, I cook or paint, I must pretend (pretend being the operative term) to organize before I start. Its part of my creative process– that sense of purging. What really shocked me is that my 19 year old child– a boys boy, does the exact same thing before he needs to study. Is it a nesting thing? Is it something that comes preordained in our genetic composition? Or is it instinctive?
But this process, organizes my brain, it prepares it, it allows me to find that first sentence, that first brush stroke.
Interesting that your child does exactly the same. I wonder is it instinctive or has he just picked it up from you.
I write a lot at night. There is no one to seek me out, the telepone doesn’t ring and no one knocks at the door. It is quiet. I kid myself that I am in a long line of distinguished writers. Balzac wrote at night with his feet in a bowl of water. Doestoevski wrote night and day without sleep for several days at a time before having a fit. He had deadlines and needed the money for the casino. There is nothing cosy in it. It is more like boiling a kettle with the hope that it doesn’t run dry. I stumble against books stacked at random on the floor and my notes are in a disgusting state of disorder. I need coffee. Lots of it. I feek sick every few days. I resist the hoover and any attempt to tidy me or domesticate my surroundings. Am I happy in this confusion? Of course not.
“Balzac wrote at night with his feet in a bowl of water.”
What an odd thing to do, any reason given?
Arlene: thank you. I’ve just shunted piles off stuff aside with my forearm to make space for my keyboard (sending piles of more stuff tumbling off the edge of the desk and onto the floor) to say I am delighted to know that it’s *not just me*.
I have a weekly clear of my desk, a ritual that I really should turn into a daily one. My desk is so untidy that coach parties now arrive to gawp through the window. It’s untidiness taken to an epoch-defining level.
I try to tell myself that it’s the truest sign of my nimble, fast-moving creative mind but then a voice in my head that sounds uncannily like my mother’s says, “rubbish, you’re just a slob”.
The detritus currently within arm’s reach on my desk includes three empty beer bottles, a tin of fly spray, a small sponge (huh?), a framed photograph of Noel Coward, an empty biscuit packet, two empty crisp packets, an An Post ‘sorry we missed you’ slip dated three months ago, a birds nest of cables that are probably all connected to important things, a little whiteboard on which are scrawled four things I need to do, one of which is ‘haircut’ which I achieved last Tuesday and another is ‘finish book’ which I was supposed to achieve two weeks ago but haven’t, about six Hodges Figgis loyalty cards each with one stamp, an Ordnance Survey map of ‘Swansea and Gower’ and a twenty euro note my mum sent me with a post-it attached saying, “don’t tell dad!” (I am forty years old). Oh, and books. Lots and lots of books.
I dream of a clear desk. I always thought I’d feel like a proper writer with a clear desk. Ah well, maybe it’s healthiest to just keep aspiring. Actually no, it’s probably healthiest to stop drinking out of this mug that last saw the dishwasher about a month ago.
* guffaws, while wincing in recognition*
Stephen King described a magnificent desk he had made for his office in his book on writing, a proper ‘writer’ desk, which he then had to get rid of as he couldn’t work at it.
Somedays I feel like a wayward horse who needs almost to be back into my chair- complete with blinkers on– to work. On those days I think the clutter accumulates.
Do you find clutter seems to accumulate apparently without any input from you? I regularly approach my office door thinking, “ooh, it’s lovely to think of the nice tidy desk that awaits me,” only to open it and find I need some kind of sextant just to locate where my computer should be.
Yes! This morning a scarf has joined the madness and bottle of Hugo Boss (?) and Mr Muscle Bathroom& Toilet spray cleaner ( citrus fresh). That I do recall using on the floor where the blasted dog tracked mud in. I really ought to do something about this mess.
Perhaps after coffee.
* admires long finger*
My desk has to be scrupulously tidy – practically bare, in fact. The simple reason for this is that I can’t trust myself to have anything on it; I’m a shocker for procrastination and am ludicrously easy to distract. It’s bad enough that my laptop is always online; one minute I’m typing feverishly, the next I’m wondering, “Ooh, I wonder what my typing wpm is, anyway?” and doing an online speed test.
So the only things I can allow on my desk are my laptop, a thesaurus, a couple of notebooks and a pen. Oh, and a coffee mug. And crumbs. Always bloody crumbs.
Seriously, I can’t even have the curtains open, for fear the view of the bins at the side of my house will distract me.
That’s how the Monks worked! In silence and on thin boards free from clutter.
The invisible thread we are all perched on seems to be coffee.
You are all making me feel better about the state of my desk. It currently contains my laptop, a plastic bottle of Boots Spectacle Lens Cleaner, two tubes of hand cream (Boots Protect and Perfect AND Neutrogena – why?!), my address book, my Kindle, a copy of Anna Karenina (I’m not even reading it), a notebook, a box of business cards (mine), a delightful leather Indian cat moneybox given to me by my friend Aishwarya, my desk diary, another notebook, a coaster with an owl on it, a copy of Deborah Hautzig’s Hey Dollface belonging to my friend Helen, and the iPhone 4 I won at a table quiz a while ago but haven’t got the right sim card yet. Oh, and a bookmark from the Gutter Bookshop. Phew!
And I haven’t even started on the heaps of book proofs and magazines on the side of the desk.
It does stress me out a bit, though, which implies I would actually be happier and more productive if I cleaned it up a bit…
Heh, I have the day off, I * might* try do something about it, I’ll let you know if being tidy helps any when I attempt to work tomorrow.
I always think a tolerance for chaos is the mark of genius. Loved this post, Arlene!
Thank Betty! If that’s the case I eagerly await my Mensa bus pass. ( which will get lost in the clutter or sat on by an over weight cat)
Ah yes liked the look of the feline sentinels. Their contented purring must be very calming when you have deadlines!
Purring= good, chair sharing= not so much and sitting on keyboard to get attention= argh!
I hadn’t noticed the F buttons and what they do until the cat showed me:)
I think the guardian saturday review has a column showing a different writer’s room each week. At least it used to. Lovely post, I’m feeling envious of you lucky writers (I know I know it’s work, but it must be wonderful to be able to do it).
Useful creatures, cats. One of mine taught me how to shrink and enlarge the print on my screen with his oversized rump.
The Observer used to have a piece on authors called ‘how I write’ and I always marveled at how efficient and business like some of the authors were, rising at 5 and working until lunch, that sort of thing. I like the sound of the Guardian room sweep though. That would be interesting.
The sitting on keyboard thing might be a bit vexing alright!
At least they don’t bark!
I’ve got two dogs who love to converse loudly under the garden fence with the dogs next door. On both sides.
Look at the Francis Bacon studio in the Hugh Lane Gallery. An absolute tip! We can tell ourselves it’s all part of the genius!
Arlene, your cats and light-drenched desk look bucolic — no wonder you’re a genius wordsmith. A fun post! Years ago I interviewed Marianne Keyes and she told me she writes in bed with chocolate because a desk is too scary.
Anyhow, was just clearing some crud from my own desk and found some Christmas cards I was sent in 2008 beneath a wax glitter-covered gun my son made, which I use as a paperweight. I work in a cloud of dog fart too, Lisa. The fun.
However, yesterday I managed to script a radio ad and write a newspaper column, so reckon I’m just about coping, and when it all gets too much I put the wax gun in my mouth and pretend to die glamorously on my computer camera.
Shane, I did go see that, amazing room, how the heck did he ever find anything?
Heh, Jennie I am * most* grateful the basset chooses to sleep in the kitchen as he can clear a room with one ‘bum-toot’. Bravo on the productive day.
An old classmate of mine from History of Art was part of the team that put the recreated studio together in the Hugh Lane after it was all transfered and apparently it took MONTHS to get the insane mess exactly right. You’d think they’d be tempted to just chuck everything all over the place randomly and assume the effect would be the same, but no! Every thrown tube or book or whatever was replaced in exactly the right spot.
It must have been so tricky to get right, I have to say I was staggered by the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ he had in one tiny room.
Balzac had trouble with his feet and put salts and herbs in water and topped it up from time to time to keep it warm. Odd? Yes, he was odd, very odd. That’s what made him different.
Your cats crack me up. ‘No room for you, lady!’
I finally collected all the scraps of note paper from the desk and around the house for the book and tacked them on a corkboard. Now the clutter is moving to the walls, so not sure how that really helps.
It seems I am something of a push over when it comes to the cats.
I rather like the idea of a corkboard, I’ll bet it’s easier to locate notes that way.
Great post Arlene! It’s getting like a group therapy meeting here! I’m Abigail Rieley and my desk’s a mess…actually it’s more mess than desk at the moment. I work at the same desk I used to do my homework at as a kid. My mum painted it with fuchsias during my (long past) pink period. It’s probably far too small for my needs but I’m used to working in the confined space. At the moment it’s piled high with research that was sent to me for the new book, which is sitting on top of the census form (still waiting for collection). There’s a jar of change, several fountain pen nibs and a bracelet that broke that I haven’t got round to fixing as well as a stack of receipts I’m supposed to be scanning in my quest for order in this year’s taxes. There’s about half a dozen USB drives, a rather grotty blob of blue tac and a nut of the hexagonal variety, I’m no idea what from. Then there’s the stuff that’s supposed to be here. It’s pretty cluttered even when tidy with an assortment of talismen with various superstitious meanings (small pack of love hearts sweet from Brighton Pier, a little statue of the Hindu god Ganesh and some old lead print letters.
I keep telling myself I’d work better if it was tidy but somehow I manage just fine in the mess. At the moment I’m deep into research so the paper is accumulating fast. It’s not going to get tidy any time soon!
Heh, I like this, we should consider forming our own support group, start planning the steps required to tidier desks.
Course we’d write our affirmations on scraps of paper and lose them under teetering piles of unopened mail and empty crisp packets, but it’s the thought that counts, right? RIGHT?
I’ve actually had to move to the kitchen table as there is no longer room for my laptop on my desk. Some logic absent in this me thinks.
Like so:
http://twitpic.com/4mtn3p
Now THAT is an impressive messy desk!
Sewing machine and all! That’s what I call multi-tasking:)
I love all these images, it’s fascinating to see them.
My studio is a constantly morphing thing.Mostly is’t really messy but now and then I find the will to tidy it a little bit. Here is the slightly neater version.
http://nicedaydesigns-ruth.blogspot.com/2010/09/my-transformed-studio.html
Here is it’s normal state
http://nicedaydesigns-ruth.blogspot.com/2010/12/messy-studio.html
Next week I will be in prudence magazine with a ridiculous version, which it only ever looked like for the one day of the photography shoot.
I have just accepted my messy nature, and try not to get bothered by it. I tell myself it’s a sign of hard work