Earlier this morning, somebody sent me a link to part of The Guardian website that hosts pictures and ‘biographies’ of writers desks and asked what mine looked like. It’s a nice question to be asked but the answer might not really be what’s expected.
First of all, here’s a few of those I liked over at The Guardian. We’ve got Clive James:
and Sebastian Faulks:
Those are my favourite looking desks and/or rooms from the selection that I think I could actually work at but this may be because I'm interested in the guys who own them and yet somehow, I think they’re all a little too ’contained’ for my liking.
I spent nearly all of my childhood behind a desk at school and over the years, more time than I had actually expected/planned stationed behind one working for The Man. Do I really want to spend more years behind one? No. I don’t.
So, my answer to the question is, I don’t actually have a desk. There’s a table in the lounge where Big Work gets done, (Big Work = work that needs a big machine and some firepower behind it to make it happen properly) but I stay away from it as much as possible and in the real world, like to do what I call Proper Work in close proximity to here:
or later in the day, perhaps here:
...but not exclusively at those places - anywhere similar is fine by me. There’s a couple of chairs in the garden for those times I need to be at home - and for rainy days (which let’s face it, is more than half the time around here), trees can make useful umbrellas if you choose the right ones and… well, the point is, it’s a pretty simple job to make words travel from inside of your head to a pen/keyboard via your fingers. There’s not actually that much equipment needed to write - I think people make it look a lot harder than it is.
The bigger the desk, the more seriously you take yourself? Is that the way it's supposed to work?
Then again, I never wrote anything big and worthy enough for The Guardian to ask me about where I do my work, so maybe a desk really is what’s needed to add the necessary gravitas - but I don't believe that at all.
However, if you're insistent on doing the desk thing, I think it should be done like Will Self. Here's a shot from his workspace - you can also find an entire 360° shot of his workspace here. If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly, right?
That's a neat workspace in any book but I'm sticking to my guns - surely you can’t get a much better space to work in than The Wild?