About A Desk

I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

Hi friends.

I feel like I have done so much thinking and talking lately about writing spaces, claiming them or creating them (not to mention building bookshelves), so to talk yet again about my writing space—in this instance finding a desk for it—feels like a little much. And yet I felt inspired to write about it, and also I feel like if I tell you mine then you will tell me yours in the comments. And I bet you have some good ones. And I like to hear your stories.

The last desk of mine I had made to fit a certain high window height. I wanted to be able to look out the office window and see my old dog Sid sitting in the sunshine in the yard. It was tall and fancy and it made me feel special to sit at it, and it seemed like a thing a real writer would do, have a desk made for themselves.

Now I have moved to a new house that is smaller and shorter, and the tall desk is too tall. There’s nothing I’m missing anyway—there is no real view from the office except some elephant ears in the neighbor’s yard. But it has light in there and it is quiet. I had all that I needed except for a desk.

I agonized over it slightly (agonizing being a pastime of mine), and then my friend Zach said to me, lightly, gently, “You know you can write anywhere, right?” Which I knew. Of course I knew. Would I have told you all of that? Yes.

We can write anywhere.

So then I went to a yard sale in my neighborhood, and I saw this old Crate & Barrel desk. Couple of scratches, but it seemed pretty sturdy. “My mother used to use it for sewing projects,” said my neighbor, which explained why it was bowed slightly in the center. “But you can see it’s already sort of bouncing back to life.”

I liked that it was used for something other than writing. I liked the color, I liked the legs. I liked that it was probably twenty years old and still in great shape, because it meant it would probably last another twenty which is probably all I’ll need it for. Although you never know, they might still want books like the kind I write by then.

My neighbors offered to sell it to me for twenty-five bucks but when they dropped it off they said I could have it for free—they were happy to have the extra room again. They said I could just buy them a coffee sometime when I ran into them at the cafe, when we were all out walking our dogs. Then we had a long conversation about things that are none of your business, but I felt like I knew them better by the end and I was even more glad to have that desk in my home.

Now you tell me about your desk, table, cube, whatever. I’m leaving the comments open. We can all be each other’s good neighbors for the day.

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.