A literature of writers’ habitats would fill an entire library. Rooms of their own, cabins in the wilderness, backyard sheds, or the basement in John Cheever’s high-rise in Manhattan circa 1950, where he’d dress in suit and tie and descend the elevator in league with gray-flannel men, bound for conformist offices, as John rode all the way down to level B, where he stripped to his skivs and composed on a trestle-table next to a boiler. Then he’d ride, again attired, back upstairs for luncheon, which he principally drank.
A writer longs for specific coordinates, probably most of the time. Yet Hemingway began writing in a series of cold Parisian flats, mobile as his rents determined, blowing on his hands between paragraphs and ducking (or not) when rotted skylights fell in on him. Did pretty well. Another Nobelist, Wole Soyinka, hit gold in solitary confinement under a political death sentence. Cervantes was also a prison scribe. Prisons as creative situs were never distinctly chosen per se, albeit a potion for the concentration of mind, over and again. Emily Dickinson, crown solitary, was her own jailer, if in bourgeois circumstances. Writing has everything to do with wall-staring.
I’m a desk man, born and true. I can look out my window, when I bother, but I’m not the consecrated birder that Joyce Carol Oates has become looking out hers, in process of knocking out a novel every month or two. Gangster multi-tasking right there. Novelist Sandra Cisneros, longtime friend, likes being disturbed by her doorbell for odd inspirations.
By my nature I despise a clean desk. Many executives in business have long been proud of their Marie Kondo Zen, a clean desk being their emblem of a bulldog ability to power through tasks. When I was among their kind, rather successfully, my desk exhibited clutter, which helped me better see or choose what I should do next. A paradox? Nobody gets that far managing from their in-box or e-mail.
For writing, I like the feel of trinkets and amulets in my midst. A photo of my great grandpa, evangel Pearly Gates, stares me down. I have inklings of a novel in my drawer, begun back when, about this singular character and his stare never wavers, unlike my dedication. I don’t use computers or type. My tools are lined yellow tablets, legal-size, which I inscribe with ink, preferably blue. I correct copy in pencil. That way I keep track of which of my thoughts came in what order. I work two tablets at once—one’s the main melody while the other’s a simultaneous scribble of words to look up (or substitute); my first-pass guesses as to dates, personages, and geography; alternate skeins of dialogue or description and, further facts to explore. Side-by-side. For next day’s rewrite, I incorporate best, I hope, of both. There’s nothing original in this method, of course.
Scraps have their place, too. On the far-right margins of my desktop I compile tear-outs or clips from newspapers and The New Yorker, often annotated on the fly elsewhere, convenient for my intentional fumbling later. My mentor at UC Irvine, novelist Oakley Hall, taught that handy tidbits can be remarkably suggestive when you’re stuck. On the left margins, it’s a gallimaufry—mostly numeric like baseball stats during the season, stock prices across time, bets I have going. Never to-do lists, as they’re for the kitchen counter. Never mix those two up, desk and counter. Mail’s counter. Dog appointments, ideas for patio greenery, and so forth.
My one bow to technology is an iPhone, in itself rather formidable. It’s my substitute for a timepiece, however. When you write, stay off-line (there’s a slogan fit for your tombstone.) My other timepiece is a vintage Bulova like Scott Fitzgerald wore in the 20’s, name-checked, as I recall, in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Oh, do I highlight my two African fetishes of antiquity? Staunchly phallic. They had to go somewhere as my desktop can contain multitudes. Let’s see, found objects like sand dollars and a cormorant’s feather; disused wallets out of my past, empty, displayed upright in a letter case. You figure out that symbolism. Calculator. Desk lamp. My favorite art book, Birth of the Cool, which details artistic ferment in mid-C LA, my home stomping grounds. (I did once own several of the paintings inside.) Not least, a half-dozen books apposite of myself, or so I believe, but hardly a coherent song—see photo.
My desk, altogether, is a curated setting for composition. The writing’s another matter.
–G–