Monday 30 December 2024
I am sure that when Herman Melville, Lev Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky were all alive, their writing desks weren’t in the immaculate and orderly conditions they are now when I visited respectively each of the writer’s homes. When these artists were alive and writing, I assume their writing desks looked something like mine: notebooks and papers, coffee mugs and teacups, framed photographs, and various mementos populating their desktops. In other words, their desks were “messy.”
To those who don’t write—in other words, to those who don’t understand or who can’t imagine what the writing process for a massive writing project is and what it consists of—to those people who only see “chaos” cluttering a room’s ambiance or décor, gathering dust, causing distress in others when seeing a well-used writer’s desk, a writing desk isn’t a messy table.
Quite the opposite. Those “random” piles of paper aren’t disorderly. I know the contents of each wrinkled and rumpled slip of paper; I even know the sequence in order of importance of those stacks of paper. If someone were to move the collections of notes, bundling them all together—the horror! —or relocating them into a drawer or some other spot—a nightmare becoming real! —then true chaos begins. I don’t know where anything is. Not knowing where my notes are IS the mess, the chaos. The dust doesn’t have time to settle upon the papers, books, and mementos because the writer constantly is sifting through them, looking for the scribbled notes he now needs to clarify a writerly dilemma, or reminiscing about the person and occasion in the photograph to re-spark the act of writing. The act of creating isn’t—it never was—neat or spotless. True life itself is disheveled and dirty.
Creativity itself is disquieting for… the writer. And their spouse and children. Anyone else… well… go to a museum, read a biography of an Artist… do anything but do not mock, disparage, or bad-mouth the appearance—a superficial and temporary state of being—of someone’s writer’s desk. For those people, they are only interested in the final product, not in the process in which it takes to cultivate the final product.
Although misattributed to Albert Einstein, I nonetheless agree with the following truth: “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?” In other words, as many other admirers of this observation have noted, a bare desktop is an empty mind. Which is worse? A desk with “stuff” on it, or a desk with “nothing” on it? And to be clear, an Artist’s (or Intellectual’s) mind is not ever cluttered. It can be distracted, uninspired, confused, unsure, hesitant… anything, but unkept.
A writer’s desk is a workstation, and writing is work. Unlike a construction site or a chef’s kitchen, a writer’s desk isn’t a physically real hazard or danger. Nonetheless, a writer’s desk can intimidate because not many people do write… serious written work, like a thesis, journal article, dissertation, novel, memoir…. The intimidations and dangers of a written text are different than hot pan holders and nail protruding 2x4s.
A writer’s desk can cause someone to slip and fall… metaphorically. A breeze from an opened window can cause a slip of paper to fall on the ground, and a careless person walking by the desk could slip on the fallen paper. This kind of danger isn’t the one I’m thinking of. The writing created from a writer’s desk does inspire revolutions. And certainly, the ideas thought of by the writer from their writer’s desk do provoke the status quo. Now define “chaos” and “messy.”
A rigid, uncompromising, and self-righteous faultfinder of a writer’s writing desk does say the writer is lazy for not tidying up their desk. A writer isn’t “lazy” because they don’t “tidy” their writing desk; a well-used writing desk demonstrates a work in progress. Tinker with any of the objects on a writing desk, and everything is disrupted. Even when no writing is happening, writers are working on writing even when not physically writing. They’re thinking. They’re wrestling with ideas. Writers are always working, even when the nonwriters don’t see actual writing happening. When I’m at my writer’s desk, I’m not whiling the time by scrolling on social media, playing video games, or journaling.
While at the desk, I listen to music, which inspires creativity. Music isn’t background noise; how insulting! Music doesn’t distract me from my work; listening to music encourages thinking. My business is thinking. My business is writing.
My business at the desk also is grading college student papers. I do have to say that I keep my student papers in separate folders; they don’t intermingle with my personal papers or my writing notes while on my writer’s desk.
Nonwriters say that the writer is inconsiderate for not cleaning up after themself. There’s nothing to “clean up.” Everything is in order, the writer’s order of things.
The papers and notebooks on my writer’s desk will… eventually… if I decide to part ways with them… end up into the recycling bin; however, right now, those papers and notebooks are among the most precious objects I own. They are not garbage. They are parts of my identity. They are physical manifestations of my creative life, my creative force; they are energy. They are mementos. I still have my original Herman Melville dissertation notebooks… to remember the writing process for it.
I can’t let you, nonwriter, shame me to throw them away the objects on my writing desk. There is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m still working on my Katyn manuscript. I’m not ready to “clean up” my writing desk. The state of my writer’s desk is at that stage of the writing process called proofreading or finalizing.
Nonwriter, you just don’t understand. Your problem, not mine. Would you, after seeing the dried-up paint spills on Jackson Pollock’s East Hampton, New York art studio’s floor, shriek in disgust because he was sloppy and thoughtless? You might even howl, “Who could work in such conditions?” Do you even see the Art on that paint-stained floor? Pollock’s floor isn’t a mere reflection of his creative process; the floor IS his creative process. Without the floor, he might not have created those renowned works of art. Why would anyone, even you, nonwriter, want to erase, apply paint thinner to “clean up,” remove those reminders of Pollock’s creativity simply and simplistically because you find the paint drops to be “ugly” and distracting stains, blemishes on the floor? What is Art to you, nonwriter?
In its current state, my writing desk isn’t free from papers and notebooks. Yeah, there are books on it; there are always books on it. My home is a small, private library. The people in my home do read books. And books do take up space. And the people who live with me understand that the writer who is writing does occupy more space, especially placing his writing notebooks and other tools on a desk. Nonwriter, what is a writing desk if not for placing writing objects on it? A writing desk isn’t just a desk, certainly not an ordinary desk.
The bound print-out of my Katyn manuscript is still stored in a cardboard box near my writing desk. I hear it calling me to place it again on my writer’s desk. It’s calling me back to work.
There is an aura always hovering about my writer’s desk. And I feel its energy vibrating. Starting this week, I will begin the final stage of my Katyn manuscript’s writing process: proofreading. I will place many items on my writer’s desk. I think it is a sign, a healthy, optimistic, and encouraging one (the vision in my mind of the Katyn manuscript, dictionaries and thesauruses, notebooks and papers, and other objects all are sitting on my writer’s desk) that the work I created on my writer’s desk will come to an end, as all writing projects should. And new ones are waiting their turns to be on my writer’s desk.