For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room.
No more child’s desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house.
In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylights study.
For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship’s captain in charge of a voyage to go nowhere.
A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity, and put in a living room suite where it had been, picking out the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife’s help.
In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crusts behind when they moved on, but I didn’t care.
They came, and they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them.
I got another desk.
It’s handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T-Rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave.
I’m sitting under it now, a 53 year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg and no hangover.
I’m doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. And now I’m going to tell you as much as I can about the job.
It starts with this: Put your desk in the corner.
And every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.
Life isn’t a support-system for art, it’s the other way around.
-Stephen King-