Want to Write Better? Consider Building Your Own Writing Desk

My writing desk, which I loved so much and had been with me through a decade of writing and teaching, was built into the wall. We were moving—more space—so I lay under that desk, looking at it to see if I could pry it loose to bring it with us. The basic construction looked simple enough, but the realtor said it was a fixed entity, so had to stay with the house. I then fell into a deep rabbit hole of YouTube videos about DIY desks. I started watching woodworking videos as a way to distract myself from writing. Even with my favorite desk, the book I was working on had essentially turned sour in my hands. I couldn’t work on it anymore. Part of me felt that waiting until we got to the new house, setting it up, then making space to begin writing again would fix me enough to fix the book. I took out library books on woodworking, starting with how to use basic tools, then moving to complex wood joinery. The saws in the video clips I watched looked so nasty I imagined my finger flinging across the room. I’d heard all good carpenters had a missing finger. It was a sign of putting in your time. Writing and reading books for my job as a Creative Writing Professor took more time than I had. All through graduate school, I felt that with such steep competition, I had to work harder than anyone else to succeed, get published, get a job, and then discovered I had to work even harder, saying yes to everything for six years until I was tenured and doubling down to edit hundreds of stories and my first two novels. I had pushed as hard as I could for almost fifteen years and was running out of creative gas, resulting in a deep panic. I felt I’d just scratched my way into the center of a career I had nothing left to give to. I felt I’d just scratched my way into the center of a career I had nothing left […]

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