Nancy Kress on Saturday posted on her blog about where writers write. As often happens, this got on my RADAR via Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog She posted a photo of an elegant desk that can be used for writing while sitting or standing. The desk has been in her family for a long time. This desk fits her personality, so I’m not surprised she has something like this as a work station.
Being 50% left brained and 50% right brained, my usual work space is pretty much like much of my life, Entropy Central. I subscribe to the idea that a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind.
I also think it’s a pretty safe bet that I am likely the only member of SFWA to write in a room with more than one fish tank. In fact, there are currently five in the office, and two more just outside the office. (And a few more in other rooms.)
That is the actual desk I sit at when I write. Cluttered papers are just stuff I need. I don’t see any of it when I’m writing, just the words on the screen.
You can see the star map posted on the closet door to the left. To the right is a cluster of four fish tanks, a pair of 29-gallon and a pair of 10-gallon tanks.
The top 29-gallon has some Apistos, South American dwarf cichlids, and some penguin tetras to act as dither fish for the cichlids. The bottom 29 houses my female Endler’s livebearers. the upper 10 is currently empty except for a nerite snail and will probably get some Moscow Black guppies soon. The bottom 10 housed my Pachypanchax playfairii until friday. (I just had a big die-off in two tanks caused by products that should have been recalled. I will blog about that in a separate post.)
Directly behind my back when I’m writing is a 5-gallon brackish tank containing bumblebee gobies. And for those of you under the age of 25, that thing in the upper left corner is called a cassette deck.
Just outside the door, I have a 20-gallon extra high (foreground) containing freshwater angelfish, and beyond that is a 46-gallon bowfront tank containing Florida Flag Fish and male Endler’s livebearers.
On occasion, I also write upstairs in a recliner using my geriatric laptop computer.