When a story is flying along, and I’m so into it that my ‘real’ world goes away, it can feel magical. I cease to be, my desk and computer ceases to be, and I am my character in his world. Psychologists call this a ‘flow state,’ and it’s better than publication, money, awards, fame.
Suppose you were working at your job one day, and you made a little mistake. Then all of a sudden a red light went on over your desk, and fifteen thousand people stood up and yelled at you that you sucked?
Writing is a sedentary gig unless one has a treadmill desk. But I have long believed writing and working out are complementary disciplines.
I just couldn’t take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that’s about all I did at school.
For the cable news guest, nothing happens for a while until suddenly everything happens very quickly. After you receive your television face, you stand around for a while, ignored, until you’re sat down at a desk and asked to argue with strangers.
I will never forget the bright September day, standing at my desk in the White House, when my young assistant said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center – and then a second one – and a third, the Pentagon.
I can guarantee you this, that more pension and benefit reforms which I will consider arbitration reform to be one of them, are things that when they come to my desk, they will be signed.
Nobody just flops a complete ‘Doc Martin’ script on the desk. They all have to be taken apart and all the apologizing taken out. Because it’s hard to have a protagonist that doesn’t really like anyone and nobody really likes him; it’s a hard premise to start from.
First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.
Suppose Watergate had not been uncovered? I’d still be on the City Desk.
Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that?
So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother’s house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write.
People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
I see friends of mine who have kids and continue to do their art. It’s deeply impressive. I can’t even fit an Amazon return into the day. It’s been sitting on my desk for two weeks.
Professionally, I remember Cronkite as a kid growing up, and more so for me, the importance of Cronkite was not him sitting there at the anchor desk, but him out there doing things.
Michael is a funny character, for whom I have a great deal of affection. He sat across his desk and seemed to be a bit of a blunt fellow. We began talking about the characters and he opened up about his vision.
At ‘The Daily Show,’ we were satirizing a news program. You put somebody in a suit, you put ’em behind a desk, and they become an authority figure.
As writers, our craft makes us sit alone at a desk and hammer away at our novel. Doing that day in and day out makes it really easy to forget that there’s a whole community of writers out there, and they love contributing to other writers’ success!
I wake up with the story in my head, so I really like to be at my desk about five minutes after I wake up. So I don’t get dressed. I put on a bathrobe, I make tea and sit at my desk.
I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run.
I’d just woken up from a nap, it was around 6:30 in the evening. I was eating some shrimp crackers at my desk. Then I get a call from an unknown number in Burbank, California and my heart immediately skips a beat because I know the Disney home office is in Burbank.
I can’t say that while I sat at my desk cold calling or trying to help people re-mortgage that playing for England was a real achievable goal.
I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.
I went to art school… but I worked at the Museum of Modern Art. I worked in fundraising at the information membership desk. I ended up, over a period of time, doubling the amount of membership revenue that came in through people entering the museum, so people would ask me to come and work for them.
The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.
I wrote a play once called ‘Lobby Hero,’ which I thought turned out very well, but there’s no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home.
This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.
I’m at my desk before nine, and I go all day. I’m not necessarily productive all day, but really, who is?
Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.
My office is tiny. I think most people would be shocked if they came to my home and saw it. It is, in fact, the former makeup room of a gorgeous local TV newscaster. I keep a neat desk. Clutter makes me anxious.
We’re not militant, but there are certain things that are absolutely secret. There was a pilot printed on red paper, and I read everything on my iPad and have a scanner on my desk for these purposes. I scanned in the script, and red paper script scans in perfectly fine.
This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.
I think I’ve got it pretty easy compared with somebody who works at a desk nine to five. I’m just working for an hour in the evening. I get a bit breathless, as I have to talk non-stop because of the puppets.
If your desk isn’t cluttered, you probably aren’t doing your job.
I was chastised for writing several obituaries for Malcolm X, exploring different aspects of his writing. One teacher in particular told me, didn’t I think I was beating a dead horse? and dismissively threw my paper on my desk.
I enjoy playing other people. It’s a great job and it’s challenging. I couldn’t do a desk job.
Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There’s a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I’m so easily led.
In every single one of my purses, even my little satin clutch and my tiny Chanel bag, I always carry a lint roller. I keep them in every drawer, in every desk and nightstand. I just buy those at the dollar store in bulk.
At home I have a mixing desk that I like playing around on. It’s great fun making music myself. And music has always been a very good counterbalance to football for me. It allows me to switch off and relax.
I find it easier to write in the winter in Melbourne. When the weather is good you want to go out for a walk, ride a bike, go to a cafe or something. When it’s raining, when it’s a miserable day, I just sit down at my desk and get some work done.
I find it very difficult to say no when I’m in Ireland. You do end up going around doing lots of events and things and not getting work done, and it’s not just a question of having hours at the desk.
A very important part of my workday are the two Nunzillas on my windowsill. They keep me constant company. They’re little windup toys, and when they move across the desk, they spark from the mouth. I think of them as my editors. They sort of remind you that the world can be a silly place.
When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.
I have a desk that I can raise or lower according to the state of my aching back. Sometimes I stand at it, and sometimes I have it high up to write at and sometimes a bit lower to type.
I just had this moment where I was sitting at my desk, and I realized what it was that I’d been wanting to do since I was a little girl – and that was act.
A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.
Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I’m not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk.
I’ve always had a picture of the White House and it would always sit right in front of my desk. Whenever I was having a hard day I could look at it and remember what my goal was.
It’s pointless to have a nice clean desk, because it means you’re not doing anything.
Walking is a great way to exercise, and we can find ways to take additional steps each day by parking a car farther away from a destination, climbing stairs instead of taking the elevator or escalator, and walking during occasional breaks from sitting at a desk.
