Desk

My vacated desk

A desk is a bit like a ship. It keeps things afloat. Keeps you afloat in a sense, even when you're not using it. This is my desk exactly as I left it about a month ago to work downstairs on the coffee table. Two projects lie open waiting my attention. For the time being I am ignoring them in favour of other projects - like a third story for the Mansfield that I started this morning.

Old Sydney town in the black and white sketch against the wall. My youngest at the age of seven or thereabouts, propped up in front. My nephew just turned one on the far wall, my parents at their engagement being coy behind paper. 

When I look at this picture I see words. Everywhere words. Indeed admission to the desk boat is primarily by word, quality and quantity. It looks like I might be working on the principle of more is more as far as words go. These days I write almost entirely on-line, although I have a printed sheet of foolscap paper next to the computer at the moment. Beneath that, another folded, smaller sheet covered in blue pen scrawl. I have put that on the computer already, but not finished the top one. 

I am a compulsive writer. I have been writing in pen all my life, from cards to thank you letters to thirty-six page letters home. Most writers are the same. I am a little different to most writers in that I kind of didn't realise I was a writer until other people told me. My father did suggest writing if ballet didn't work out, back in the early eighties (83) based on my letters home, and they then gave me the Brontes for my 21st, but I didn't take the hint. I wanted to be a ballet dancer. I did read the Brontes, mind. I loved Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. I read lots of stuff. D.H. Lawrence before I was twenty, and I left school at 14. So I must have had some idea about writing from fairly early on, I just didn't quite realise it.