I spend a great deal of time sitting at a desk.
This is partly because I write.
It is also because everything I need has gradually migrated there.
Notebooks.
Books.
Coffee.
More notebooks.
A pen I dislike but continue using for reasons I cannot explain.
The desk has become efficient.
This is the problem.
Efficiency is useful when you know what you are doing.
When you do not, an efficient desk simply allows you to remain confused for longer.
I have spent hours trying to solve a scene by looking directly at it.
Move a sentence.
Read the paragraph.
Move it back.
Read it again.
The scene remains unmoved by my dedication.
Eventually, usually much later than would have been sensible, I leave.
Not dramatically.
I do not throw the notebook into a drawer and announce that art has defeated me.
I put on a coat.
Walk outside.
The strange thing is how often the problem follows.
For the first ten minutes, I continue writing the scene in my head.
This is not leaving the desk.
This is carrying the desk through the city.
Eventually, something interrupts me.
Traffic.
Rain.
A dog with urgent business on the opposite side of the street.
Someone laughing outside a restaurant.
The world, inconsiderately, continues being interesting.
And the scene becomes quieter.
This is usually when the answer appears.
Not because walking is magical.
I distrust advice that requires buying specific shoes.
The answer appears because I have finally stopped demanding it.
Attention needs somewhere else to go.
The mind continues working without the writer standing over it asking for updates.
Apparently, it prefers less supervision.
I understand this.
Some of my best decisions have arrived far from the desk.
On trains.
In cafés.
Walking through unfamiliar streets.
Once, while waiting for a traffic light that seemed personally opposed to pedestrians.
The difficulty is remembering this when the work becomes difficult.
My instinct is still to sit longer.
Try harder.
Look closer.
Sometimes that is necessary.
Sometimes the most professional thing a writer can do is close the document and go outside.
The desk will wait.
Mine always does.
It knows I have nowhere else to put the notebooks.
— D. Vaen