Every writer needs a place to write. As a newspaper and television reporter, I’ve written just about anywhere and everywhere — on airplanes and on the floors of several airports, in press boxes and in the front seat of my pickup, on smok
y hillsides, in coffee shops, in bars, on those brutally hard courtroom benches. All that is required is a place to make an Internet connection (or, in the old days, a place to “couple” my crude computer to a pay phone) and I’m off.
Writing at home, however, is a different animal. For years, I simply sat at a small desk in the corner of the family room or, more recently, set up shop at the dining room table.
But in 2009, after Jim Davidson and I agreed to embark on the journey that is The Ledge: An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier, I knew I needed a dedicated space to do my work. Luckily, there was a small, little-used bedroom on the second floor of our home, and I claimed it. I moved in my wife’s oak rolltop desk — which over the years had been wrestled from the main floor to the second floor to the basement — and a couple file cabinets. And then I got to work.
The room isn’t large — barely 100 square feet total. But I have two nice windows that face south and west and catch the sun all day long, and even allow me a glimpse of the Colorado Rockies. I have a comfortable chair. The best part about this, frankly, is that just before I walk away for the day I can stuff everything into the desk, roll down the top, and hide the debris of my work.
If you sat down at my desk, you’d see all kinds of junk — mementoes, sticky notes, scraps of paper, and things I use to inspire me:
- Random photographs of my children at different ages.
- A few of my journalism awards.
- A bulletin board festooned with scores of credentials accumulated from nearly a quarter century of working as a reporter — those from the World Series and the Olympics get their own special hook.
- Purple, blue, green and yellow sticky notes reminding me of passwords to various computer programs, things that need to get done and phone numbers.
- A Jeff Foxworthy “You Might Be a Redneck If …” desk calendar.
- Spare ink for the printer.
- Business cards.
- Three links removed from the watch my wife gave me for Christmas.
- The Elements of Style, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and Touching the Void.
- One of my favorite cartoons from one of my favorite cartoonists, Drew Litton.
- One of my favorite editorial cartoons from one of my favorite editorial cartoonists, Ed Stein.
- A couple dozen reporter’s notebooks, ready for use.
- And yes, at times, a glass of red wine.
KEVIN VAUGHAN 