The Perfect Writing Desk

I blogged before about how the husband made me a new desk, just for my writing. And it's been great--perfect size, perfect location. But the thing is, it wasn't quite done.

Enter in this weekend's project: finish the desk!

Here it is in it's raw stage: the bookshelves built into the wall came with the house; the husband added on the desk part.





















First things first: we separated the new desk part from the bookshelves in the wall and got it ready for painting!
















After layers of primer, I painted the shelves and the desk glossy black. I mean, black-black. Like a ninja's soul.





















One thing I've always wanted to do was to wallpaper a room with maps. I love maps. But it's never really been practical to line a whole room with one. What I could do, though, is line the shelves with maps. For this project, I chose England (top shelf, along with Ireland) because I've always loved it and studied abroad in London, and Italy (bottom shelf) because the first place I traveled abroad to was Malta, off the coast of Italy, and I love Florence--and my favorite movie (Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn) took place there. Oh, and pizza.





















Next step, add the writing instruments! On the top shelf, I've got a brand-new file sorter thing. I desperately need to keep better track of paper. So: red folder on left = rejections folder. Legal pad beside it = notes (I love legal pads!) On the far right is my pad folio that I take to conferences, and notes from my last conference. And on the shelves in the middle is work for my book: ms. pages, research, and blank note pads.
















On the Italy shelf, I intend to put a new Mac computer...once I save enough money to buy a new Mac computer (which will be months--maybe even a year or more--from now). So, while I'm waiting on the new computer, I've put a wine-bottle lamp in it's place. This wine-bottle lamp was custom made for me, right after I wrote my first ms. I've also got a full bottle of win (that wasn't drunk in preparation of the lights) that I intend to break out after I (finally) get a publishing deal.





















Some writers keep old manuscripts under the bed. I keep them in my hidden compartment under the desk!





















It's fairly hard to get to (you have to crawl under to get to this bottom shelf), but it's the perfect place to store those old manuscripts that I can't throw away, but can't work on, either.















And here it is--the end result! All I need now is a shiny new Mac computer to go on the Italy shelf, and I'm gold! For now, I guess the laptop will do. *sigh* I suffer so much for my art! :)