Don't ask what's on my desk. Really. You don't want a 10,000 word reply, do you? I write both fiction and nonfiction, so the desk in my study is forever cluttered. My main tools are as follows: HARDWARE PC laptop, monitor, Zip drive, floppy drive, scanner, printer, speakers, headphones, and no, I didn't buy any of this. I have generous friends and family. SOFTWARE Web design: Netscape Composer and assorted image software. Reading and writing: WordPerfect, NoteTab, Word only if I must. Reading, research, and e-mail: Netscape 4.75 (preferably) and Internet Explorer; Adobe Acrobat. Accessibility: TextAloud (text-to-speech program); RealPlayer (preferably) and Windows Media Player; Bookshare.org Unpack (for unzipping the books for the blind I download); and OmniPage (OCR program for translating scanned books into word processing files). NON-COMPUTER STUFF Pens and pencils. A notebook in which I record my submissions. Various scraps of paper where I scribble notes about plot ideas and revised sentences, plus a little notebook where I *ought* to be putting those scribbles. A file cabinet, very big, and I still can't fit all my older writings in there. My stereo in the living room. This is a vital piece of writing equipment, because I get my endorphins flowing - and hence my creative juices - by dancing to music. Reference books next to my desk. The main ones I use are dictionaries (Merriam-Webster's and Oxford), a thesaurus, and name books. Novels and short fiction: printed, electronic (stuff I get from the Web and stuff I get from Bookshare.org, the library for the blind), and braille. Braille's my preferred method of reading novels, because I don't read braille well enough to be able to skim in it. I don't much care for recorded fiction, because the narrators don't voice the dialogue the way *I* think it should be voiced, so I use text-to-speech when listening to novels and short fiction. Various nonfiction books and classic literature, for researching my historical fantasy stories. (That's my excuse for filling the bookcases, anyway.) The biggest collection of gay leather magazines this side of the Mississippi. No, that's an exaggeration, but the collection is a healthy size. This is for my ongoing research on leather history <cough, cough>. It also comes in handy for researching my leather fiction. A much-too-small collection of leather books, for the same purpose. Friends whom I bug for research info. Libraries! Endless research matter! iosamie wrote: "As for objective, I usually don't. Once I've gotten an idea, the characters seem to come alive and take hold of everything. My characters are very real to me, and they tell the stories. I simply do the typing/handwriting." jtalbot wrote: "The story's objective? Grins. The characters tell me that." Exactly, except that sometimes my characters get stuck, and I have to help them out.

But your answers are always 10,000 words, hun. *grins* But we love 'em anyway! Heh...my characters have been known to get stuck on occasion as well, so I know that fun.

"But your answers are always 10,000 words, hun." Could explain why I can't seem to write any stories under 20,000 words. :)

*chuckles* Good point. ;)

And there's me thinking I was talkative.... Heheh. That's an impressive collection of stuff. I think it beats even my heap of clobber!

I know this thread is sort of old, but it's a good question... I have to hand-write everything on my front enclosed porch with my tiny little space heater, a pack of cigarettes and a blanket. I seriously can't write anywhere else. Living in NE Ohio it gets frigid out there, but I can spend up to 16 hours in my chair, with a pen and big fat notebook in hand and I'm just happy as a pig in poop. Until I get paper-burn on my right pinkie, then it gets ulcerated and bleeds and it's a big painful mess. But I think a lot of it has to do with me being just slightly obsessive compulsive. Everything's gotta be the same exact thing every day or I can't write. When my stories are halfway to almost finished, I come on up here and start typing them out, editing them as I go along, adding some filler here or there. Right now I'm working on my 3rd "serious" novel (this will be one of the 15 I've started that WILL get finished here soon), and as far as my family goes, the husband and son absolutely despise it. Oh well...it's fun.

Oh! Oh! Can I use you for a character? You sound really interesting. :-)

Sure, have at it. :oops: :)

I love these type of threads -- they make me feel more normal, because everyone else seems to have the same chaos I do! I work in my office upstairs -- in what would be a second bedroom, but the baby refused to sleep in it and hence her bed is now in the playroom. (She can sleep in the bathtub as far as I care, as long as she actually sleeps!) On my desk: My ten year old computer, a coffee mug, a juice cup, notebooks, stationary, address labels, a gray ceramic chalice that holds coins, business cards for the sources I'm currently working, Ambesol, my rolodex, my recipe file, my wall, a diaper, a ream of cardstock, a ream of typing paper, the handset from a telephone we haven't owned since 1995, a big dictionary, my word count binder, my accounting binder, my fax/phone machine, a box of scrap paper for making notes, envelopes, stamps, a card of needles, some 'inspiration' cards, hand cream the baby thinks is candy and hence must be sequestered, a digital camera, a journal, all the folders tahat are Play Ball, my contract with the local senior mag, mail that has to go out, approximately 45 envelopes for grade school valentines, the 1993 Plattsburgh Area phone book, sans cover and letters w-z in the yellow pages, a star point screwdriver, from which dangles a golden styrofoam apple covered with sparkly golden and iridesecent beads. I'd describe the rest of the office, but it's not nearly as tidy. :shock:

LOL I'm just surprised you can still see the desk. :)

My desk is an antique washstand - there is no space on it for anything at all, apart from the computer, and one notebook or stack of paper - there is no clutter, but that's because there is no room. I type to you from a keyboard across the top of an open drawer - they did not know, in about 1820, that they were making computer tables of the perfect height. I'd actually *love* a bigger desk, but that would mean getting rid of the washstand - there is nowhere else to put it, and it's so pretty I can't bear to do it. I'd love one of those L-shape ones, so you can have all your notes and books on the side. As for the original questions at the start of this thread, I'm a bit more physical than electronic, but that is gradually changing as I'm discovering the wonder of the Net. I store research in lots of big fat files, but am starting to store on the computer. I do all my stuff in Apple Works, and then convert it (under pro-*test*-('")) to Word, because Word has taken over the world. For my desert island tool, a pen and paper would be fine.

Oooh! Another Mac fan! We have to stick together, you know - we are quite rare (and special ... and of very good taste and judgement). Die, Word! Die! Die!!! The desk? It's just a dainty old early 1800s washstand - sort of dinky little table thing with teeny drawers and carved legs ... and *nice knobs* - I need a desk for my Mac because it's not the sort I can carry anywhere, it's one of those design-icon ones they don't do anymore, a screen with a stalk on a snowball. Ideas about whether I should have a laptop one are in another thread - I think it might cause too much moaning and asking for sympathy when away in awful places.

LOL! Mac fans, unite!! :D you have a desk-thingy with tiny drawers??? oooooo.... I love tiny drawers... **drools, Homer style**

They're really *very* tiny ...