escritoires, however you spell them

I've seen a few of those escritoires in Parisian flea markets, Seth.  Highly tempting, but you'd have to haul it around while traveling in Europe, or pay as much in shipping as it cost, to get it home.  At various times I've wished I had done that.  But I so rarely travel by stagecoach anymore.



It would be an elegant accessory if you were a writer in the late 19th century, especially.

I have the functional equivalent in my office here in Florida, a field file cabinet of sturdy brass-fitted cedar.  On top of it is a more humble home-made "portable office" that I got unfinished at Wood You and sanded down, stained, and shellacked.  Just a box with a slanted top that holds a ream or so of paper  and some pencils, pens, and ink.  Pencil slot on the top like old school desks had.  Together they give me a good surface for writing standing up, which I should do more often.  (Picture on sff.net.)

I made room for it on the "Florida room" porch and used it intermittently.  I don't think I wrote for more than an hour or so at a time that way, before finding a place to sit down.  But if I had the architectural "footprint" for it now, I'd still use it.


Hemingway claimed that he could think better, writing standing up.  Dickens said the same, and Nabokov, Woolf, Churchill, and Kirkegaard agreed.  So if your name has double vowels, you might look into it.

Joe