“Put Your Desk in the Corner”

While I haven’t read Stephen King’s iconic literary work, it’s tough to not recognize him as a monolithic writer who will be immortalized as one of the greatest to ever do it. As soon as I learned that he wrote a short text called On Writing about (you guessed it) the craft of writing, I jumped at the chance. 

There’s a moment in this winding masterpiece of meta advice about how to do exactly what he’s doing to you as the reader, King shares a surprising detail about his writing room. It surprised me, at least. In an effort to tell the reader everything about writing, Stephen King starts with this:

“..put your desk in the corner, and everytime you sit down to write, remind yourself why it’s in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”

I could help myself. Sometimes we forget the same is true for fitness.