Organization Thursday: 5 Writing Desks Under $100

I use grammarly's plagiarism checker because all hail the glow cloud.


As a gift for graduating high school, my parents gave me an heirloom writing desk. It is my prized possession - it has all sorts of drawers and hideaway places for pens and paper and index cards. I've written thousands of words sitting at it; it is probably my very favorite thing!

Unfortunately, at the moment I live in a Very Small Space. My desk won't fit in my tiny room, and I'm sort of obsessed with pretty writing desks - so here are some affordable ones I found that might also work for you!

Winsome Alden Lap Desk Flip Top and Drawer - Target - $25

Normally lap desks aren't my favorite thing for writing - they're useful for getting on your computer when all you've got is a bed, but they aren't much for storage and most of them aren't that attractive. This one though is a gorgeous wood, AND it's got a flip top/built-in drawer. If you haven't got a lot of space at all, you should definitely look into getting something like this! 

Furinno Compact Computer Desk - Amazon - $35

This one is adorbz! I'm a little in love with the bookcase/shelf bit on the side, and not to mention, it's only thirty-five bucks, and perfect for small spaces! You can get it on Amazon, and if you have Amazon Prime, two-day shipping's free. (Hint: It's free to get a one-month trial of Amazon Prime.)

Mainstays Basic Student Desk - Wal-Mart - $40

This is the desk I used all throughout college. It's $40, but I distinctly remember finding it on the clearance aisle for $20, so keep an eye out when at your local Wal-Mart - you might just get a deal! It's got two shelves great for storing, especially if you get some storage boxes or large file folders to keep there. 

Sauder Hutch for Computer Desk - Office Max - $70

This one is gorgeous! Not exactly small-space friendly, but definitely a lot of value for what you're getting. If you've got enough space, I would definitely look into this - lots of places for books and storage! 

LASSE Desk with Bookcase - Ikea - $75

I couldn't resist flipping through Ikea - aside from my love affair with writing desks, my broader love affair with furniture in general just wouldn't let me pass it by. I like to go for desks that have storage for all my boxes of notecards and drafts, and this one was the loveliest! Available to buy online, when a lot of Ikea products have to be purchased at the store.

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15 Minute Outlining

It's always a good idea to have a map to where you're going.

 On one end of the planning spectrum, you have those writers who love outlining and planning every single detail, and on the other end you have those who just sort of...write, and see where it takes them. 

Since it's almost guaranteed that you'll write more if you know what you're writing first, I've done my best to come up with a way to outline that can be used by both kinds of authors, and everyone in between. 

This method is a down and dirty quick method, designed to be completed in fifteen minutes or less. It has two phases.

The Big Picture

Most stories consist of two initial disasters, then one final disaster that culminates in an ending. 

Not all, but most. Your story doesn't have to fit along these lines, but assume, for the moment, that it does, and fill in the following:

1. Initial Disaster 1 - The Call To Action

This is the disaster that gets your character's butt in gear. It's the thing that made him leave home, or the thing that makes her decide to get her act together and go out for that scholarship. It's Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle burning to death, the Ringwraiths in Hobbiton, Harry Potter's Hogwarts letter. It's the impetus for your character to get up and take some action.

Scribble down one thing that can get your character moving. Stick to it for now - you can decide to change it if you don't like it later. For now, go with your first instinct. 

2. Initial Disaster 2 - The 'Crap It Got Worse'

Man, now you're in it deep. Now you're on the Death Star and you've got to rescue Princess Leia. Now everyone's arguing over the ring and Frodo's got to decide to take it to Mordor, now someone's trying to kill Harry during his first-ever Quidditch match. Things are serious now, even more serious than they were before.

In this disaster, you can have your character win or lose, but I find it usually stretches out the tension if your character loses something every now and again. This is a really good place to do it.

Sketch down a second disaster to let your character know he's really in deep. You can change it later. 

3. Final Disaster - The Highest Hump on the Rollercoaster

Luke's in the Death Star trench now, and one by one his comrades are being shot down by Darth Vader himself. Boromir's dead, and the Fellowship is unwittingly split. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have to face down all the safeguards surrounding the Philosopher's Stone in order to keep Voldemort from coming back to life.

This is the toughest disaster your character will face. Things are harder than they've ever been, and you have to show it.

Jot down an ending. Not the whole thing, just a few specific details. What happened, and why is it so hard? Will your character triumph, or not? 

That's phase one, done. Don't spend to much time on it. Just write it down, and move on to the next bit. You can always change it later.

The Little Picture

We are now in the business of figuring out what you're writing right now. 

Writing every day can be tough. What do you write about? This is the bit that you can do every day, before you write, to figure out what to do next. Take your big-picture outline, and have a look at it. Mine looks like this:

First Disaster: Ana gets caught stealing a magical substance (quicksilver)

Second Disaster: Ana is trapped in a prison for werewolves with three people to take care of.  The prison is a quicksilver mine. The quicksilver has mutated the creatures in the mine and made them huge and monstrous, and one of them attacks Ana and wounds one of her legs so that she can't walk. 

Third Disaster: Ana is forced to choose between unlocking ALL the prison's inhabitants, and saving her friends, or letting her friends die in order to keep the prisoners locked up. 

I'm not too happy with the second disaster right now, but I'll come back to it. I need to figure out what to write today. So here's what I'm going to do.

The first disaster is: Ana gets caught stealing a magical substance. This is the one I'm working towards today.  The queston I ask myself is:

What is the first step towards propelling her towards the disaster? 

• Show her stealing the quicksilver.

This is the first thing that came to my mind. It's all I need, right now, so I'm going to stop right there.

Next question.

What does the reader need to know about this scene? 

• who Ana is
• why she's stealing the quicksilver
• the risk Ana is taking by stealing the quicksilver

There's where I get what I'm going to write for the day. I'm going to write a scene that shows my character Ana stealing a magical substance called quicksilver.  It needs to demonstrate who Ana is, why she's stealing, and the risk she's taking. (The reader, at this point, doesn't necessarily need to know what quicksilver is, only that Ana needs it.) 

At this point, you can do one of two things. If you don't like the outline, you can go back and edit it, and add more steps towards each disaster, if you like. If you're more of a fly-and-be-free type writer, you can come back tomorrow, and ask What's the next step towards the current disaster? Then, you write that for the day.

Remember, this is designed as a system to help you write every day, and still write towards a goal - so don't fiddle around too much with the outline before you get to work! 

Lessons Doctor Who Taught Me

I could act all professional and write an article that is very in, that is very in keeping with the theme of this blog, that doesn't highlight my massive fangirl nature and is very neat and tidy, thank you very much.

I could do that, but I'm not gonna. I could pretend that I'm completely unaffected by the fact that the new Doctor was chosen today. I most definitely would be capable of writing an article that indicated that I'm not head over heels with Peter Capaldi and I'm not currently plotting large amounts of fanfiction in which his character and Billie Piper's gratuitously smush their mouths together, but that, my friends, WOULD BE LIES.

So, without further adieu, I present to you, 23 things the Doctor taught me.

1. There is no such thing as an unimportant person.

2. It isn't what you're born to, or what you are that makes your destiny - it's what you do.

3. Sometimes you need a hand to hold.

4. What's the point in being grown-up, if you can't be childish sometimes?

5. Metal dogs are the best sort.

6. Stories don't belong to one person. Stories belong to the reader.

7. Life's a cycle - sadness may come around, but life (and the Doctor) always comes around to the happy bits again.

8. There are three levels of fan. There's the casual fan, there's fanboy, and then there's Ascended Fanboy.

9. Current Ascended Fanboys include David Tennant and Peter Capaldi.

10. Being a hardcore fan can actually get you somewhere.

11. If you're brilliant at something, there's no shame in taking pride in it.

12. Bananas are a good source of potassium.

13. The foundation of society should be a man that never would.

14. The most important thing in the universe is an ordinary person.

15. Celery is good for your teeth.

16. Sometimes you're born into your family, and sometimes you choose your family.

17. What's important about you isn't the name you were born with, it's the name you choose and the ideals you dedicate yourself to.

18. Never make a bet with a Time Lord. They'll never cough up - especially when they owe you a chicken.

19. Don't give hot chocolate to strange Aztec women. You might accidentally get engaged.

20. When in doubt, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

21. Time is not a linear progression of cause to effect. It's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

22. There's a better way of living. Not travelling, not seeing amazing things, but standing up and making a decision instead of letting life happen to you.

23. Sometimes, everybody lives!

One thing you can do to get started

Pick a thing.

Ah-hah. You thought I was going to tell you the exact thing you need to do to get started. But that's up to you, and that depends on what you need to do. Are you looking to write a novel? The thing you need to pick is probably writing. Are you looking to become an artist? The thing you need to do is probably drawing. Decide what the simplest step is - break it down to the least complicated building block.

Now do the thing.

Do the thing over and over and over until it's second nature.

No matter what else happens, even if it's just in tiny increments, you will get better.

My favorite college professor - a huge, linebacker of a man who wrote about heartbreak and barbecue sandwiches -  was in favor of what he called The Program. And The Program was essentially sitting down, one time each day, and writing, non-stop, for fifteen minutes. When students would come to him and ask how to solve writer's block, or what they should write about, he would look at them over the rim of his glasses and ask "Are you on the program?" 

If you want to do a thing, then pick up and do the thing. Not in huge, life-altering measurements but in small building blocks that make The Thing less a thing and more a regular part of your life.

Now why are you still reading this? Set a timer for fifteen minutes, and go do the thing.

If you're a writer and you'd like help doing the thing, click here to join other lovelies also engaged in the same journey. xD

You can do anything for fifteen minutes! 

Being Rose Tyler

I create myself. 

This is my favorite line, from my favorite show, from my favorite character. Arguably, I could say it's my favorite line from any imaginative literature, period (though it would have to do battle with Hamlet's to be or not to be soliloquy and The Princess Bride's declaration on death and true love). It boils with everything I want to do, be, say to other people.

I create myself.

In Doctor Who, Rose Tyler is pretty singular among the Doctor's companions for what she makes of herself. When she starts out, she doesn't have much in the way of anything. No job, not much education, no real prospects to speak of, and by the end of her tenure on the show, she's a dimension-hopping BAMF who knows what she wants, goes after it, and gets it. 

I've had a couple of rough days. Days where the things that I want to be and the things that I am don't seem to match up - where in order to get from where I am, to where I want to be, what I have to do might as well be hopping between dimensions because it's just too damn impossible. And every time, I go back to that line.

I create myself.

What does it mean? To Rose it meant she transmuted her helplessness into the power to do what she needed to do in order to save someone she loved. But how do I do that? I don't have a handy space-and-time machine or access to futuristic technologies that will make my problems go away.

I have a map, in my head. A picture of myself some indeterminate amount of time from now, in which I live in a house, and the inside is cozy, reds and browns, where the kitchen resembles a hobbit-hole, and the library is something like Hogwarts. This person I am is happier, healthier, well-traveled. She's a wife and a mother, she's got a warm, exciting life full of the things she loves, and most of all, she doesn't struggle nearly so much. She's content.

Most days, getting to be that person seems like an impossibility. Everything from my health to my geographical location seems to stand in the way. But here's the thing.

All world-ending obstacles are made up of tiny little annoyances.

Overwhelming obstacles are made up of little obstacles. I wanted to be healthier, so I started running. Not a lot, not frazzling myself - I just got up, every morning, and jogged for fifteen minutes. And it worked. I felt amazing.

Other obstacles have little steps to beat. I want to travel, but I don't have a passport. So I set everything in motion to apply for a passport; when I have it, I'll be one step closer to achieving the big, big dream I have. Don't worry about the big stuff right now. Fix the little obstacles, and when you get to the big ones, they won't seem so big.

Here's the part where I give you a giant hug. 

Man oh man, do I ever know what it's like to sob into your pillow because there's something you want so badly, and the hugeness of it is impossible.

Hugeness is made out of a lot of little things though. I'm trying to concentrate on one or two of the little things - chipping away at a problem steadily instead of trying to get rid of it all in one go.  What I hope here is that you see something huge and impossible happen for me, so that you know that it's definitely, 110% possible for you. I haven't reached that goal yet.

But it's gonna be mine.

I'm gonna do it no matter what.

One way to tell stories you love every time

It's so easy for me to get burned out.

I'm the queen of ideas. Idea-generating is sort of like slinging rainbow-colored finger paint at white walls for me - beautiful and and bright and unplanned, and when it's happening it's the best thing ever. But afterwards it doesn't take long for me to get tired of being sticky and covered in paint - makes me want a bath and a bright, shiny new canvas.

I'm still learning, obviously, but lately there's one trick I've been using to keep myself interested.

Grab A Pen, My Loves

And some paper. You can do this in your head, but writing things down makes the thought process clearer and more concrete in your brain. 

Now, I want you to think of the top three things that make you angry, right now. I'm not talking about pet peeves, here - I'm talking about deeply ingrained, political or value-based issues that leave you seething.

My list looks something like this:

1. Classism

2. Health care and education

3. Modesty culture/sex-and-body shaming

Into the Frying Pan They Go

Got your list? Okay! Toss one (or all three) of your issues into a frying pan with your character, and add heat.

No really. Take your character and make them deal with the issue that makes you so angry. It doesn't have to be the main conflict. It can be a subplot. It can be the entire story, if you want. Slip it into a villain's motivation, make it part of a culture, take a basic right away from your character and have everyone she knows expect her to give it away freely. 

For example: right now, I'm writing a story about mer-people who used to be human. They became half-fish because the highest echelon of their society (herrre's the classism) decided that they should use magic to escape their shameful bodies (sex-shaming!) and anyone who teaches this history is summarily executed (education!).

I can get tired of writing about mer-people, but it's literally impossible for me to stop writing about these things. 

(It's important to remember that you're a storyteller, not a preacher, so filling your story with shoulds and should-nots is an easy way to alienate a reader. Having your character react in a real and faceted way to the situation - and having someone else read the story to tell you how the tone comes across - is probably a good idea.)

Go forth and write, good citizens of the interwebs! 

Writing Basics 101: Using Past Perfect Tense

Today's piece of advice:

95% of the time, you don't need the word "had'.

Yes!Had: 

Rose had a banana. The Doctor wanted the banana, but he also wanted Rose. The Doctor stole Rose's banana, had it for dinner, and then he had Rose for dessert. 

Fail!Had:

Sam and Dean had parked the Impala next to a big, blue box. Dean'd walked around it several times, squinting. 

"What's a 'Police Public Call Box'?" 

Sam had looked confused, too. "It's a holdover from the 1950s, before everyone had cell phones. If there was an emergency, you just found one and used it to call the police." 

Dean had given Sam a look. "Dude. Weird." 

It had obviously been a comment on his intelligence, but Sam wasn't phased. He'd stepped up and put his hand on the box, feeling a slight humming just underneath the surface of the wood. 

"You're telling me. They never used these in America, Dean. They're from England." 

Using "had + verb" is called "past perfect" tense. It's used to describe an action that happened before another action that is happening in the past. A lot of fanfiction authors confuse past perfect tense with plain old past tense, liberally scattering unneeded 'hads' everywhere. 

 Turning a Fail!Had into a Yes!HadSam and Dean parked the Impala next to a big, blue box. Dean walked around it several times, squinting. 

"What's a 'Police Public Call Box'?" 

Sam looked confused, too. "It's a holdover from the 1950s, before everyone had cell phones. If there was an emergency, you just found one and used it to call the police." 

Dean gave Sam a look. "Dude. Weird." 

It was obviously a comment on his intelligence, but Sam wasn't phased. He stepped up and put his hand on the box, feeling a slight humming just underneath the surface of the wood. 

"You're telling me. They never used these in America, Dean. They're from England." 

When It's Okay To Use Past Perfect

Most of the time, you just want to use regular old past tense. But sometimes, when you're using past tense, you need to describe something that happened in the past of the past you're writing about (sheesh, grammar sure is timey-wimey). Like so:

The Doctor thoroughly enjoyed his dessert. Somewhere in the hazy bits, between the flavor of banana and the flavor of Rose, he had lost track of where they'd meant to land, and so when they finally opened the doors, he was not expecting the American midwest, or the two surly-looking boys examining his TARDIS. It was completely worth it, though, because while not nearly as lovely as his magnificent time ship, the car - the car was a thing of beauty.

This has been a public service announcement.