If the Internet is good at anything, it’s connecting people with similar, obscure interests.1 If there’s something that interests you even in the slightest, chances are you can find a community of people who are crazy about the subject. Blogs, Flickr groups, newsgroups, podcasts. Thirty minutes of searching on Google can produce enough research material to keep you busy for weeks.

Example: people love to show off their desks. Either they’re sharing the computer hardware they own, 2 showing off their interior design chops, or perhaps are writers and just want to share how their carefully crafted writing space looks.

I’ll admit, I look at a lot of these pictures. It’s interesting to see how an author who has written books, serves as an editor for a major magazine, or writes a blog that has hundreds of thousands of readers works. Is their desk messy or spotless? What kind of computer do they use? Where do they put it? What is their lighting like? Are they in a corner of a busy room or do they have a dedicated writing studio somewhere?

Somewhere along the line I came across the picture posted below. I forgot to save the source, but I liked it enough that I tucked it away to use at some later date. I had forgotten about it completely and ran across it while doing some hard disk cleanup over the weekend.

You can talk about what your favorite computer is, what kind of keyboard you use, a preferred office chair, etc. that would make up your ideal writing space. But I think this dude had it just about right.


  1. And porn. It’s really good at porn. 
  2. We Mac geeks are probably the worst offenders.