There are a lot of things I enjoyed about that Lapham’s Quarterly chart I blogged about last week — for instance, the discovery that Victor Hugo fought procrastination by giving his clothes to a valet and telling him not to return them until he’d finished writing.

Another point that got me thinking was the fact that several authors wrote while standing up. Ernest Hemingway stood at his desk, Thomas Wolfe used the top of his refrigerator, and Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens composed poetry while doing chores and walking. And then there’s Jonathan Lethem, who’s jury-rigged a system that involves a treadmill and a cordless keyboard.

I have a normal desk and can’t imagine replacing it, but if I had some extra space I would love to get some sort of supplementary stand-up system… What do you think? Do you write standing up, or want to?

Like many writers, I often fantasize about having a physically active job — something like carpentry or construction, where I’d use my hands to do more than type and scribble, and end each day with an actual object I’d created. If you break it down, I suppose those are two very different dreams: the first about just being able to get off my bum more often, the second about creating something that’s not so maddeningly conceptual. I don’t know if visual artists share the same anxiety (it probably depends how you work), but if you spend an entire day writing, it’s quite possible you’ll have literally nothing to show for it when you’re “done,” or not until much, much later.

Of course, the grass is always greener, and the reality of a physically demanding job is doubtless very different than I picture it to be — for one thing, the exhaustion. From where I sit right now, elevating a sprained ankle on my desk as I work (dark porch, one too many steps), writing is a pretty great occupation, at least until I have to hobble downstairs to make my coffee.

Do you fantasize about having a less deskbound career?