Don DeLillo writes at home, at a desk with a manual typewriter, in a room he keeps deliberately clear and quiet. The one striking detail is what sits within eyeshot: a photograph of Jorge Luis Borges. He looks at it when his focus starts to slide.
A Quiet Room and a Clear Desk
DeLillo works at home. The room is quiet and the desk is clear, with none of the snack food, coffee, or clutter that might pull at his attention. He has described solitude as something a writer takes real trouble to secure and then squanders anyway, by looking out the window or reading random entries in the dictionary. He has long lived in the suburbs north of New York City, and by his own account the writing happens in that plain, controlled quiet rather than in cafes or busy shared spaces.
He doesn't romanticize the setting. The point of the bare room is practical. Fewer things in view means fewer invitations to stop working, which matters for a writer who admits how easily his own solitude slips away from him. The desk itself is a fixed thing. The manual typewriter stays where it is, and he returns to the same spot to do the same slow work, morning and afternoon.
The Photograph of Borges
The exception to the bareness is a photograph of Borges. The Irish novelist Colm Tóibín sent it to him, and DeLillo has described the blind, aging face in it as fixed with a fierce, absorbed concentration. When his focus starts to drift, he looks at the picture to break the spell. He's said he tries to treat Borges as a guide, a way to pull himself back out of lethargy and toward the charged work of making art. It's a small ritual, and it tells you how he thinks about the room: as a place built to hold his attention when his attention would rather wander.
To break the spell I look at a photograph of Borges, a great picture sent to me by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín.
Don DeLillo, Paris Review, 'The Art of Fiction No. 135' (1993)
The setup is small and it stays put. A desk, the manual typewriter, the photograph within view, the same quiet room each day. That fixed station is part of how DeLillo drops into work. See how the space, the schedule, and the method connect in the full Don DeLillo writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Strip the desk down. A clear surface and a quiet room remove half the excuses to stop.
- Keep one image that pulls you back. DeLillo uses the Borges photo as a cue to refocus when he drifts.
- Work in the same spot. A fixed station trains your attention to shift into work mode faster.
- Guard your quiet. He treats solitude as fragile and worth protecting.