Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.

You’ve sat on the couch with your laptop for long enough. You’re a real writer, and you deserve a professional writing space of your own. A place where, by the mere act of sitting there, your brain engages into WORK MODE. A place where inspiration can find you. What makes desks so great for writing? Desks are renowned for their flatness, which makes them ideal for both computer-based and paper-based writing.

So what kind of desk do you need? As a writing-advice columnist and Famous Author, I am required to say here that the best desk is the one that you’re sitting at, so pretty much any desk will do—if you’re a conformist, mindless NORMIE, that is. C’mon, we’re going shopping.

Your options:

• IKEA: A simple, elegant desk never goes out of style—nor does cursing at the confusing instructions of IKEA furniture. If you succeed in getting the desk built, however, you’ll love it, along with all the other clever household goods you didn’t need but decided to buy anyway. Bonus: your time spent observing all the couples having relationship-ending fights in the IKEA store will pay big dividends when you write your novel.
• Thrift store desk: A great way to save money, as well as absorb the residual inspiration from all the stories written at this desk in the years before you bought it. This desk could tell some pretty amazing stories of its own. How much junk mail was casually chucked onto it? How did anyone get this elephantine monstrosity into, then out of, their house? Why did all of its previous owners die? Why have I felt a malevolent presence ever since I brought this thing home? Can you believe it only cost thirty bucks?
• DIY: Why spend a bunch of money on a cookie-cutter desk that anybody can have? Building your own may consume all your available writing time for the next three months, but you’ll have your dream desk at only 104% of the cost of buying a similar desk at Target.

• Adjustable desk: The best of all possible desks is the motorized, adjustable desk. Stand when you want to feel energized! Sit when your back starts to hurt! Check Facebook in either position! The important thing is that you set a monthly reminder to use the desk’s standing mode, since you spent all this money and you haven’t engaged its standing configuration in weeks.

• The “I’m still deciding what type of desk I want to buy” desk: These can be purchased at pretty much any hardware store. Simply buy a pair of sawhorses and a closet door. If your friends or spouse raise an eyebrow at this eyesore, you can tell them it’s temporary until you decide on your forever desk. You don’t have to make a final decision until three years from now, when your significant other finally puts their foot down, at which point you quickly order the first thing you find on Amazon.

If you think this is fun, wait until you buy a chair!

Have a harrowing tale of how you brought home your writing desk? Share your story in the comments!