The small secretary desk where I write is tucked into a corner of my bedroom. I spent hundreds of mornings here, shaping and reshaping the manuscript of my novel, Temporary Palaces , while a few feet away my partner and our beagle—both late sleepers—snoozed contentedly.

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Our house is small, but it’s not cramped. There are places I could work alone. In the spare room or at the dining room table. But when we moved into our house, I carried my desk out of the moving cube and up the stairs, instinctively placing it in the corner of our bedroom.

My earliest experiences as a writer took place at a desk in my suburban bedroom, as a teenage zinester. It was there that I scribbled tiny stories, edited them, copy-and-pasted layouts, and after a trip to the copy shop, collated and stapled the latest issue of my zine Ghost Pine .…