Tayari Jones keeps a baby food jar of dirt on her desk from Toni Morrison’s hometown. CJ Hauser gifts her students a tiny plastic chicken to pull out whenever and wherever it’s time to write. Writing totems, talismans, amulets—we ascribe many names to the objects we keep close while we write. These objects inspire us, comfort us; they can prompt our productivity, make their way into our writing, or at the very least, serve as a dangling carrot to the world beyond our daily pages.

In Virginia Woolf’s short story, “Solid Objects” her main character grows enamored with a smooth piece of green glass he finds at the beach. “It pleased him; it puzzled him; it was so hard, so concentrated, so definite an object compared with the vague sea and the hazy shore.” The right object can be our own green glass; a raft when we’re treading the slippery shapes thoughts take.

In SOLID OBJECTS, we ask writers about the objects most essential to their creative practice, and what exactly these objects do for their brains.

This edition is written by Kate Folk, whose short story collection, Out There, debuts on March 29th.

I mostly write on my couch, a mint green loveseat from Ikea (“Morabo”) that I bought in fall of 2020. I was living in a studio apartment and a loveseat was the largest couch-type thing that fit the space. I recently moved to a slightly larger apartment that could accommodate a slightly larger couch, but the mint loveseat still has plenty of juice in it. A coffee table sits in front of it, which I sometimes put my feet on.

From the far corner of the coffee table, the Garfield plush toy regards me smugly. I found this Garfield recently in my old room at my parents’ house, and brought him back to San Francisco. I was obsessed with Garfield as a kid. I had a ritual of watching Garfield and Friends on Saturday mornings, before my parents got up. As an only child, I had many rituals that hinged on solitude, lest they be sullied. I loved the Garfield segments of GaF, and tolerated “U.S. Acres,” the farm segments, which seemed like filler. I resented those tedious farm animals, especially the sanctimonious Orson Pig. Sometimes there were “behind the scenes” episodes in which Garfield broke the fourth wall, which felt like a betrayal. A director says “cut,” and Garfield reveals himself as an actor, and tours us around the set of what we had thought was his real house. This raised troubling questions. So Garfield was not Garfield, but a paid actor? Was his real name even Garfield? Did the actor who played Garfield have a wife and children, a mortgage payment, a sex life? My faith in narrative itself was shaken, and has never fully been restored.

Because I was such a fan, it makes sense I’d have some Garfield memorabilia floating around my old bedroom, which my parents have halfway converted to storage. Still, I don’t have distinct childhood memories of this particular Garfield. I feel like he’s always existed at the periphery of my life, though I’ve never focused on him until now. He seems too firm and small to cuddle, though cuddled he must have been, as his fur is worn and a bit grubby. I like how his hard plastic eyes are half-closed above a crooked smile made of thread. He looks stoned, a mascot of my inebriated teenage self. I like having him there on the coffee table while I write. His expression says, “Who cares?” and “So what?” and “Life is meaningless.” I need that reality check while I’m writing. The Garfield reminds me that nothing I do is very important, which I appreciate.

Writing involves a lot of looking away from my laptop screen while I think something through, and the Garfield is right there to meet my gaze. I imagine him as my toughest critic, though he would never bother to read my work in the first place. He’s a physical manifestation of the part of me that says writing is boring and hard, so why not go to the beach or make a sandwich instead? Against his foil, I can be earnest, as though I’ve poured my self-sabotaging tendencies into this orange object. By offloading negative energy into the Garfield, I’m able to create more freely.

Really, the Garfield is so condescending. “That’s nice,” I imagine him saying about the book I’m about to publish. “You must be proud.” He keeps me humble. But sometimes, when I’m sick of his crap, I turn him around so his eyes face the wall.

Kate Folk is the author of Out There: Stories (Random House, 2022). She’s the recipient of a Stegner fellowship in fiction from Stanford University, and has written for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and Zyzzyva. Originally from Iowa City, she lives in San Francisco.

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Solid Objects: Kate Folk