If I weren't a writer there would not be a toby jug full of pencil stubs on one end of my desk, produced by diligent use of a pencil extender cut from the bamboo thicket outside my study window;

A printer's dummy of a dictionary on the other end (J.L. van Schaik's Afrikaanse Sinoniemwoordeboek, 608 paginas, 74 gsm Oyster opaque) stuffed with notes towards fictions I may or may not write; three yellow Post-its stuck to my monitor that read '"the travelling salesman approach to literature" - Margaret Drabble', 'title: The Floating Population' and 'tenosynovitis: nausea induced by bad poetry'; a copy of The Exploded View under the leg of the coffee table in my lounge; a pewter kohl-pot on the mantelpiece holding a speckled feather picked up on the shores of Lac Assal, 'the deepest depression in Africa'; a photograph by Roger Palmer on my dining-room wall that appears to show Cape Dutch cottages in a landscape; a copy of the King's English Dictionary (British Books Ltd, 1933) at arm's length on my bookshelf - the Rev. C.A. Alington, former Head Master of Eton, begins his Introduction with these words: 'There is a great deal to be said for the man who declared that, if he were condemned to limit his library to a single book, that book should be a dictionary'; a postcard propped against the King's English Dictionary picturing the Wenningstedt beach-hall tilting on the edge of a cliff after the Sturmflut of 24 November 1928; an e-mail in my inbox inviting me to participate in Le Marathon des Mots (better start training); a note in my diary that reads 'Ask Thomas Brückner if my translations from Eich will do'; a column attributed to me in the Sunday Times that begins 'If I weren't a writer'; and so on.

• Flashback Hotel, a collection of short stories by Ivan Vladislavic is published by Umuzi R180