As a kid, I “knew” what it would be like to be a writer.
It
would involve the following:
- A corduroy jacket (WITH elbow patches…the elbow patches are important.)
- A “study” with built-in corner shelves
- Enough well-worn classics (first editions) to line said shelves
- A window seat over looking an ivy-league looking courtyard
- A huge dark oak desk, buried under crumpled up rough drafts
- A wire wastebasket, also overflowing with rough drafts
- Maybe a pipe (I like the smell of cherry tobacco, but I don’t like smoking. Maybe mine would be a bubble pipe.)
- A typewriter. Definitely a typewriter (with a very distinct clicking sound and a crisp ding! at the end of each line)
- An assistant in a flowered dress who brews hot tea, probably with sugar cubes
- Several notebooks full of inspirational scribbles
This is what being a writer actually looks like:
- Working a 9 to 5 day job (well, a 7-3 day job…)
- Red and white heart-print Old Navy Pajamas
- A bedroom with a queen-sized bed
- Disheveled stacks of magazines and books tucked in various crevices and containers next to bed
- A TV with DVR just a few feet away (hmmm, that’s not tempting when I have writer’s block)
- A laptop with a smeary screen and sticky right-arrow key
- A living room, dining room, kitchen and 1.5 baths that do not clean themselves while I write. Ditto on
the laundry that doesn’t carry itself down to the laundry room or fold itself afterward.
- A super-large sweet tea
- A nine-month old assistant who drools on the screen and tries to do full body rolls on the keyboard as I type
- Several notebooks of inspirational scribbles
would involve the following:
2 Responses to The “Glamorous” Life of a Writer
DeQuan
on February 22, 2010
that the same life I want except I want Mountain Dew pjs, instead of Old Navy.
Shannon Dittemore
on February 24, 2010
Hey! You’re “office” sounds a lot like mine! Man, do I wish laundry did itself!