What is it about writing as a stranger that is so much better than writing as yourself? For a project this summer, I was given the liberty to write as anyone who could speak as an authority on the subject of green building. I chose Sarah Wendell, a sustainably-minded San Francisco resident. And God, I loved it. I think I know why is was so invigorating, and I suspect it has something to do with choosing a life for myself. Sarah is older, settled, and completely sure in her voice. She works. Actually, she is a sought-after architect. She's got Lulu and Rob (dog and husband, respectively). And let me tell you, her husband is a looker. Women do double-takes as he walks Lulu down the city streets.
Me? I sleep in my Brooklyn apartment on a mattress on the floor, looking for work and dreaming of buying a set of drawers or a chair to sit on (may seem a small thing, but when you have nothing to sit on, you soon realize that the two options-standing and reclining- are vastly overrated). Bet Sarah Wendell's apartment has some damn seating. She is in a sweet, content kind of love. I am frozen in this new situation, waiting for my life to start again. I'm not unhappy, just waiting.
So here are the words I wish I could write from the kind of life I wish I had.
http://puredesignmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/a-pure-design-by-sarah-wendell/#comments
http://puredesignmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/searching-for-inspiration-by-sarah-wendell/
*Note the comment from a poor stranger who thought this fictitious person was real.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
I Am Not Writerly
I am clearly not a writer
I do not own a mac. I see this as the first roadblock to me becoming a real writer. Sure, my computer connects to the internet, it writes and computes and all that. But it is not the machine of a writer. Get that smug look off your face. Yes, I look wistfully at your sleek, silver simplicity, but I am content to click away on the homely HP I got half price at Costco, decorated in bubbles that you might find on the walls of a child’s bedroom or a steel reusable water bottle.
Beyond the fact that I own a PC (Ee gads! Look away darling, that thing is the tool of a plebeian not an ar-teest!) I have decorated the background with pictures of my friends, happy and smiling at football games and dances. None of them are ugly nor are they understated. None of them are black and white or sepia. None of them are candid.
When I pull my hair back, the pieces generally settle into a sleek, athletic ponytail. I wish I had the hair of a devil-may-care hipster, with poetic stray hairs that fall artfully across my eyes as I tell you that you must, MUST read Dostoevsky. You know that girl. You see her and you just KNOW she has something completely original to say. Her taste in music is better that yours. My hair is not the hair of a novelist.
I do not fall into periods of tortured inactivity. Bite me, Keats.
I drink my coffee with ice, cream, and fake sugar.
I am not a regular. Yes, I can be found here regularly, but the man who pours my coffee does not greet me with a smile, and a how’s it going, Jenn? The only place I’ve ever been a regular is at my hometown Quiznos. Something tells me that had Jane Austen lived today, she would not have been known for her penchant for the oven toasted sandwich chain, although there’s a mental picture for you.
I not only see Amanda Bynes movies, I own them. Three of them. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the great screen writers of the past weeping.
I live in Brooklyn. Let me stop you before you get to thinking Brooklyn, well that’s more like it. I live in Park Slope. Think strollers, not bikes.
Great writers drink a little for inspiration. The only sentence the drink has ever inspired me to write was seven lines long, had no punctuation, no verb, and no coherence.
I took a painting class last year, in which the professor would often call certain students' work 'painterly'. As in "Class, look at the brush strokes on Keith's vase, they're in a very, uh, Piccasso-like, painterly style. Well done Keith". When you think about it, the adjective 'painterly' seems to mean 'in the fashion of a painter'. I tended to take this critique to translate roughing as "Class, look at Keith's natural talent. This boy is an artist, while the rest of you, in a word, blow." I mention this occasion of stumbling across a new word simply to say that, should the word 'writerly' exist, it obviously would not be used to describe me. My hair is too tame, my temperament too stable, my neighborhood too gentrified and my tastes too bourgeois.
The odds, I fear, are stacked against me.
I do not own a mac. I see this as the first roadblock to me becoming a real writer. Sure, my computer connects to the internet, it writes and computes and all that. But it is not the machine of a writer. Get that smug look off your face. Yes, I look wistfully at your sleek, silver simplicity, but I am content to click away on the homely HP I got half price at Costco, decorated in bubbles that you might find on the walls of a child’s bedroom or a steel reusable water bottle.
Beyond the fact that I own a PC (Ee gads! Look away darling, that thing is the tool of a plebeian not an ar-teest!) I have decorated the background with pictures of my friends, happy and smiling at football games and dances. None of them are ugly nor are they understated. None of them are black and white or sepia. None of them are candid.
When I pull my hair back, the pieces generally settle into a sleek, athletic ponytail. I wish I had the hair of a devil-may-care hipster, with poetic stray hairs that fall artfully across my eyes as I tell you that you must, MUST read Dostoevsky. You know that girl. You see her and you just KNOW she has something completely original to say. Her taste in music is better that yours. My hair is not the hair of a novelist.
I do not fall into periods of tortured inactivity. Bite me, Keats.
I drink my coffee with ice, cream, and fake sugar.
I am not a regular. Yes, I can be found here regularly, but the man who pours my coffee does not greet me with a smile, and a how’s it going, Jenn? The only place I’ve ever been a regular is at my hometown Quiznos. Something tells me that had Jane Austen lived today, she would not have been known for her penchant for the oven toasted sandwich chain, although there’s a mental picture for you.
I not only see Amanda Bynes movies, I own them. Three of them. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the great screen writers of the past weeping.
I live in Brooklyn. Let me stop you before you get to thinking Brooklyn, well that’s more like it. I live in Park Slope. Think strollers, not bikes.
Great writers drink a little for inspiration. The only sentence the drink has ever inspired me to write was seven lines long, had no punctuation, no verb, and no coherence.
I took a painting class last year, in which the professor would often call certain students' work 'painterly'. As in "Class, look at the brush strokes on Keith's vase, they're in a very, uh, Piccasso-like, painterly style. Well done Keith". When you think about it, the adjective 'painterly' seems to mean 'in the fashion of a painter'. I tended to take this critique to translate roughing as "Class, look at Keith's natural talent. This boy is an artist, while the rest of you, in a word, blow." I mention this occasion of stumbling across a new word simply to say that, should the word 'writerly' exist, it obviously would not be used to describe me. My hair is too tame, my temperament too stable, my neighborhood too gentrified and my tastes too bourgeois.
The odds, I fear, are stacked against me.
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