Lifestyle

In my latest perusings of Making a Literary Life, author Carolyn See advised her readers to “pretend” to be a writer. What in the wide, wide world of sports? I do not pretend, woman: I do!

Oh wait, moving on, she makes a very good point; that is, what your muse wants your muse should get, i.e. mountain vistas, cocktail parties and wild boat rides down the Nile. Naturally, this advice could render some adverse results. Infidelity, embezzlement, and boarding actions by Somali pirates come to mind. But in terms of tailoring your life and personal self-image to your writerly tastes, I am intrigued.

So let’s see, what does my writerly self look like? I like the idea of long sleeves, since they lend their wearer a sense of sophisticated sobriety – chill short sleeves are good, but sanguine by comparison, long sleeves are alert. I’ve got those and the glasses – rectangular in the style of my inner, hip professor.

Notebooks are a must, both lined for journaling and blank for sketching. Got those too. Now I just need an office, with wood-paneled floors, and wood baseboards, and wood trim in every corner – even trimming the ceiling – a small, but cozy fireplace; a big swivel chair that reclines so that I can prop one foot on the heavy oak desk when conducting an interview, pipe in hand – selected from my collection of handmade antiques – imposing wooden shelves on at least two walls – all my books will be leather bound, even the paperbacks, courtesy of a custom leatherworking shop – and one of those large, revolving globes that sits in a three-legged frame. To say nothing of the human skull resting near my right hand for those truly morose moments of imaginative fervor.

Lifestyle-wise, I’d like bodyguards in turtlenecks, blazers, and khaki slacks, though only for those black tie events that harbor lurking assassins. And speaking of death, unless I die in bed with “rooooooosebuuud” preceding my death rattle, I’d like to be standing at the epicenter of a cataclysmic meteoric impact.