First, you must find the proper spot. Ideally you want a rickety desk on the second floor of a cabin overlooking a lake in the northwoods of Wisconsin. It should be fall, or late spring, so it’s cool enough to wrap a blanket around your legs but not so cold your fingers turn blue. Bearing that, though, you may find a coffeeshop with the appropriate ambiance—a little bit worn in, a little bit rough around the edges, nothing too shiny and new. If there are many hipsters or much stainless steel in sight, you’re in the wrong place. Get a cappuccino or black coffee, but nothing with whipped cream or too much sugar, it’s undignified. If you really must put Splenda in your coffee, do it by the self-service bar so as not to mar your writerly image with yellow packets and granules of sweetener scattered about your table. If you really must, you can write at home. I suppose that desk facing the street will do, but honestly, I’m not sure how you think you can get any work done in a place so banal. Perhaps you can snuggle in bed with a cup of tea and occasionally look plaintively out the window as you write, that might work, though I’m still unconvinced that you could possibly churn out any interesting material from home. All the great writers spent time in Paris, so perhaps that’s the solution. Find someone who will fly you to Paris, then at least if your writing is trite and awful you can console yourself with pastries and Parisian men.
The desk itself is important too—it should be large enough for a laptop or a notebook or whatever it is you write on, but not so large you can clutter it with a hundred books and paper and leave no room for your soul to breathe. Nothing from Ikea, for God’s sake. If you can find an aging table with chipped paint, that would work, providing there’s some wonderful history to it. Of course, it has to be wood, those metal and laminate monstrosities won’t be any use at all. Dovetail joints, definitely. Buy it at a flea market and find love letters in the bottom drawer. Or get it at an estate sale from a grieving son whose mother used to journal there in the creeping morning light.
You can have a cup of tea, or maybe some toast with the raspberry jam you canned last summer, but keep an eye to plating. If your beverage and/or snack are not properly presented, don’t bother trying to write, it’s no use. Better to spend the time sitting at your Ikea desk reading fashion blogs if you’re going to drink diet Coke and have half a leftover pizza out of the greasy delivery box. I mean, seriously, do you think Virginia Woolf would be caught dead in your situation right now? Ramen is for the Sue Graftons and Danielle Steeles of the world. Aim higher. Maybe you can fancy yourself some sort of whimsical Harper Lee if you get the Coke in the glass bottles, but that’s probably pushing it.
Now as for you. You can’t be overly stylish if you’re going to be a writer, we’ve learned that from Hollywood. Obviously you have to be stunningly beautiful, so that’s going to be a major barrier, but your natural tendency to be somewhat frizzy-haired and rumpled will certainly be a boon. It’s too bad you don’t wear glasses. Convince yourself that your vision is blurred and go in for an eye exam. Glasses will almost certainly make you a better writer, so that’s something to work on. Wear lots of cozy sweaters. Get a chambray shirt and a slouchy leather bag. Develop lots of charming eccentricities. Diane Keaton in Annie Hall with a little dash of Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath, minus the head in the oven. You need enough personal tragedy to be interesting, but not enough to be dead.
Now. With this advice, take stock of your life. That stool at the Ikea desk is too short, the desk is too big, you have no place to write, you’ve been drinking juiceboxes like it’s your job all morning long (so unpoetic), you’re wearing sweatpants, your vision is fine, your apartment is too small, your wardrobe is clumsy and limited, and you’ve got an ever-lingering anxiety that you’re slowly turning into a Cathy cartoon. Clearly you’re not cut out for this writing nonsense. Maybe for tonight you should just watch a few hours of Mad Men and go to sleep. Wait for your life to sort itself out; unless you’ve set the scene properly, I can’t see any sense in trying to come up with story ideas, much less put pen to paper. Probably best to just become an accountant.
