The clothes make the (hu)man (pt 1)

Daily writing prompt

You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?

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There’s a line used in classist repression: “the clothes make the man.” Okay, maybe that is unfair, it is about more than repression.

The idea is that a convincing wardrobe can do a lot for a person, make them feel better, and make them look better. Clothes can in fact make the difference in many situations… but there is also some elitism rolled into that.

You have to dress a certain way to be taken seriously. And usually that way is on the other side of a gatekeeper, whether is is the cost of (and access to) finer clothes, or just the stabilizing presence of an elder to teach you how to dress yourself.

Who taught you how to tie a tie? Where did that tie come from?

Clothes do not make you into whatever you are. And, similarly, the “perfect space for reading and writing” does not make you a writer.

Writing is hard work, but the greatest piece of fiction is that everyone has the next great novel just waiting inside them. Turns out, getting out that novel (or dissertation or whatever) is actually really hard. Nearly impossible. So we have created for ourselves a whole zeitgeist of conditions about what it takes to be able write.

Special typewriters, or modern-day throwback word processors like the Freewrite. Hot tea. The right kind of music. A specific brand of pencil. A desk of certain dimensions and a chair with the right posture. The right time of day is important, too.

We make excuses about writing just like we do about exercise. We don’t actually make it easy to do by inventing all these aides and tools (Scrivner vs Jetpack vs Postbox vs Word vs vs vs vs vs). Instead, we make it easier to give up, to skip a day, to break a routine and leave it broken. To not start a routine because we are waiting for the right time to start. Monday, or the first of the month, or even better, New Years Day.

I cannot write today because I ran out of my writing beverage or fountain pen ink or alloted time.

It is easier to externalize these factors than to admit that every minute of the day is a choice you make about how to spend your time. Either you are a writer, or you aren’t, and the only difference is if you are writing.

The perfect space for writing is the one where you write. Because it isn’t the clothing that makes the person.