Writing is like interior design. I’ve been doing a lot of the latter this week, though “design” might be too professional a word for what this is. “Decorating”, on the other hand, feels too superficial. I am furnishing an interior. And one consequence of my room in this new apartment being bigger than before: I now have to get more stuff .
In my old bedroom there was a vintage stereo cabinet within arm’s reach of the bed. I left one side of the cabinet open, clipped a lamp to the door and used the shelves inside as my nightstand. In my new room the cabinet is against the far wall opposite of where I sleep. I’d been using a wooden folding chair as a temporary night table and last week bought a pouf to replace the chair. The exposed brick and honey amber floors room suggested the pouf, which has a golden straw weave with the bottom half dipped in white. The pouf suggested a new comforter, and that I get a fitted linen cover for the box spring I use in lieu of a bed frame. The change in the sleeping area suggests different window treatments, roman shades instead of curtains, and now I’m thinking about moving the stereo cabinet into another room and replacing it with a small, lighter-wood desk. With all due respect, Mr. Carlin, what I’m seeking isn’t more stuff, but an exceptional harmony.
I wrote this in my first novel: “Connor had always admired people who had a knack for interior decorating, like the stylists who composed the rooms for the spreads in furniture catalogs. They were working with the same furniture and accessories as everyone else, but it always came out so much better, even without all the photographic tricks … you needed to be able to see beyond the beauty of any stand-alone object – a desk, a chair, a piece of decoration – and instead see it working within the larger system.”
I hadn’t realize it at the time, but I was writing about wanting to be an author. Every novel ends up being about its own creation.
When we respond to a thing in situ, whether it’s a table in a room or a graf in a story, we’re responding less to the thing itself than to its relationship to what’s around it. You buy the table you saw in the catalog and bring it home but something’s off about it, it doesn’t work here. Some people buy the catalog spread, the whole room for $965. Others, the artists and poets, the ones who become the stylists, can detach themselves from the standalone object. They can see it in imagined context, or they are willing to try it out and if it doesn’t work take it back to the store. Great writers take full advantage of the return policy.
