The right style, it seems, as how often it appears, is a practically essential trait for those with prolific publishing careers.
While the idiosyncrasies vary widely from personality to personality, most writers tend to bundle their iconic literary sensibilities into a unique personal aesthetic. Consider Jack Kerouac: Could he have written On the Road in something less American than a mid-wash gingham check denim? Fashion and writing, although dissimilar and separate industries, often find themselves intertwined, even married.
Suffice it to say: this is certainly no longer the case, even if at some point it is. Every now and then I hear muffled whispers, as in a state of disbelief, from fairy tales long ago when writers were flown to the islands to work on their manuscripts, given maps of company payment with unlimited budgets, and asked to come back only when they had developed something polite. and ready for printing. Even in fiction 20 years ago, well after the 1950s and 1960s (the golden age of the publishing industry), work was still characterized as extremely lucrative: Carrie Bradshaw was working as a freelance for Vogue at a now unprecedented rate of $4 per word.
Adjusted for inflation, this is only a part of what writers did a century ago, as other industry standards have continued to drop and the cost of life was composed and increased. When publications close, staff are laid off en masse, while freelancers work for ever lower rates without fringe benefits. Fighting against a client for payment is not an uncommon rite of passage for early career writers, nor is he forced to waive future rights to his work or fail to publish it all.
The way we adorn ourselves reflects both the present material conditions of our lives and the future lives we aspire to lead. Therein lies the paradox. Because writing is a highly respected job, people outside the industry often expect it to be paid well.
Access to fashion is a matter of workers in the most frivolous and practical sense of the term; it requires capital available for leisure, pleasure, beauty, and enjoyment. Still, I find myself motivated by a sense of nostalgia for those earlier times: I still spend a huge chunk of my salary on clothes and dress as I imagine a writer of my kind would appear.
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