> CD #37: What writers wear
I can finally tell you my good news: Starting in September, I will be the 2021–22 Canadian Writer in Residence as part of the Canadian Distinguished Writers Program at the University of Calgary. It’s a dream come true for me to have the time and space and funds to work on my next book project, and I’m also looking forward to meeting other writers, doing manuscript evaluations, and (hopefully) hosting some community events too. What a privilege. What a life.
It’ll be trippy to be back on campus after all this time. I’ll have an office in the same English department where I did my Bachelor of Arts more than 20 years ago (the math feels all wrong on this, but alas), and I think some of my former professors are still there.
It’s funny because I remember, shortly after graduating, writing my first memoir piece and trying to decide if I should get a manuscript evaluation from the writer-in-residence at the time. After weeks of deliberation, I decided no. My writing wasn’t good enough, and I’d only embarrass myself. Never—and I mean never—did I think I’d wind up being the writer-in-residence.
The incomparable Lynda Barry once wrote (click through for the most beautiful story you’ll read today, I promise):
COMICS ARE MIRACULOUS!!! They are IMMUNE SYSTEMS! They are TRANSPORT SYSTEMS!!! They are TIME TRAVELING DEVICES!!
And boy was she ever right.
It still doesn’t feel real yet—someone is going to pay me to write and draw my own stories??—and sometimes I get nervous. Will people be excited to send their work to a “real” author and be disappointed to discover it’s just me? I mean, I’m very small and not that impressive-looking. Maybe I need to dress the part? What do writers-in-residence wear anyway?
It feels kind of silly to think about clothes in this context because part of me has always assumed that serious writers are concerned only with their minds, not their bodies. But a few months ago, I was reading a book by the poet Mary Ruefle and there, in the middle of her dense exploration of the mysteries of poetry, she frets over whether she should wear polar fleece in public and the message that might send:
"Polar fleece is a plush, spongy, totally artificial material that weighs nothing and conveys no quality of warmth or coolness; in fact, you can wear it in the most bitter weather or in the hottest heat. Polar fleece looks neither flimsy and light nor hearty and warm. It has no historical, cultural, or physical association with a place, a season, a society, or any living thing. It is the first existential fabric—eminently useful, meaningless, dissociated and weird."
I was so happy to see that real writers think about clothes after all.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. From Samuel Beckett’s Gucci bag and Clarks Wallabees to Joan Didion’s Céline campaign to basically everything Zadie Smith wears, famous authors are some of the most style-conscious people out there. Dorothy Parker wrote for Vogue, and Virginia Woolf was seriously clothing-obsessed. In fact, this 1925 quote from The Diary of Virginia Woolf could serve as the motto for Closet Dispatch:
“I must remember to write about my clothes next time I have an impulse to write. My love of clothes interests me profoundly: only it is not love; & what it is I must discover.”
And the following list she made of her daily anxieties? So relatable:
“shall I write another novel; contempt for my lack of intellectual power; reading Wells without understanding; Nessa’s children; society; buying clothes…terror at night of things generally wrong in the universe; buying clothes, how I hate Bond Street & spending money on clothes.”
LOLOL.
Well, whether I’m dressed appropriately for it or not, I am excited about finally having a room of my own (à la Woolf’s slightly more famous quote) for ten whole months. How lucky I am to have found writing and comics—or did they find me? Either way, I hope I live up to the magic they’ve brought to my life.
:) Teresa
ps. In an attempt to get off the internet for a while, I’ll be taking a break from Closet Dispatch in July.
What is happening even?? Closet Dispatch is a free, limited-run weekly newsletter by Teresa Wong.
Congratulations! That is so exciting.