A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
And perhaps, a little Starbucks coffee drink, to get the gears turning. Something with caffeine, to make sure she’s firing on all cylinders. But not too much caffeine because when she has more than two shots of espresso, she has a panic attack.
A journal, obviously, to record her innermost thoughts and the complexities of her tormented interiority—that goes without saying. A luxury Moleskin, perhaps.
Ooh, and a cute set of Muji Pens—one in every color. For brainstorming, mind you. If she just uses the one all of her ideas could get muddled. So the rainbow pack is actually a sort of an investment when you think about it.
Wi-Fi is a big one as well. She’ll need to do research for her novel and take a few of those hard-hitting BuzzFeed quizzes on days when she’s feeling introspective.
And a desk, from IKEA perhaps. One of those sleek, hardwood ones that assemble themselves. And if she’s going to spend a day in IKEA, she’ll probably be hungry, so like, maybe also,
Some Swedish Meatballs.
And a bunk bed, because they make her nostalgic and she’s already here. IKEA is sprawling.
It’s never a bad idea for a writer of the female persuasion to have a cell phone, to go on TikTok when the narrative process becomes overwhelming. We can’t have her burning out right before she crafts the Great American Novel. No way.
And if she has one of those, she’ll also need a quirky cell phone case. From Urban Outfitters or something.
And if she’s on the Urban Outfitters website, and they’re having a sale, say 10 percent off orders over $200, she might as well get Snoop Dogg’s new cookbook, for creative insight, of course, one visionary to another. And maybe a new corset top, and a Polaroid camera, to document the banality of the current moment for when she’s immeasurably famous one day.
And like, hear me out, a pair of Gucci sunglasses. So she can look cool, and aloof while she’s writing in cafés—like a genuine Forbes 30 under 30-type.
And I’m just spitballing here, but what if we got her a succulent for her desk? Like, just for inspiration. Nature is vital to the modern writer, because it’s so easy to get lost in the industrialized haze of the NOW. She should be in touch with the outside world, shouldn’t she?
But also, and let’s be real now, what if she kills the succulent? Because not everyone has a green thumb. Women aren’t always nurturing and if you assumed she would be, that’s a bit regressive of you, isn’t it? And so if the succulent dies, she’s going to feel guilty and end up having another panic attack. She’s a writer. She’s sensitive.
Now that I think about it, she has a lot of panic attacks. Maybe she should also have a therapist. Being the voice of your generation is a rather stressful undertaking.
Anyway, maybe after the first succulent, we could get her a fake plant. She could write a sonnet on artificiality and aesthetics or something. Because she’s profound, obviously.
But also maybe a domesticated seahorse, because she has so much love to offer, and it probably gets a bit lonely in a room of one’s own, and it’s more eccentric than a dog. And the seahorse could be sort of distracting, just so that she remembers to be present and exist unselfishly. Obviously, she’ll need to feed it kelp, or whatever a seahorse eats, and take breaks from her manuscript.
And maybe a knife, because if it really is a room of one’s own, that means there’s no one else there. She needs to be able to defend herself, hypothetically.
But she should know how to use the knife, right? Let’s throw in self-defense classes. And some mace too, just in case.
Okay, and what about a marble statue of Aubrey Plaza? There’s this adorable shop on Etsy that sells them, and our writer has always had kind of a crush on her.
And maybe, she needs another room, because this one room is already filling up with stuff, and she’d like to have some friends over. She has loads of friends because she’s an empathetic person.
And as long as she’s moving, she could get a place with an Olympic-sized swimming pool maybe. And a greenhouse. Maybe even a kiln— she’s multifaceted, so it should be no surprise that she’s been meaning to get into pottery. At the end of the day, a person’s space is sort of a representation of them, isn’t it? We need to do her’s justice. One day it will probably be a UNESCO historic site.