Monday 18 July 2011

I Couldn't Help But Wonder...

I loved Sex and the City. The television series that is, the less said about the movies the better. Apart from the fantastic clothes, the handbags and the glimpses of New York life, we also got to see the inside track on the life of a journalist.

I, like the fabulous Carrie Bradshaw, am a journalist.Unfortunately, that's where the comparisons begin and end. I don't write about sex, I write about the lifting of the European Union milk quota. The only relationship issues I attempt to hammer out are the link between the Greek riots and the price of Irish bonds.Carrie Bradshaw said in one episode that when money was tight she bought a copy of Vogue instead of dinner. If I even attempted such a thing, I'd end up eating the pages, glossy sheen or no. Which is probably how she manages to fit into all the designer clothes that she somehow manages to afford on a freelance salary. A column a week does not a Burberry trench-coat buy, my friends.

As far as I'm concerned, the biggest myth that show spawned was not the fact that one 'average' woman could use four different Dior bags in a single episode, or that friends will forgive you if you repeatedly slam their other half. It wasn't even the unrealistic dynamic of female friendship that Holli Moncrieff wrote about. It was the 'one take' idea of writing. I never saw her do rewrites, for example. She just sat down, made a scrunched up face, smoked a Marlboro Light and 'wondered'.She never once wrote an article on, say, sheep-farming in Bavaria, to make ends meet. She never made writing look like the hard work that it actually is.

She did wear some cool clothes though...


7 comments:

  1. Ah, what gets me every time is the fact that she can afford to live in new york with all those clothes on a writers salary! Now all my writerly dreams involve me being unrealistically fabulous. :(

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  2. HA. That is how she can fit in the clothes. I bet the pages of Vogue keep her regular, too. :P

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  3. TV is so unrealistic at times. I can't imagine not rewrites. That is just part of writing. Must be nice to be perfect every time. Wow.

    I must watch this show though because I have never seen it yet. I keep meaning to watch it.

    Heather

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  4. LOL! You'd eat the pages of Vogue! Me, too!

    If only it were so easy to be a writer and live in NYC.

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  5. I haven't watched. High fashion annoys me to high heaven and we've never had HBO, so I would have had to make an effort to track it down, so until this minute I did NOT KNOW she was a jounralist... this adds to the appeal. Honestly, though, I think your background sets you up to write GREAT books... political thrillers, conspiracy stuff--you have and idea how things are intertwined in a way the rest of us don't. Work it!

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  6. @Brit: I know! Writing in a Dublin suburb just doesn't have the same cachet!
    @Alleged: That's true! Maybe we should write a diet book on the subject :)
    @Heather: It's a good show, worth a watch anyway.
    @Susan: Lol! Glad I'm not the only one :)
    @Hart: Thanks Hart :)

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