I’m going to start by saying that I think writers and hipsters can easily be one in the same. Maybe I’m referencing the last great generation of writers, those Beat writers like Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac, who would easily be categorized as hipsters. Actually, according to Kerouac, this mad pack made up the original hipster…
“The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way.”
The hipster, a cool cat who is ahead of his/her time, is classified as edgy and modern. When you find freelance writers who tend to be ahead of the pack, cling to these writers with all of your might if you hope to advance your business in the same manner. How do you spot a hipster writer to begin with?
It’s All in the Look
Writers are the best — and worst — of judges. We see far too much into things, over analyzing, tucking mediocre things back in our minds, noticing the fine print. And still the old saying goes, “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” which comes to call the writer as a close character into judgment. For writers who want to create a hipster “cover,” to, for example, go incognito into a herd of hipsters in hopes to write a New York Times article on the subject, here are some fashion pointers:
- Plaid flannel shirts, preferably more than one; tie one around your waist and wear the other buttoned for boys, unbuttoned and layered for the ladies
- Boots, scuffed with a previous owner, if possible
- Body hair, on the face for the dudes, everywhere else for the gals
- Local everything, from hand-spun wool socks to a hat tie-dyed using foraged flowers and herbs for an eco-conscious dye
- All natural odor, maybe with a little lemon freshness, using real lemons, grown in your backyard grove
No, It’s What You Say…and Read
Some would say that a hipster writer has his own language. Adjectives, like cavernous, and exclamations, like “o bohemia!” come spewing from their ‘stached faces. While riding bicycles around the block, they spot coffee shops that grow their own coffee beans causing them to stop to write lines including “beans in the black create worlds in the blackness” and “stimulating soils” before popping off their granny bike to grab a bite at said coffee shop. Books leading toward the hipster-writer persona should be read at all costs and include:
- David Wallace Foster’s “Infinite Jest”
- Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Tree of Codes”
- Leanne Shapton’s “Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry”
Actually…the key about being a hipster writer is not being aware of it. So scrap what you’ve just read, pretend you never saw this blog post.
Shimmy on down to your local thrift shop to score some old threads.
Scoot into the home brew shop to stockpile carboys and fermenters. You need to have a hipster hobby. Plus it’ll help loosen your lips for the next…
Hit up your stationary supply store for a renovated typewriter once said to belong to Stephen King’s….son, Joe Hill, the hipster version of his horror-writer-hero father.
Oh, and make sure to incorporate lots of dash-es and … into your writing. Just…for…the…heck…of…it…
Miranda B writes wherever she goes and about whatever she does, which makes for some highly entertaining and often surprising content.
