Video in which I retread old ground and revel in my favorite fascinations. Because I must.
A rough time stamping for those who havened mastered the fine art of the fifteen hour cappacino despite the fact that you cant spell it and the repo man approacheth.
9:00| Minimum Viable Product doesn’t make for good Literature Opinions on Storytelling
11:24| Description of ‘The Sketch of Sam Monroe’ my jungle themed novel in progress
12:55| Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z and Synchronicity
14:21| My Psychedelic Disclaimer and why some psychonauts are the worst kind of Presbyterian
17:50| Reading ‘The Green Cathedral’ the opening to ‘The Sketch of Sam Monroe’
20:16| The setting begets the story – vibe based storytelling
21:29| Aliens! Phil Schneider Alien Human War 1979! That weird 80s/90s ish Nichols/Cameron video Did this video inspire Stranger Things LOL The Grays Get Drunk and Smell Bed (Rednecks?) Patronus Sex Spell Unicorn wTf
The best thing about writing is you can get better at it by doing other things. I spent a good portion of the day learning JS and practicing guitar. As I was making a salad just now the thought occurred to me that I managed to squeeze in two poems. I don’t know if they’re the greatest thing in the world but they did happen.
Which got me to thinking. Shouldn’t I be more focused on writing. Shouldn’t I have written, researched, and posted more? Shouldn’t I get more serious about turning what I guess is my primary skill into a career or if I’m being less crassly commercial into a craft?
So I got all these thoughts and I realized that learning JS and other programming languages, nerdy concepts, etc would help me to write more believable characters. It would help me to inform readers of the various mercurial abstractions of just why OOP is such a big mess.
So should I be writing more. Yes. But the beauty of writing is that a lot of it happens in those blank spaces of time where you’re trying to figure out why you chose to learn Java instead of a language that didn’t arise out of an existential crisis.
Michael Crichton was a doctor and a filmmaker. So there. There’s your established example to prove that the best thing about writing is that you can get better at it by doing other things.
The modern day certainly isn’t romantic. You need time for romance. And the modern day is all about instant access. So, it’s no surprise that sepia hued conceptions of lone desks in sparse rooms reeking of whiskey jar with reality. And this jarring leads some would be writers to whiskey without the licence of having written like Bukowski.
You may not dig Bukoswski. You may think my depression era vision of artistic struggle is cheesy (Confession: It is but cheese is yummy). But the fact that many feel that today’s over saturated market, desensitized readers, and short attention spans spell doom for spelling out literary vistas is undeniable.
The aforementioned factors are certainly there. Even though some may question the degree to which they’re present. They are there.
What does oversaturation imply? It implies a flooded market. What’s so bad about a flooded market? Well, aside from the obvious increased difficulty in getting traditionally published there’s the accompanying lack of funds due to a lethal combination of stiff competition and sheer static.
But, was it any better for Bukowski or Poe? I don’t think so. There’s probably a good reason both men were notorious alcoholics. A bohemian paradise isn’t one. Poe was writing at a time when literacy still played second fiddle to operating a plow. His market was small.
What’s worse a big market with lots of noise and asskickers or a small market full of aristocrats? I really don’t know.
I know that in Bukowskis day even though literacy had improved it still played second fiddle to assembling widgets at GM. Also, no one had time for reading.
That’s my first set of reasons for the firm belief that today might be the best time to be a writer. Because, despite all the hot air about overstuffed schedules readers have more time than ever. As do writers.
So, we have unprecedented levels of literacy and people who have time to watch the Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead while checking in on the Packers game.
Yes, but all these things are numerical…qunatative. It doesn’t matter if there’s more potential readers if there’s no engagement. People who are distracted by Game of Thrones and top ten lists won’t be reading very deeply if reading at all.
This may well be the lament of those who wish to view the past in roseate hues. But, the truth as far as I can see it is that these shallow consumers have a shadowside. Lots of folks, many of whom are in places like WordPress, are fed up with reboots. They make the exact sort of complaints that writers make. They’re hungry for deep engaging content. And seeing as they’ve had the whole worlds literary cannon at their fingertips are well equipped to engaged with said content.
Traditional publication and revenue may be difficult and it was always difficult. In fact I think that better informed folks might be able to argue that making money as a writer was even more difficult in Bukowskis day.
Yes, it may have been more difficult and it may still be difficult but there are many more tools. And one big difficulty is easily taken out of the equation. Writers as far as I can tell – want to be read. Due to technology and sites like WordPress this has never been easier.
This is a wonderful tool because it provides the invaluable insight of feedback. And there are many tools at the writers disposal. There are instant translators, internet dictionaries, just insane amounts of information about any given topic. Not only that but there are countless tools for organizing that information, for formatting, spell-checking, and editing your work.
I still flirt with the idea of the sparse room with the weathered keyboard. I flirt with it cause it’s sexy and it’s fun. But this little idealization of where real work and real writers happen is like most idealisations mere whimsy.
I’d conclude with something more concrete but I have to make my second cup of coffee before my shift starts.
Thanks for reading and don’t let the idea of being a ‘blogger’ keep you from writing.
So I was doin a bit of studying and stumbled on a U2 song with a sweet and simple (somewhat trite) lyrics ‘you’ve been everywhere.’ Which got me to pondering the funny way music and glib phrasing allows us to overlay our own lives and interpretations over a piece.
Saturdays often find me gathering strength for the coming week. They are often as productive as any other day but their charm lies in that they don’t have to be.
So I sit here giving my eyes a rest, nearly blind without my contacts, perusing Vanity Fair. I come across an article discussing a zeitgeist shift of ‘serious writers’ ceasing to shun Television writing. Opting instead to embrace it and taking TV shows they watch ‘very seriously.’
I did not put ‘serious writers’ in snark quotes for any elitist reason. I am huge Michael Crichton fan and have always (when it’s done right) understood both the big and small screen as rich and valid mediums.
I put serious writers in quotes because the term confuses me. I feel that anyone who takes the trouble to write is a serious writer. Perhaps the piece was using the language to highlight the fact that accomplished writers (whose work is expressive of the sort of nuance that one associates with those who appreciate literary art) were no longer shunning an industry pariah.
Which is fine but I can’t help but fiddle the hilt of my sword. I am on guard for the king called disinterest and his prince ‘l’art pour l’art.’ A position that I feel is increasingly rare. When I hear ‘serious this or that pursuit’ these days I am wont to think that ‘serious’ means commercially viable.
I am decidedly steeped in Classicism as I’ve come to understand it. I do not mean by this any restrictive form but rather a mindset. A mindset tracing its roots back to the ancient city states of Greece where merchants were shunned.
The commercialization of science and art is a decades old story. It is a story too broad and important for this uncharacteristically cool Carolina morning. Books will be written about it for decades. The purpose of this wee essay is to serve as reminder that every fertile thing that elevated civilization is now being processed into quick, unnaturally tasty, canned goods.
The Vanity Fair article is an excellent springboard for thrusting the Classic outlook back into the collective conscience. It’s a rich little morsel that raises all sorts of questions.
Questions like the namesake of this article: “Is ‘pitch culture’ gonna improve novels?”
If ‘serious writers’ are being funneled from the world of the novel into the world of the sitcom as the authoress suggests then what does this mean for novels?
I do not necessarily think it means anything foul. The pithier more economic approach of television writing is certainly good to have and maintain in one’s literary tool belt. And I do enjoy a good show so the presence of ‘serious writers’ means that I will have a richer life.
But, even if these pros I’ve highlighted existed without their shadow cons then one must still remember the ground bass of classicism. That little voice that says, “Is the greatest number, the greatest good?”
Paradoxically, I think that history attests to the fact that the greatest good, for the greatest number is meted out by that little voice. A voice that is often too modest and too much of a minority.
avoiding the cons of ‘Pitch Culture’ means giving ear to that voice.
What do I mean by pitch culture? To those unfamiliar with marketing a pitch is a proposal. It’s putting forward an idea that’s likely to get people hooked to a guy in the business of making money getting people hooked. And getting the guy to think that the idea will get people hooked. With so many hooks you can see how quickly the process gets crooked.
The obvious problem here is the difficulty of making something as inherently subjective as art as objective as a studios bottom line. This is an art in itself that I don’t necessarily disdain, I just think it like any market requires ethics and oversight.
You don’t want metrics, things that in themselves are fraught with the chaotic problem domain of social statistics, to become the cookie cutter for your artistic treats.
The article argues that today due to the presence of serious writers this cookie cutter approach is rarer. I do see some evidence for this but that evidence is of course shows that I happen to find engaging and is thus suspect.
That being said I feel that many shows are not so much abdicating the cookie cutter but simply using a cookie cutter that tries really hard to not seem like a cookie cutter.
Everytime I hear words like ‘groundbreaking, raw, gritty, etc’ I immediately encounter a funny sensation. It’s a dull sort of malaise that settles over my mind as I picture a litany of industry standards like ‘Dr. House accepting his lesbian daughter while taking potshots at corporations and Jesus as he fights off zombies that put him face to face with the surprisingly violent nature of average people in a shitty situation.’ This is the cookie cutter that I call ‘shit just got real.‘
South Park did a really great bit that highlights the overindulgence of shocking realities when the character Butters tires of ‘all the gay weiners’ in Game of Thrones.
A pretty standard line of advice for any profession is that ‘you have to know the rules before you can break them.’
I think that the lack of a strong reading culture makes audiences particularly susceptible to cheap tricks. And if serious writers are going to revolutionize an industry known for cheap tricks they’d better be careful when catering to the whims of that audience and the farmers at Madison Avenue.
The Fractal Journal 