I’ve had really smart agents and unnervingly good editors, but I don’t need THEM to lead me astray; I will happily do that to myself. I write about culture, and sometimes I’m soaking in that shit so much that I don’t notice how flaccid and limp my prose has become, how bland and dumb I’m getting, how little faith I suddenly have in my voice. I start thinking I should write shit that I hate, in a tone that I cannot fucking get behind, because maybe that will make my financial picture a little less stressful.

That’s when I call my friends and talk their sad ears off, and mewl and moan and piss myself until they have to pretend their cell phone connections cut out just to get off the fucking phone with me.

You know what I need to do though? Put the phone down and ask myself who in the whole wide world is supposed to take responsibility for what I write if I won’t do it myself.

The Awl | Ask Polly: Jesus, My Struggling Writer Friends Never Shut Up!

The above, by Heather Havrilesky, contains some of the best writing advice (or, maybe more specifically, living/working advice for people who write) that I’ve read in a very long time. Lately I’ve found that the more questions I’m asking, the more I’m throwing my messes at other people in hopes that they will be able to name and untangle them for me, the more it’s time for me to shut up and just do the work my own damn self. See also: Renata Adler, “Writers rant. Writers phone…” I tend not to phone—it’s more frantic, long-winded emails—but the work-averse impulse is the same. Having good, solid friends and mentors and various other types of ears you can put bugs into at all hours of the day and night is hugely valuable, of course. But undersold, I think—to young writers at least—is the importance of being able to call your own self on your own self’s probably very real and abundant bullshit.

During the worst dark nights of the soul, my smaller failings rise up one by one in a chorus of metallic voices: that unwritten, obligatory important letter; my tipsy, laughing, unintentional, klutzy faux pas booming into a sudden silence; the failure to speak when speaking would have helped someone…

These things are much worse to recall than any of my gigantic, life-changing mistakes. Those are boulders too big to see all at once, hulking, unmoving, and strangely safe, whereas the little things generate a cascade that turns into an avalanche. They’re all connected to one another somehow, neurochemically, so that remembering just one of them sets off a chain reaction sparking all the way back through the decades with increasing urgency until I’ve looped through my entire life, all the way back to the first one, which now seems worse than ever in light of all the others.”

Kate Christensen’s Blue Plate Special is out in July, and this is from the very first page, so you know you’ll want to devour it as soon as possible. (via maudnewton)

I understand that it is a healthy and worthwhile thing to read books that challenge your thinking, that “make you see the world” “in new ways” and “expand your horizons” and “broaden your thinking” and “take you out of yourself” and all that, but also there is nothing quite like reading a series of sentences that precisely capture a feeling or a thought or experience you have had but that you have not yet put into words, or that you tried and failed to put into words, or that you put into words but not quite the right words, or that you encountered in such an abstract way that you hadn’t quite got to the point of thinking about them in terms of language, but now you don’t have to, because they exist in the world in the form of someone else’s effort, pure comfort and reassurance that you are not crazy, or at least not alone. This is the same feeling I get when I go into a hardware store, sometimes. Thankful that someone else has done the work to invent all these bits and pieces to solve my problems and stop up my gaps. Which is to say, I’m really really excited about this book.

There’s a really good chance that this whole enterprise, if you got it off the ground, wouldn’t change much of anything because the problem you are describing is a spiritual malady, not one that is going to be solved by your college roommate throwing $5 a month at it. If you do not feel like a real or legitimate artist, that is on you, all the adulation in the world is not going to fill that hole.

The Village Voice | Fan Landers, “Bands Abusing Kickstarter Are Exploiting Fans” (via marathonpacks)

In the absence of Dear Sugar, Jessica Hopper is the best bullshit-caller on creative types we have. This is just about some “Write Like A Motherfucker”-level stuff here. Lets get some mugs made, people.

The experience on the page is not for you, the writer. This is a mistake people make about memoirs – that if you have had a bad enough ass-whipping, you should make a lot of money. Now, I think we should all make a lot of money, but that’s a topic for another evening.

But in therapy, say, you pay them. In memoir, hopefully, they pay you. That suggests that you are supposed to give them something: an experience – that distilled experience. You’re supposed to create a world where things that perhaps sound strange on Jerry Springer actually begin to sound feasible or possible.

Mary Karr on Nieman Storyboard (via michelledean)

If you’re looking for a shorter quote from Karr on the same general subject (say, something to write on a Post-It note and stick on the bottom edge of your day-job computer monitor, in hopes that its continual presence in your peripheral vision will make you a better writer/person) I suggest: “bring something to the fucking party.” I think it’s helping me! Or at least I am thinking more about parties these days.

If you loved and/or love Rilo Kiley, you should definitely read this Carrie Battan tribute/essay-thing cleverly masquerading as an rkives review over at Pitchfork. I did and now I’m having a lot of feelings. Now listening to More Adventurous for the first time in years and thinking about a time in my life when I cried a lot more than I do now and wouldn’t spend more than $2.97 on a skirt at a thrift store but giddily spent upwards of $15-$20 on single skeins of hand-dyed yarn. Also wishing I didn’t delete my LiveJournal, but then again maybe that was for the best. LiveJournal! Only recently has it not seemed terrifying to speak its name aloud. Maybe it never was, maybe it still should be. I don’t know. Bless you, Jenny Lewis, either way.

Source: Spotify

jamiesoncox:

A Shot of Jamieson, Episode 2.7 - Rachael Maddux (rachaelmaddux)

The newest episode of A Shot of Jamieson features writer/editor extraordinaire (+ INDIE HUNK) Rachael Maddux. (Pitchfork, BuzzFeed, eMusic, Salon, and many more) We dove pretty deep into heavy Internet stuff— gender and music writing, “call-out culture,” online existence as performance— and then pulled back out to talk about John Jeremiah Sullivan and “work music.” I finally deemed this second round of shows a “season.” I hope I made sense.

As always, thanks for your support! I welcome your questions, comments, and concerns, however you want to send them. Happy listening!

This was fun. I’m a hunk! FINALLY!

(via jamiesoncox)

My First Love Was A Lion Tamer (Redux)

A few years ago I wrote a thing for Thought Catalog about the first great love of my life, Gunther Gebel-Williams. Then last fall I reworked it for True Story (where readers do a show-and-tell with a personal artifact that relates to their piece) and then this reminded me that I had intended to post the betterized version here but never did. So here it is. 

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BLVR: Did you ever watch The Simpsons?
RA: No, but my son did. It’s apparently wonderful.
BLVR: Yeah, it is. I’m asking because if you watch episodes from the first few seasons, the characters look different. It’s uncanny: they almost look the characters you know, but not really.
RA: Like Peanuts. Early Peanuts. Garry Trudeau. Early Doonesbury. They changed, as people do. We followed daily for decades and didn’t notice.
The Believer | Renata Adler interviewed by Alice Gregory

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