Month: July 2009

The party’s over…

Today I got nothin’ but dirty counters, dirty dishes, an entire 64-gallon recycling bin full of bottles all of which I have had to rinse by hand, a 64-gallon composting bin half full of other people’s sticky paper plates and half-eaten food, and a truly head-scratching collection of leftover beer and wine.

And a really disgusting floor.

But you know, it was fun. Nicola says it all so I don’t have to. Go on over there and take a look. Nothing to see here but Oh, gross, what is that?

Enjoy your day.

Whip it

So I woke up tired, and a little bit cranky at nothing in particular, and a little bit feeling like, I don’t know — like I’m more than halfway through my life and I still don’t know how to get everything done that I want to, still don’t know the “big secret” of adulthood (no, don’t ask me what that means, the whole point is I know there is one but I don’t know what it is!)…

… and then I saw this.
 

 
And now I feel better. I’m going to find my inner Barbie and skate her ass off. Thank you Drew Barrymore, Shauna Cross and Ellen Page: I’m looking forward to your movie.

Hug that cactus

A couple of days ago, Nicola posted her conclusion that traditional publishing is dead. And she pointed people to the launch of OR Books, who will publish only in e-book and print-on-demand formats — and put big bucks into online marketing campaigns for every book.

I think this is a great strategy, definitely both author-friendly and publisher-sustainable. But I don’t think traditionally published books will necessarily vanish from the earth. This isn’t (yet) the same paradigm as videotape to DVD, where one delivery mechanism kills another in a frenzy of social evolution: I think it’s more of an expansion and an embracing of an audience in transition. Perhaps someday books that you can just pick up and look at in a retail location will be a rarity: but baby boomers are still the biggest consumer demographic in the US, and if we read, many of us would rather read an actual book.

Many of us will buy print-on-demand — I expect POD awareness to reach a tipping point within a couple of years when the technology is better integrated into traditional brick & mortar retail, and when it’s transparent on Amazon (meaning that you buy a book that interests you without needing to know whether it’s in inventory or being printed on demand). But the current challenge of POD, apart from the mainstreaming of it into an older late-adopter demographic, is the aura it still carries of “vanity publishing” and the implication that if it were a Real Book, and the writer was a Real Writer, then a Real Publisher would be supporting it. And that’s very often true (stay tuned to this space for an upcoming rant about how The Intarwebs have made it possible for any shmoe with an online connection to persuade herself she’s every bit the Real Writer by benefit of her sudden ability to publish her work). But not always — there are plenty of brilliant writers who can’t get traditionally published these days — and I expect more of them will find homes with businesses like OR Books. That will help change the perception of POD.

And what will also help is a new paradigm of marketing. Money goes farther online; if it’s done right, new works can be brought to the attention of their potential audience more efficiently, effectively, and more enduringly (I recycle newspapers and magazine, but the pixels are always with us in this brave new hyperlinked Googleverse).

And can traditional book publishing be saved? Jonathan Karp has some good ideas about how publishing needs to change in order to survive.

It seems likely that the influence and cultural centrality of major publishers, as well as other producers of information and entertainment, will diminish as digital technology enables more and more people to create and share their work. This is exactly why publishers must distinguish themselves by doing better what they’ve always done best: champion books that offer carefully conceived context, style and authority.
 
— from “This Is Your Wake-up Call” by Jonathan Karp.

This isn’t just true for traditional publishers, but also for the new kids like OR Books and all those who will adopt their online/POD model. In a world where an unlimited volume of “books” can be available (those pixels are very efficient that way), readers find ourselves increasingly freaked out by the choices: how do we know what’s good? I think what Karp is saying is that publishers need to continue, and in many cases return to, being quality content filters as opposed to churning out the copycat thriller of the week.

Some people will howl and accuse me of elitism. I suppose if you think that shmoe we talked about is automatically a Real Writer, then yes, I’m elitist as hell. Writing is important to me. It matters that it’s done well. And books are important to me: I want them to survive so I can read them, write them, share them, peruse their spines on my bookshelves when I’m looking for something to read (try doing that on a Kindle — it’s maddening). That’s going to take, as Nicola says, a willingness to grin and hug the future. For many writers and publishers, that’s a bit like hugging a cactus, but I expect everyone will cope — we have to. And the irony is that returning to old-school values — fewer books, more editorial focus, more long-term development of books and authors — may be a big part of what saves publishing in the end.

When people need shoes

I said in a recent comment that I don’t need any more lessons about the abuse of women. But I’m not sure there are ever enough reminders that there are things we can do to help stop violence against women.

One thing I like about this article is its emphasis on listening rather than telling, and on giving information and presenting options rather than prescribing behavior.

When I was studying ASL, I was part of a class project to interview one of the advocates at ADWAS (Abused Deaf Women’s Advocacy Services). She told us that one of the most important things they do is give agency to the women who come in seeking help. They make sure the woman is clear on the options available to her, and then they ask her what she needs — and believe the answer, rather than deciding for the woman what would be best for her. They’ve realized that controlling people by telling them Oh no, we know what you really need is not so different from controlling them in any other way; which control is, of course, what the woman in question is seeking to escape.

She made her point by telling us the story of a Deaf woman with two kids whose husband abused her. She came to ADWAS, and she didn’t ask for help with a restraining order, or counseling, or legal services, or a place to stay: she asked for shoes for her two-year-old. The advocate told us, “Some people in women’s shelters won’t grant this kind of request, because they worry that someone is trying to take advantage of them. They push women to make a different choice. But when we asked this client why she needed shoes, she told us that her son couldn’t walk out on his own in bare feet, and she needed him to walk so she could carry the baby. So we got her shoes.”

I still have plenty of opinions about what would be good/better/best for other people; but that interview helped me change my definition of support into something that is more about the other person than it is about me. I find as I get older that my close people and I are better at saying what we actually need: Don’t fix me, just listen, or I really want to try this so please don’t tell me that it’s not going to work. Sometimes I support people when they’re making choices that I think are boneheaded or incomprehensible. But those choices are theirs to make.

And so I like the advice in this article: express my concern, be ready with information, and then listen. It may be that my friend will make choices I don’t understand. My choice is whether or not to give her shoes if that’s what she asks for; to keep the door open to her when she doesn’t do what I wish she would.

I can’t always do that. Sometimes I do feel used or manipulated, and I close the door. That’s my choice too. It’s complicated: I don’t think we owe each other rescue at any cost to ourselves, and I also don’t want to be the person who will only help if other people are suitably “grateful” (meaning that they do it my way and then get all gushy about how my way is best).

Still finding the balance. And I’m thinking that’s true for pretty much everything.

Jennifer’s Body

Fox is putting a trailer of Jennifer’s Body in front of Bruno this Friday. Great, right? Only problem is it’s not our trailer. It’s kind of a straight horror preview and while we’re sure it’ll appeal to many of you, we wanted to make sure you guys got to see our cut … Lets call it the “filmmaker’s cut”. We think it captures the comedy and scares of the horror films we grew up on — a kind of nostalgia for when horror films were fun. Can’t wait to show you the whole film… In the meantime, here’s the red band trailer we wanted our fans to see.
 
— Karyn Kusama (director), Diablo Cody (writer/executive producer), and Jason Reitman (producer)

I don’t believe I’ve ever known filmmakers to release their own trailer on a viral basis to compete with the studio’s trailer, but I’m certainly happy to help out from my little corner of the internet. Nicola and I were talking last night about how much it sucks to have one’s work misrepresented by the folks responsible for distributing it: this happens in publishing all the time, and it’s not just frustrating, it’s potentially career-damaging. This is not to say that publishing or studio marketing/publicity people are Evil (that would be Jennifer, as you’ll see in the trailer) — rather, that they are often overworked, often under-informed about the work they are tasked with representing, and honestly, sometimes it’s just easier to take the well-worn path. It’s a horror film, don’t confuse people by making them laugh! It’s a science fiction book, put a spaceship on the cover!

Part of that impulse, I imagine, is to try to reach the widest potential audience. I get that impulse, but here’s what I know: you cannot fool people into liking your work, at least not for very long. If you set people’s expectations for pizza and give them peanut butter instead, there is no guarantee they will ever come over for dinner again.

It’s far more effective in the long term to market a work as clearly, as specifically, as possible, so its audience can find it. Sadly, neither New York publishing nor Hollywood studios are working for the long term these days: books and movies have become a volume business, driven by and focused on Amazon pre-orders and first-weekend ticket sales. But when artists put thousands of hours of work into making a project that represents their particular voice and vision — which I think is the case with Jennifer’s Body — it’s miserable to see that vision re-spun into peanut butter. It hurts.

Apart from artist solidarity, I’m also posting this trailer because it’s made me want to see the movie (Hey Fox, their trailer worked!). It looks funny and smart; it also looks like the kind of film that either stands all the teen sex/women in horror film cliches on their heads, or ends up reinforcing them sideways. Given that it’s a Diablo Cody film, I’ll assume that headstands are the order of the day…

This is a red-band trailer and so is totally Not Safe For Work.

Enjoy.
 

A little insane…

A self is deciduous, it leafs out as one grows, changes with one”™s seasons, yet somehow stays briskly the same. The brain composes a self-portrait from a confetti of facts and sensations, and as pieces are added or removed the likeness changes, though the sense of unity remains, thanks to well-furnished illusions. We need illusion to feel true.
 
A medley of different selves accompanies us everywhere. Some are lovable, some weird, some disapproving of each other, some childish or adult. Unless the selves drift too far apart, that solo ensemble works fine and copes well with novel events. As the psychoanalyst Philip M. Bromberg writes in Standing in the Spaces: “Health is not integration. Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them. This is what I believe self-acceptance means and what creativity is really all about — the capacity to feel like one self while being many.”
 
— Diane Ackerman, from An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

I love these ideas: they reflect my experience of myself as a person and a writer, and I so admire when I see other writers working with them. And so I thought of them again as I was reading screenwriter Craig Mazin’s post about the insanity necessary to create good characters — which I imagine as standing between the spaces of my selves in order to create a self that isn’t me, and to make her so real that her story becomes real for you too.

And of course it’s not only writers who do this. As Mazin points out, we all do it when we dream (hmm, well, okay, I know people dream differently, but I tend to assume that things like this are hardwired…). And I suspect that there are many folks in the world, like me, who spend part of our lives enjoying “waking dreams” — for me, these are an odd but very enjoyable balance between seeing a private movie in my head and feeling/behaving as though I were really living it. It happens a lot with music, which is one of the reasons I love music so much. But these moments can come anytime, and I know they aren’t “real,” but they sure are real to me.

Is that insane? I don’t know. If it is, then it’s even better for me that I’m a writer and have made accommodation with it, have put some skill and framework around it. Have made a door for it to more safely open and peer out into whatever it is we mean by the “real” world. (More safely for whom, you ask? Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it?).

I hope all your selves are having a lovely day.

fear.less

There’s a new kid in town, one of those neighborhood champions who will get in between you and the big bully — the one with the scabs on his knuckles from knocking down a thousand just like you — stick out her chin and say You leave my friend alone! And because it’s not just you anymore, Scabby Bully Kid will sometimes go away.

That bully is fear, and fear.less is the new online magazine that’s here to help us all square off against it. To help us help each other, by giving space for people to tell their stories and spread their experiences, ideas, ruminations, affirmations, and sometimes just raise their fists against all the things that make us afraid.

Fear.less is the creation of Ishita Gupta and Clay Hebert — a place where:

Every story you read is an example of conquering fear, whether an immediate physical danger, the looming threat of failure, the pressure to compete in a changing world, the incessant quest for identity, or the overwhelming uncertainty of death.
 
— from About fear.less

They’ve just put out their first preview of what you can expect in the magazine: from photographer Platon, reflections on fear, honesty, preparation and bringing your own true self to the party. See for yourself in this lovely PDF. If you like it, you’re welcome to save a copy for yourself, and spread copies far and wide.

Life can be so very good, but it’s rarely good in a vacuum of self. We’re here together, and that matters. We’re creatures made of soul, made for joy and love, and anything that gets in the way of that needs to get its front teeth knocked out. We’re all the kid being bullied. We can be the champions too.

(You can also find fear.less on Facebook and Twitter. Ishita and Clay, thanks very much for your permission to make Platon’s story available here.)

Every moment of success

A truckload of thanks to my friend Dave for pointing me to this perfectly true and totally non-boring post by Christine Kane on “the boringness of success.”

This idea speaks to me in all kinds of ways these days. I’ve been thinking about late blooming, and about the 10,000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his book Outliers. In a nutshell, the idea is that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expertise. In anything.

In my opinion, this is So. Fucking. True. In fact, I feel a blog post coming on about how much artists (in particular) who whine about this are starting to annoy me. Ah, but not today (*stepping back from the Ranty Ledge of Doom*)…

Today I want to thank Christine Kane for saying so elegantly what I think is so true, and part of what I was trying to get at when I talked about being gone from the game. Not that success is boring: I read that as, hmm, not hyperbole but shorthand. Of course it feels good to have great abs or see someone reading your book on the bus or have someone say Yes, I’ll marry you, or any of the hundred trillion other things that a human being might define as success. It’s just that it may take 10,000 hours of training or writing or working on the relationship to get to that moment — and that’s not just okay, that’s the point. Success is not the arrival, it’s the fact that we had the stones to make the journey. The arrival is the result: the success happens every single moment between now and then.

Independence

Happy Independence Day to US peeps. To the rest of the world, bear with us today while we get all fireworky, and some of us lose fingers or eyes, and some of us get drunk and hurt each other, and some of us get sunburned and eat way too much potato salad… But it’s not all like that; not just Big Lights Big Noise, but also a day to think about, ya know, the meaning of it all; this Declaration.

Several years ago, someone created this modern-language version of part of the Declaration of Independence. If it’s been a while since you thought about what those founder guys were doing, take a look: it’s about the right of a people not to be dehumanized, marginalized, ignored, or harmed by their government.

Today I find myself thinking about independence, and about the fact that it’s only achieved when we can depend on each other.

That’s why this article about the Make It Right Foundation building homes for Katrina survivors in New Orleans is here today. This article will tell you what’s happening right now, for context: but what I really want to point you to is this long profile of Brad Pitt’s work to make the foundation, and the homes, happen.

This to me is a social-justice issue. And to create something that’™s equitable and fair and has respect and provides dignity for the family within is absolutely essential…
 
— Brad Pitt, speaking about the houses that will be built by the Make It Right Foundation

Yes, it is. It’s the reason we got into the revolution business in the first place. It’s why we have the governmental framework that we do. It’s why we have a new president. And wanting each other to have what’s equitable and fair, wanting to provide each other with dignity, is what will ensure that we all retain the independence that we’re so proud of.

I hope someday we’ll only ever use our independence the way Brad Pitt is doing — as a shield, as a tool, as a tie that binds us all together into community. I hope one day we won’t feel the need to use it as a club against each other and the world. Now there would be a thing to celebrate.