I know lots of people have decided that now that they’re older, wiser and less angry with the world they’re over Brett Easton Ellis, and that his books, particularly his debut Less Than Zero and the callously excessive American Psycho , are just nasty, bitter and full of the kind of dead-eyed loathing that the world doesn’t need right now. But I’m not one of them. I think he does what he does exceptionally well, and that in a digital age his cold, detached cruelty is perhaps more resonant than ever. Just saying.
Up until now I have been 50/50 on the prospect of The Social Network. On the one hand anything written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher should be amazing. But the story of FaceBook, starring Justin Timberlake?
However, even taking into account the fact that everything musical genius JT has acted in so far has stunk to high heavens, it has to be said that this, the third trailer for The Social Network makes the film look amazing.
If nothing else it’s an inspired example of the art of the film trailer.
As previously mentioned, I like quotes. It’s as if I think that by merely knowing what someone intelligent said, I will become just as intelligent as they. Only I’m not intelligent enough to remember any of the things that they actually said, which is why I have to write them down. Here are my most recent finds, the majority of which I’ve lifted from the brilliant @ommwriter’s twitter stream (for ‘majority’ read ‘all’) – I suggested they make a page of them ages ago, they haven’t yet, so I’ve made my own.
Some are funny. Some are true. Some are familiar – although who remembers who first said “Less is more”? Really? Liar. Some are inspiring, but I left most of those out because most ‘inspiring’ things make me cringe. All entertained me though. Lookout for the one by Truman Capote, whose way with words was almost as inspired his taste in home furnishings (see above). The one from Popular Mechanics is also very insightful.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“What’s the sense of living if you’re not learning.” – Chiquira Carrasca
“Less is more.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” – Maria Robinson
“Music is love in search of a word.” – Sidney Lanier
“Imagine more. Think less.” – unknown
“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow…” – Lawrence Clark Powell
“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” – E. L. Doctorow
“Writing is both mask and unveiling.” – E.B. White
“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” – Edwin Schlossberg
“Writing well means never having to say, ‘I guess you had to be there.’” – Jef Mallett
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949
“The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.” – Richard Harding Davis
“Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.” – Catherine O’Hara
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” -Ernest Hemingway
“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” – Tom Clancy
“A dose of poison can do its work only once, but a bad book can go on poisoning people’s minds for any length of time.” – Stud Terkel
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us” – Franz Kafka
“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” – Elmore Leonard
“The human mind is like umbrella. It functions best when open.” – Max Gropius
“Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things.” – Noam Chomsky
“Some stories are true that never happened.” – Elie Weisel
“I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.” – Henri Matisse
“It [creativity] is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – Doctorow
“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” – Thomas Mann
“It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.” – Andrew Jackson
“There is no method except to be very intelligent.” – T. S. Eliot
“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector.” – Ernest Hemingway
“Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.” – Truman Capote
“I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.” – Cormac McCart
“Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area.”- Nadine Gordimer
“If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.” – Kingsley Amis
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” – Isaac Asimov
“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” – Douglas Adams
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” – Albert Camus
“Other people’s interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself.” – B. Francis
“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” – Cyril Connolly
I’m a big fan of Chuck ‘Fight Club’ Palahniuk’s writing. I’m an even bigger fan of his warped world view. And I’m an even bigger fan of the way he’s created this whole cult movement around the first two. I would love to go to one of Chuck’s readings, but until he makes it to London I’ll have to make do with the film above.
Writing isn’t hard. It’s concentrating long enough to type a whole sentence that’s the real bugger. Which is why OmmWriter is one of the best inventions of all time. As they say, Your mind is a wild monkey, and this simple little piece of software is just the thing to tame it. Download it now (if you’re on a mac that is) you won’t regret it.
Typical. Just minutes after describing Theophilus London as what Kanye would be if he was cool and not a complete arse Kanye puts this out as a reminder that sometimes he is cool, not a complete arse and is never to be underestimated. Arse.
Kanye West feat Dwele – Power
Just discovered Theophilus London. I know, I’m a little behind the times, but probably still three years ahead of Q Magazine. He’s had three mixtapes out from what I gather: Jam, This Charming Mixtape – apparently he’s a big Morrissey fan, but don’t hold that against him – and at the end of April he put out the brilliant I Want You.
I can’t get hold of the first two and most of the links I found to I Want You were broken. However, I found a SoundCloud playlist here. Not ideal, but well worth sticking with. Make the most of it while it’s still there.
He’s like what Kanye would be if he was cool and not a complete arse.
Evidently there’s an album on the way, so for more info Theophilus’s website is here and his myspace is here.
Vice Magazine and Intel have put together The Creators Project to showcase the work of influential and inspiring musical innovators and creators. Diplo, Peaches, James Lavelle, Phoenix, Richie Hawtin, Laurent Garnier, Mark Ronson and film maker Spike Jonze all feature. Including an exclusive interview with each artist, videos and biographies it’s really very good.
I love the photography of Carlos Nunez. He’s got that whole ’70s rock’n'roll sex thing going on. See more at his website www.carlosnunezphotography.com and blog ohsnapscarlos.blogspot.com NSFW but not in a straight-up porny way.
Cool Snow White and The Joker iPad vinyl stickers.
If I had an iPad I might be tempted by a gothed-up Snow White.
There is an advert that pops up every so often over there on the right hand side. It may or may not be there now. Have a look. It’s one of these google ads that is generated according to surrounding content. It features a picture of a very smiley bald man with a laptop (or sometimes an equally delirious lady with lovely long hair and a laptop) and above his head it cheerily reads: Why not be a writer?
I think the same thing every time I see it.
BECAUSE IT HURTS AND MAKES ME WANT TO BREAK THINGS.
Just saying.
I am a big user of Moleskine note books. I have way too many of them. I will no doubt have way too many more. The pictures above are from an imaginary ad campaign that Amy Nortman, a student of the University of North Texas, won a competition with. What competition? I have no idea. But they are genius and ably explain the love of the Moleskine, so I hope it was a competition with a big fat cheque at the end of it.
See these and the rest of the series in their full glory on the Moleskine Flickr. To find your own deep love and spend more money than is reasonable on notebooks, see the Moleskine site.
Jay-Z. Definitely cool. Or at least he is when he isn’t in sportswear. Sportswear Jigga is not a good look. Sweat bands and basketball attire aside, Sean Thomas Carter is a leading light in rap, not just because of his lyrical skills and business acumen, but because he carries himself with a dignified confidence that demands you listen up and take notice. Is that not the core ingredient of cool?
I have ghosted celebrity memoirs. I have worked on biographies. I am currently two thirds of the way through writing a novel, plotting another and working on a film idea.
I used to do all of the above in Word. It used to to make me very unhappy.
I used to have folders all over my laptop with notes, research, transcripts, chapters, outlines, drafts, manuscripts. It was all very confusing. When the draft was finished I used to have to cut’n'paste each chapter into yet another Word document. Making sure there was a page break before each chapter was a nightmare. Keeping the formatting consistent made me want to kill. And if I wanted to change or move anything… I used to weep…a lot.
Not anymore. Oh no. Now I use Scivener. Now I have all my notes, research, transcripts, chapters, outlines and drafts in one place and when all the chapters are done I can compile them into a manuscript and output it to Word, page breaks and formatting included, at the touch of a button.
Am I happier? Of course. Would I recommend other writers try Scrivener for themselves? Absolutely. Am I more productive? Not a bit, but I at least get to procrastinate and be unproductive free from the fear of page breaks and formatting and not being able to find my notes the one time I do decide to write something. Which in its own way is worth every cent of the $39.95 it costs.
Don’t believe me? Why would you. Maybe the video below will do a better job of convincing you.
Elmore Leonard knows so much about writing he could write a book about it... or at least a list.
I never wanted to be one of those writers who ends up writing endlessly about writing but never seems to do any actual writing. Then again I never wanted to be one of those writers who spent hours on the internet reading other writers’ writing about writing instead of actually doing any writing, but I do a hell of a lot of that and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t found it a most enjoyable and educational way to avoid writing. So, by way of a compromise, here are some links to some brilliant writers talking about their brilliant writing.
Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s now legendary ‘10 Rules Of Writing’, The Guardian ran a two part feature where the likes of Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Sarah Waters and Zadie Smith divulge the 10 rules which either make them the writer they are or stop them wanting to self-harm. Some tips are more technical than others, but all are informative, entertaining and worth reading. My particular favourites are Richard Ford’s: “Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea” and Roddy Doyle’s very wise opener: “Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.”
Greatest rock video ever. Stadiums? Check. Guitars? Check. Girls? Check. Hanging out in guitar shops in black and white while smoking cigarettes, signing autographs and generally looking like you don’t give a fuck? Check. Sometimes it’s worth watching as a reminder that this is what being in a rock band is meant to be like.
In what is bound to be a fast track to being even less productive than I normally am, I’ve opened a dailybooth.com account. If you’re there already follow me and I’ll follow you and we can be like friends and such.
Ben Folds pays tribute to Chatroulette’s Pianoman Merton. Genius.
Erykah Badu’s new album New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), follow-up to the stunning, off-head R&B slouch that was New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), is finally on the way. By way of celebration, here’s the video for Part One’s glorious single, Honey. Genius.
New Cold War Kids single, Audience Of One. Couldn’t get into the last album at all. This one sounds like it may well make up for it.
Jamie Lidell returns with Beck, Feist and Nikka Costa. Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three (and indeed, four).
I like quotes. Here are some of my favourites, including one or two from the good doctor above.
“Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.” Hunter S. Thompson
“Choose not a life of imitation,” Red Hot Chili Peppers, Can’t Stop
“Writing is the flip side of sex – it’s only good when it’s over.” Hunter S. Thompson
“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original you will have to ram it down their throats.”
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Calvin Coolidge
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.” Jim Jarmusch
Vanity Fair journalist to Matthew Perry’s character Matt Albie in Studio 60 as she takes down the name on the label on the rug in his office: “It’s a 10,000 word feature, they can’t all be winners.”
French author Frederic Beigbeder when asked what makes a good party: “Pretty girls, Champagne and me.”
“When two people know a secret, it’s not a secret anymore.” Titta Di Girolamo, The Consequences Of Love
“Midlife is when you get to the top of the ladder and realise that you’ve had the ladder against the wrong wall,” via Tom Ford
“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” George Best
“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” Eleanor Roosevelt
John Updike on living in NYC: “The true new yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
“Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend, inside a dog it’s too dark to read.” Groucho Marx
“I act real shallow but I’m in too deep,” Dizzee Rascal, Bonkers
“Pop music will never die, it just has no direction” Bis, Action & Drama
There is a better life. And it looks a little something like this. A thought to conjure with on a cold, snowy/icy/slushy night in London in January. For more of the same, see my new favourite oversized coffee table book Poolside With Slim Aarons. Genius.
Virtual life getting you down? Never got time to see your wife/kids/real friends? Always too busy answering emails/facebook messages to enjoy a nice walk in the park? Always being poked, but not in a good way? Then help is at hand.
The 2006 making of film director Claude Lelouch’s legendary 1976 short film, C’etait un Rendez-vous, in which Lelouch does it all again, but slower, and in French.
If you’re curious about Google Wave, or struggling to understand what the point of it is, this video explains both the pros, and with the very last bit, the major con.
My new favourite video. Mirrorkicks cover of Bleedin’ Love + cheerleaders = future video classic.
Also worth noting that Mirrorkicks are in the process of making a video to accompany ever track on their brilliant, forthcoming album. More bands should do the same.
