Harlan Ellison’s Wonderful Rant on Why Writers Should Always Get Paid

in Business, Writing | November 6th, 2015

In a perfect world, I could write this post for free. Alas, the rigors of the modern economy demand that I pay regular and sometimes high prices for food, shelter, books, and the other necessities of life. And so if I spend time working on something — and in my case, that usually means writing something — I’d better ask for money in exchange, or I’ll find myself out on the street before long. Nobody understands this better than Harlan Ellison, the hugely prolific author of novels, stories, essays screenplays, comic books, usually in, or dealing with, the genre of science fiction.

Ellison also starred in Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a documentary about his colorful life and all the work he’s written during it, a clip of which you can see at the top of the post. In it, he describes receiving a call just the day before from “a little film company” seeking permission to include an interview clip with him previously shot about the making of Babylon 5, a series on which he worked as creative consultant. “Absolutely,” Ellison said to the company’s representative. “All you’ve got to do is pay me.”

This simple request seemed to take the representative—who went on to insist that “everyone else is just doing it for nothing” and that “it would be good publicity”—quite by surprise. “Do you get a paycheck?” Ellison then asked. “Does your boss get a paycheck? Do you pay the telecine guy? Do you pay the cameraman? Do you pay the cutters? Do you pay the Teamsters when they schlep your stuff on the trucks? Would you go to the gas station and ask them to give you free gas? Would you go to the doctor and have them take out our spleen for nothing?”

This line of questioning has come up again and again since Ellison told this story, as when the journalist Nate Thayer, or more recently Wil Wheaton, spoke out against the expectation that writers would hand out the rights to their work “for exposure.” The pragmatic Ellison frames the matter as follows: “Cross my palm with silver, and you can use my interview.” But do financially-oriented attitudes such as his (“I don’t take a piss without getting paid for it”) taint the art and craft of writing? He doesn’t think so: “I sell my soul,” he admits, “but at the highest rates.”

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Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

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Stephen King Creates a List of 82 Books for Aspiring Writers (to Supplement an Earlier List of 96 Recommend Books)

in Books, Literature, Writing | October 29th, 2015

Image by The USO, via Flickr Commons

Stephen King has given writers a lot to think about these past few years in his numerous interviews and in his statement of craft, On Writing. He deems one of his most salient pieces of advice on writing so important that he repeats it twice in his Top 20 Rules for Writers: writers, he says, “learn best by reading a lot…. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” To help his readers discover the right tools, King attached a list of 96 books at the end of On Writing, of which he said, “In some way or other, I suspect each book in the list had an influence on the books I wrote…. a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work.”

King’s original list of 96 books for aspiring writers generated a fair amount of comment on Aerogramme Writer’s Studio, who brought it to our attention last year. Later, the same web site brought us another list of 82 books, which King published in the 10th anniversary edition of On Writing. With King’s second list, as with the first, you’ll find that best-selling genre writers sit comfortably next to lit-class staples.

In this list, the spectrum of accessibility is a little narrower. We have fewer classic writers like Dickens or Conrad and fewer commercial novelists like Nelson DeMille. Instead the list is mostly twentieth century literary fiction by mostly living contemporaries, with little genre fiction save perhaps sci-fi/fantasy writer Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, thriller author Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, hugely popular mystery writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Patrick O’Brian’s adventure series. Below, we’ve excerpted a list of 15 books King recommends—books, he says, “which entertained and taught me.”

Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Robert Bolaño, 2666
Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke
Sue Monk Kid, The Secret Life of Bees
Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey’s Room
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

King almost shrugs in his short introduction, writing, “you could do worse.” I expect many readers of this post might have suggestions for how they think you could also do better, especially given the five years that have passed since this list’s compilation and some of the blind spots that seem to persist in King’s reading habits. I doubt he would object much to any of us adding to, or subtracting from, his lists—or ignoring them altogether. It seems clear he thinks that like him, we should read what we like, as long as we’re always reading something. See the full list of 82 titles here.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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The Essence of Hayao Miyazaki Films: A Short Documentary About the Humanity at the Heart of His Animation

in Animation, Creativity, Writing | October 20th, 2015

Filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki detests being referred to as the Japanese Walt Disney. The great animator and storyteller admires the gorgeous animation of classic Disney films, but finds them lacking in emotional complexity, the element he prizes above all else.

Miyazaki’s films are celebrated for their mystical, supernatural elements, but they take shape around the human characters inhabiting them. Plot comes later, after he has figured out the desires driving his people. “Keep it simple,” he counsels in Lewis Bond’s short documentary The Essence of Humanity above. An interesting piece of advice, given that a hallmark of his 40-year career is his insistence on creating realistic three-dimensional characters, warts and all.

American animators are also taught to simplify. They should all be able to sum up the essence of their proposed features by filling in the blank of the phrase “I want _____,” presumably because such concision is a necessary element of a successful elevator pitch.

As Bond points out, Western animated features often end with a convenient deus ex machina, freeing the characters up for a crowd pleasing dance party as the credits roll.

Miyazaki doesn’t cotton to the idea of tidy, unearned endings, nor does he feel bound to grant his characters their wants, preferring instead to give them what they need. Spiritual growth is superior to wish fulfillment here.

Such growth rarely happens without time for reflection, and Miyazaki films are notable for the number of non-verbal scenes wherein characters perform small, everyday actions, a number of which can be sampled in Bond’s documentary. The beautifully-rendered weather and settings have provided clues as to the characters’ development, ever since the lovely scene of cloud shadows skimming across a field in his first feature, 1979’s The Castle of Cagliostro.

via Devour

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Her play, Fawnbook, opens in New York City next month. Follow her @AyunHalliday

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10 Rules for Writers by Etgar Keret, the Israeli Master of the Short and Strange

in Books, Creativity, Literature, Writing | July 13th, 2015

Etgar Keret, above, is a best selling author and award-winning filmmaker with the soul of a teenage zine publisher. He’s a master of the strange and short who plays by his own rules. This sounds like a recipe for outsider status but Keret frequently pops up in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and on public radio’s This American Life.

The child of Holocaust survivors told Tikkun that he began writing stories as a way out of his miserable existence as a stuttering 19-year-old soldier in the Israeli army. This may explain why he’s so generous with young fans, handing his stories over to them to interpret in short films and animations.

When Rookie, a website for teenage girls, invited him to share ten writing tips, he playfully obliged. It’s worth noting that he refrained from prescribing something that’s a staple of other authors’ tip lists — the adoption of a daily writing practice. As he told the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

For me, the term “writing routine” sounds like an oxymoron. It is a bit like saying “having-a-once-in-a-lifetime-insight-which-makes-you-want-to burst-into-tears routine.”

With no further ado, here are his ten rules for writers, along with a liberal sprinkling of some of my favorite Keret stories.

1. Make sure you enjoy writing.

You won’t find Keret comparing his chosen profession to opening a vein. As he told Rookie:

Writing is a way to live another life…be grateful for the opportunity to expand the scope of your life.

2. Love your characters.

…though few will ever seem as lovable as the girl in Goran Dukic’s charming animation of Keret’s story “What Do We Have In Our Pockets?” below.

3. When you’re writing, you don’t owe anything to anyone.

Don’t equate loving your characters with treating them nicely. See Keret’s story “Fungus.”

4. Always start from the middle.

This is perhaps Keret’s most conventional tip, though his writing shows he’s anything but conventional when it comes to locating that middle. His novella, Kneller’s Happy Campers (on which the film Wristcutters: A Love Story, starring Tom Waits, was based) manages to start at the beginning, middle and end.

5. Try not to know how it ends.

At the very least, be prepared to dig yourself out to a different reality, like the narrator in Keret’s very short story “Mystique,” read below by actor Willem Dafoe.

6. Don’t use anything just because “that’s how it always is.”

Here, Keret is referring to what he termed “the shrine of form” in an interview with his great admirer, broadcaster Ira Glass, but his content is similarly unfettered. If your writing’s become bogged down by reality, try introducing a magic fish who’s fluent in everything, as in “What, of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?,” read by author Gary Shteyngart, below.

7. Write like yourself.

Leave the critics holding the bag on comparisons to Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut and Woody Allen, Lydia Davis, Amos Oz, Donald Barthelme…

8. Make sure you’re all alone in the room when you write.

um…Etgar? Does this mean I have to give up my coffice?

9. Let people who like what you write encourage you.

Nerts to underminers, frenemies, withering internal editors, and deliberately hateful reviewers!

10. Hear what everyone has to say but don’t listen to anyone (except me).

Read the Rookie interview in which Keret expands on his rules.

via Rookie

Related Content:

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Roberto Bolaño’s 12 Tips on “the Art of Writing Short Stories”

in Literature, Writing | July 3rd, 2015

For some certain romantic reasons, a segment of the English-language reading population fell in love with Roberto Bolaño in the first few years of this millennium. One invariably glimpsed Bolaño’s award-winning 1998 novel The Savage Detectives on endtables and nightstands after its translation in 2007, with or without bookmarks. When 2666—the Chilean writer’s dizzyingly enormous work on the darkest of events in 1990’s Northern Mexico—appeared, it did so posthumously, further elevating Bolaño’s literary outlaw mythos. In addition to being a hard-bitten Trotskyist nomad, Bolaño—who died of liver failure in 2003—was said to have been a heroin addict and alcoholic. Neither was the case, writes Hector Tobar in the LA Times, quoting a Mexico City-based journalist on the author: “He had a super boring daily life. It was a life built around his own writing rituals and habits.”

For all his legendary exploits as a globetrotting journalist and poet, Bolaño also seems to have built his life around reading. “Reading,” Bolaño has said, “is more important than writing.” He finds much company with this statement among fellow writers. Patti Smith, for example, who urges reading “anything by Bolaño,” could also “recommend a million” books to anyone who asks. A much shorter but still challenging list of hers reveals a deep and broad investment in literature. William S. Burroughs, who probably didn’t read Bolaño but worked in a similarly hallucinatory vein, taught a class on “Creative Reading” that was only secondarily a class on writing, filled with example after example from writer after treasured writer. The best writing advice writers can dispense, it seems, is this: Read.

Such is the approach of Bolaño himself, in a short, pithy essay on how to write short stories. He begins in a perfunctory way, almost with a sigh: “Now that I’m forty-four years old, I’m going to offer some advice on the art of writing short stories.” The advice, found in the graphic form above on The Paris Review’s Tumblr and reprinted in a non-fiction collection titled Between Parenthesis, quickly becomes exuberantly pedantic, permeating the boundaries of its neatly ordered list form with tongue moving from cheek to cheek. Does he really mean that we should read “the notable Pseudo-Longinus” on the sublime? Or to suggest—after insistent reference to several essential Latin American writers’ writers—that “with Edgar Allan Poe, we would all have more than enough good material to read”? Probably. But the gist, with more than enough sincerity, is this: Read the greats, whoever they are, and read them often.

See Bolaño’s complete text here at Electric Cereal and an excerpted version below.

(1) Never approach short stories one at a time. If one approaches short stories one at a time, one can quite honestly be writing the same short story until the day one dies.

(2) It is best to write short stories three or five at a time. If one has the energy, write them nine or fifteen at a time.

(4) One must read Horacio Quiroga, Felisberto Hernández, and Jorge Luis Borges. One must read Juan Rulfo and Augusto Monterroso. Any short-story writer who has some appreciation for these authors will never read Camilo José Cela or Francisco Umbral yet will, indeed, read Julio Cortázar and Adolfo Bioy Casares, but in no way Cela or Umbral.

(5) I’ll repeat this once more in case it’s still not clear: don’t consider Cela or Umbral, whatsoever.

(6) A short-story writer should be brave. It’s a sad fact to acknowledge, but that’s the way it is.

(9) The honest truth is that with Edgar Allan Poe, we would all have more than enough good material to read.

(10) Give thought to point number 9. Think and reflect on it. You still have time. Think about number 9. To the extent possible, do so on bended knees.

(12) Read these books and also read Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver, for one of the two of them is the best writer of the twentieth century.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Hear John Malkovich Read From Breakfast of Champions, Then Hear Kurt Vonnegut Do the Same

in Audio Books, Writing | June 25th, 2015

In high school when I was trying to write surrealistic short stories in the vein of Richard Brautigan, despite not really understanding 90 percent of Richard Brautigan, my English teacher recommended I start reading Kurt Vonnegut, so later that day I went down to our city’s sci-fi book/comic book store and bought on her recommendation Breakfast of Champions. A comic novel, it was breezy and fun, and by gum, had cartoons in it! (One was of a cat’s butthole, the effect of which on a high schooler’s mind cannot be overstated.)

But, I admit, I haven’t read it since–the world and my tsundoku is too big for rereadings–and maybe you haven’t read it at all, or perhaps it’s your favorite book. It was the novel Vonnegut published four years after his best known work Slaughterhouse Five. When he graded his novels in his 1981 “Autobiographical Collage” Palm Sunday he gave Breakfast a C. It’s certainly one of his most rambling novels, where he brings back Slaughterhouse Five’s sci-fi author Kilgore Trout and pairs him with the delusional Dwayne Hoover, and unpacks all the dark parts of American history, from racism to capitalism to environmental degradation in passages both sober and bleakly comic.

John Malkovich doesn’t seem like the obvious choice to read Vonnegut for this audiobook, a short excerpt of which can be heard above. (Note: you can download the complete Malkovich reading for free via Audible’s Free Trial program.) But the passage is key in that it introduces the martini cocktail lounge origins of the book’s title, and Malkovich brings out the droll irony of Vonnegut’s writing, especially the way he rolls the word “schizophrenia” off his tongue. There’s a bit of the schizoid in every author, letting a world of characters speak through them like a medium.

For comparison, check out this earlier Open Culture post about Vonnegut reading a long section from Breakfast of Champions in 1970. The author chuckles at some of his more comic passages, and the audience roars along. The timing is that of a standup routine, but this opening—one assumes its the opening—would go on to be furiously rewritten, dropping the first person style. It’s an alternative universe Breakfast that can only leave one to wonder how the rest of the novel might have been handled.

h/t Ayun

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Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the FunkZone Podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Umberto Eco’s Advice to Aspiring Writers

in Life, Writing | June 18th, 2015

Umberto Eco, now 83 years old, has some advice to pass along to the young.

In March, the Italian semiotician, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist — and, of course, author of Foucault’s Pendulum — published How to Write a Thesis. It’s a witty, irreverent and practical guide for the student laboring over a thesis or dissertation. Josh Jones has more on that here.

Now, in a newly-released video from The Louisiana Channel (a media outlet based in Denmark), Eco turns his attention toward aspiring writers. And his wise counsel comes down to this: Keep your ego in check, make sure your ambitions are realistic, put in the time and the hard work, and don’t shoot for the Nobel Prize in Literature straight out of the gate. That, Eco says, kills every literary career. He’ll also tell you that writing is “10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.” They’re truisms — you discover when you’re an octogenarian — that turn out to be true.

Find more tips for aspiring writers below.

Dan Colman is the founder/editor of Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox.

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by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

10 Writing Tips from Legendary Writing Teacher William Zinsser

in Writing | May 13th, 2015

Image used with permission by Mark Ostow/Yale Alumni Magazine

Author William Zinsser died at his Manhattan home on Tuesday, May 12, 2015. The 92-year-old left behind one of the classics of writing instruction manuals as his legacy, On Writing Well. Since its first printing in 1976, the book has sold 1.5 million copies, and Zinsser made sure to update the book often. He loved the revolution in writing that computers brought, calling it a miracle.

Never have so many Americans written so profusely and with so few inhibitions. Which means that it wasn’t a cognitive problem after all. It was a cultural problem, rooted in that old bugaboo of American education: fear.

Zinsser stressed simplicity and efficiency, but also style and enthusiasm. Here are 10 of his many tips for improving your writing.

1. Don’t make lazy word choices: “You’ll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want.”

2. On the other hand, avoid jargon and big words: “Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.”

3. Writing is hard work: “A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”

4. Write in the first person: “Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.”

5. And the more you keep in first person and true to yourself, the sooner you will find your style: “Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.

6. Don’t ask who your audience is…you are the audience: “You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for.”

7. Study the masters but also your contemporaries: “Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.”

8. Yes, the thesaurus is your friend: “The Thesaurus is to the writer what a rhyming dictionary is to the songwriter–a reminder of all the choices–and you should use it with gratitude. If, having found the scalawag and the scapegrace, you want to know how they differ, then go to the dictionary.”

9. Read everything you write out loud for rhythm and sound: “Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.”

10. And don’t ever believe you are going to write anything definitive: “Decide what corner of your subject you’re going to bite off, and be content to cover it well and stop.”

Zinsser follows his own advice, in that this book (pick up a copy here) is a joy to read, with a rollicking humor and an infectious enthusiasm. May he rest in peace!

Finally, as someone who can’t stand to hear the word ‘unique’ modified, Zinsser has this to say: “…being ‘rather unique’ is no more possible than being rather pregnant.’”

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Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the FunkZone Podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Harlan Ellison’s Wonderful Rant on Why Writers Should Always Get Paid

Stephen King Creates a List of 82 Books for Aspiring Writers (to Supplement an Earlier List of 96 Recommend Books)

The Essence of Hayao Miyazaki Films: A Short Documentary About the Humanity at the Heart of His Animation

10 Rules for Writers by Etgar Keret, the Israeli Master of the Short and Strange

Roberto Bolaño’s 12 Tips on “the Art of Writing Short Stories”

Hear John Malkovich Read From Breakfast of Champions, Then Hear Kurt Vonnegut Do the Same

Umberto Eco’s Advice to Aspiring Writers

10 Writing Tips from Legendary Writing Teacher William Zinsser

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