but not everyone reads all my posts, but karisa rules, which is why if you want to get on my bad side you misspell her name or disrespect her.
yesterday we had a delicious lunch on vermont at a place that she’s never been at. how thats possible is beyond me. it was a working lunch and she was constantly getting messaged through her blackberry, and people were interrupting our conversation and even though it was the middle of the afternoon and even though we were in the midst of the the cool-hip part of east hollywood we were the stars of the show and i love that.
and i also love that she shies away from it just as much as i do, but as the old fortune cookie saying goes, what you resist persists, so its no wonder that the Good Lord would make me one of her best friends, me who loves taking pictures and movies and writing about my cool friends, and she who hates pictures of herself and movies starring her and blog posts with her as the subject. its a struggle for both of us as i want to respect her privacy but shit man, look at her, how am i not going to bring a camera on a sunny day and try to get a decent picture?
but because even i can fuck up a quickie lil photo shoot, i backed myself up with a one minute little film that you can see here.
k, enough about her. sk smith says she always likes to have two things to talk about per each blog post. so heres the second thing. someone wrote in asking about writing style and how to get it and how to maintain it. and bro you couldnt ask for a tougher question, so heres your answer.
writing style isnt something you think about, its something that happens when youre not thinking.
to me writing style is like a moving fastball or a wicked curve. i write about this all the time and i doubt that anyone understands it but im going to say it like elvis says until i instill it.
anyone can throw a decent fastball but when youre right on it your fastball moves and not you or the catcher knows whats going to happen to it cuz it gets a mind of its own and zips and wiggles and drops or does something impossible like rises. rarely does a moving fastball move from luck. it happens when velocity and intention french kiss will and gravitys jaw drops and even the air gets outta the way.
when you write from your heart your fastball will move. when you do it repeatedly you will see your style form. if you try to pin your style down you will become predictable and stale and your moving fastball will turn into a gopher ball and you will stand there with your head down as the sucker rounds the bases and your team loses.
so every time the world knows youre going to throw that fastball, even if you know it might move, throw the change up or if youve got guts, the curve.
the most famous writers have easilly identifiable styles. hem wrote in short AP style sentences. joyce wrote super long acid trippy nonsense. faulkners lines were twisted and gnarled, and twain was wordy and funny and exaggeratted.
in the same way you arent conscious of your own personality, you really shouldnt be concious of your writing style. its something that should be as natural as a throw from short to first. automatic.
if you think you have no style, good. keep it that way. the story should be the star anyhow, not the writer. i love tarantino and woody allen as much as the next guy but they are so full of themselves that theyd die if you made them direct each others scripts. a good young writer should strive to be nimble and versitle, not stymied with their own flava.
the best way to acheive a certain style is to mimic your heroes. im obviously influenced by jd and bukowski and hemingway and ee and william carlos williams. im also influenced by johnny rotten and howard stern and mike royko and raymi the minx. if youre clever you integrate equal parts of all your influences and mix em up real good and pretend that it equals you. if youre not so clever you’ll put far too much of one superstar and leave out the rest.
but the trick is to own all those superpowers and channel them through you so that even if the viewer can see the brushstrokes, it doesnt matter, even if they can point out exactly all the books youre stealing from, its a nice collage and youve put together the pieces in a way that those individuals couldnt ever done. or wouldnt.
when kerry wood throws his moving fastball he’s pretending to be nolan ryan whose from his hometown, but when he throws that fucked up notevenfair curve he’s bringing nolan into the 21st century cuz nolan didnt have anything like that. and that combo is kerrys style. but if you think for a second that when kerry was in highschool he was doing anything other than throwing heat youre crazy. that curveball was a major league necessity that he adapted into his repotoire the same way johnny mac’s serve was developed once he knew he needed an edge over bjorn.
concern yourself more with secret weapons than style because maintaining yr style will only hold you back. its the footprints of the runner who has already passed. its the aftertaste that critics write about once the art is over. its not the message its not the magic, its the name of the box that others put you in so that they can attempt to describe you.
whats jimi pages style? blues? not really. rock? so limiting? jazz? not even.
your goal, if you choose to accept it, should be to be to have people say, that motherfucker sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads.
period.
it started early with the maintence man coming over to check out the mysterious leak in my walls. he was here at 8:30am bright and early. his english aint so good so there was no negotiating which is too bad as i normally hit the hay around 5am and last night was no exception. he inspected, we shook hands, and he laughed at my pajamas that had been turned into summer pajamas after a few snips of the scissors.
as i was doing my dishes the activist formerly known as my