Björk (Back Again with Michel Gondry): "Crystalline"
This takes me back to a simpler time! It is pleasant to see two people — Björk and Michel Gondry! — have fun in a form they know and like so much. Miss you, the 90s. (via)
Washington Punditocracy: The Littlest Achievers
“For the Washington punditocracy, to attain last-name status on Drudge marks an achievement of sorts: It’s recognition that political observers find your work so familiar that a first name is hardly needed. ‘Having your last name touted on Drudge is sort of the Washington equivalent of first-name recognition in Hollywood, where Jen and Brad and Angelina need no further identification,’ said The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz.”
'Vogue' #2 Gets Sarah Palin-Level Money for Memoir
Wow, the delightful Grace Coddington, the creative director at Vogue, has turned back time to 1996 or 2004 or somewhere in there and allegedly sold a memoir to Random House for the low seven figures: the Observer is saying $1.2 million. Now this is a book I would read! (Like, when they send me the galley. I’m not saying I’d buy it.) This is a book that perhaps, maybe, you would read — loving, as you do, Condé Nast intriguers and swinging London in the 60s and various accounts of eccentricity. And, but, well… did she even kill anyone and/or become a prostitute? (I mean… perhaps she did! And/or will before her book deadline!) But this is Sarah Palin book money — the kind of money even Palin won’t get again, after her second book wildly underperformed her first, except of course until she becomes First Lady President of America, USA, and we give her all of everyone’s book money.
"Sentinel Chicken" Down!
Poor sentinel chickens. The canaries in our disease coalmine, they get routinely poked and prodded for infections of all kind. And then sometimes they actually get one. So send your prayers to the bold sentinel chicken who just came down with West Nile virus in Florida. On top of the dengue and malaria, maybe don’t go outside much down there? (Though, for our sentinel chicken friends, I guess it’s a better life than being an “eating chicken”?)
Album Covered
The folks at Stereogum have put together a tribute to Is This It, that Strokes album from TEN YEARS AGO. Man, remember ten years ago?
Ego Checks You May Encounter As A Blogger-Turned-Book-Writer
by Claire Zulkey
Just because an agent approaches you doesn’t mean you have a good book idea.
The agent may have heard of you and figures that if you’ve written a million words online, you might be willing to publish 60,000 of them in a book. But the things you wrote might not make sense for a book. While the agent might love you and your voice, she might not be so hot on your other ideas, which can be confusing. Didn’t the other ideas come from you and your voice?
Just because you write most of a book doesn’t mean you can finish and sell a book.
Doesn’t it seem like if you can do most of something, you should be able to finish it? Like, if you run 23 miles of a marathon, you can walk the last few miles. If you eat 3/4th of a pizza, you can cram in that last quarter. But you cannot, it turns out, walk the last three miles of your book.
Just because you write all of a book doesn’t mean you can sell a book.
This seems strange, because people (including agents) have told you how great you and your voice are. Now you have a manuscript. Why aren’t you rich yet?
The process of writing, editing, selling, editing and publishing a book is agonizingly slow, perhaps even slower for the blogger who is used to the immediate gratification of seeing work published immediately.
A book can take a full year (sometimes a year and a half) to be published after it’s been sold. This can be hard to explain to your father, who wants to know why it takes so long and you realize you’re not sure you know exactly, even though it’s been explained to you. Incidentally, your father may have offered to publish your book himself if you couldn’t sell it, which is heartbreakingly touching and frustrating at the same time.
Just because you wrote a book doesn’t mean people want to buy the book.
Even if you tell every single person you have ever emailed about it. Even if you get out there and ask people nicely with pleading yet polite eyes.
Just because you wrote a book doesn’t make you immune to comments like “How come I haven’t heard of your book?” and “Does it bum you out that your book wasn’t a bestseller?”
Even if you are murdering them with your eyes, you still have to say things like “I don’t know, I guess it must not be very famous!” and “Well, yes, of course, but…”
Just because you wrote a book doesn’t mean your editor will offer you a contract for future books.
This is especially tough if all your other writer friends have signed contracts for future books, and they complain about their deadlines for future books and you think, “I wish I had deadlines for future books.”
Just because you wrote a book doesn’t mean you are immune from bouts of jealousy regarding your more successful friends.
This is a hard envy to quash because unlike some other writing goals you may have set that were competition-induced, such as, say, publishing in a certain magazine or website, you’ll realize that book publishing is less in your hands than other forms of writing, which should be a freeing thought, actually, but it’s not. Fortunately most of your successful friends also have experienced this malaise and will talk to you about it over drinks.
Just because you wrote a book doesn’t mean your editor is interested in your future books.
You can keep trying, though.
Just because you wrote a book doesn’t mean other editors will be interested in your future books.
This could make you sad if you really liked your editor, just because you might feel like you let him or her down. It will also just make you sad because, you know, you wrote another book and you’d like it to be published and now you have to find a new editor. You think back to all the “shortcuts” you had with the first book (like an agent finding you) and realize that this process takes only slightly less time than evolution. On the upside, maybe you will grow a fin by time your next book is published.
Just because you wrote a book doesn’t mean your agent will think all your future book ideas will be great.
But you need to keep trying. Even if you’re wondering if you’ll ever have a good idea again.
Just because you wrote a second book doesn’t mean your agent will think it’s great.
This seems disloyal somehow, even though it’s just business. Shouldn’t the agent be able to tell you a quick fix to take your book from unsellable to great? Like, maybe a font change?
Just because you wrote a book you don’t become immune to the self-doubt and agonizingly slow pace of writing another book.
You’re going to get mad at yourself and think, “I did this already. I should know how to do this! It should be easier this time!” You kick yourself for once joking that you hope it takes less than the ten years it took to publish your first book to publish your second book, because even if it does, nine years is still a really long time.
Just because you wrote a book you don’t necessarily know what you’re going to do next.
You may jokingly say, “Maybe I should just go to law school” except that joke isn’t funny because you would hate law school and you already know plenty of lawyers who hate their jobs and their lives. So you can’t even stick the landing on a stupid self-pitying joke. Maybe you should just have a kid. Or keep trying to write. Or both.
Claire Zulkey lives in Chicago. You can learn so much more about her here.
Photo by Jonas8110.
19 Politicians Who Didn't Return Their Donations from BP in 2011
by Abe Sauer
• Cory Gardner (whose homepage currently features a call for more drilling.)
Plus!
• National Republican Congressional Committee
• National Republican Senatorial Committee
And! Related.
Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.
Watch A Jumping Spider Dance To Impress A Prospective Mate And Name A Newly Discovered Species
“So the female wants to say no but he puts it in big bright letters ‘new and improved.’ He’s basically finding loopholes in her sensory system.”
— University of British Columbia zoologist Wayne Madison explains the increasingly complex mating dance of the male jumping spider to The Last Word On Nothing’s Anne Casselman. Madison discovered a whole new species of jumping spider in Ecuador, and you can help name it!
“The spider is a small adult male, about 5mm long. Like all jumping spiders, he has four big eyes on the front of his face, and four smaller eyes on top. He’s mostly reddish brown except for his face, which has a big white band, and his jaws have striking diagonal yellowish stripes. No other known jumping spider has a face quite like this one.”
The first part of the name will be “Lapsias” (for some scientific reason that we have no control over.) But the second part can be one or two words long, and we, the people, can submit suggestions. I can’t decide between “Lapsias Lee Roth”
Or “Lapsias Apache”
Or “Lapsias Pointer Sister”
Or “Lapsias Mack Daddy” (Or “Lapsias Daddy Mack”)
Or “Lapsias Everlast”
Please Welcome....
by The Awl
The Awl is pleased to announce the hiring of John Shankman as publisher of The Awl, The Hairpin and Splitsider.
Shankman will begin next week. He is departing his position as account director at the Huffington Post. Prior, from 2007 to early 2010, he was a regional sales manager at Federated Media.
He can be reached at John@theawl.com.
David Cho, our founding publisher, has departed to be the director of business development for ESPN’s Grantland, and will be an advisor to the company.
The Awl launched in late April of 2009. When the New York Times wrote about The Awl last October, we reported that we’d grown from just 100,000 unique visitors in August of 2009 to 500,000 in August of 2010. In the second quarter of this year, Awl Network total traffic has ranged from 3 million to 3.5 million uniques a month. (Google Analytics numbers throughout.)
In other news, we are seeking permanent office space in Manhattan — approximately seven or eight desks. Do you have a little office space to rent? Give us a shout regarding that or with any other questions.
