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Reuters had an interesting article about the most overused words and phrases in 2007.
Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics.
The contributors gave first prize to the phrase "a perfect storm," saying it was numbingly applied to virtually any notable coincidence.
"Webinar" made the list as a tiresome non-word combining Web and seminar that a contributor said "belongs in the same school of non-thought that brought us e-anything and i-anything."
YES! YES! I can't STAND the word (and I use the term loosely here) "webinar". Although I disagree with hating i-anything, because I LOVE my iPhone. (Thank you, Webmeister! :-)
Some of the other hated phrases were "X is the New Y", as in "brown is the new black" or my favorite example from the Reuters article: "chocolate is the new sex."
When people ask me do, I say I'm a writer, cause that's what I do. I write. Well, except when I'm taking stupid quizzes on the Internet or reading other peoples' blogs.
So the final line of the article cracked me up :
"Finally, any self-respecting writer would groan at being labeled a "wordsmith" who engages in "wordsmithing," the list-makers said."
If I call myself anything other than writer, I think I'm going to opt for Wordmeister. Wouldn't that be cute? The Webmeister and The Wordmeister. Coming soon to a computer screen near you.
Okay. We are going to take a week off from The Publishing Spot--a chance to go crazy with my novel, catch up on reading, and get out of the city for a little bit.
I hope you have a happy holiday, and I'll see you on January 2nd when they force us all to go back to work.
If you want some content, check out my favorite writing interviews from the last year or so: sci-fi wizard Brian Francis Slattery, pulp fiction hero Paul Malmont, scriptwriting memoirist Allen Rucker, novelist Min Jin Lee, and travelwriting madman Tony D'Souza.
If that's not enough, check out the 20 songs on my Best Writing Music of 2007 list. Instead of reading about writing tips, listen to these songs and WRITE SOMETHING NEW.
20. "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe" from The Stage Names by Okkervil River.
19. "Missed the Boat" from Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse.
18. "One Two Three Four" from The Reminder by Feist.
17. "Chemicals Collide" from The Meaning of 8 by Cloud Cult.
16. "If The Brakeman Turns My Way" Cassadaga by Bright Eyes.
15. "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse from Back to Black
14. "Like Castanets" by Bishop Allen from Broken String
13. "In Our Talons" by the Bowerbirds from Hymns for the Dark Horse
12. "Up The Wolves" by The Mountain Goats from The Sunset Tree
11. "Forks And Knives (La Fete)" by Beirut from The Flying Club Cup
10. "What Light" by Wilco from Sky Blue Sky.
9. "To the Dogs or Whoever" by Josh Ritter from The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter.
8. "Satan Said Dance" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah from Some Loud Thunder.
7. "Ultimate" by Gogol Bordello from Super Taranta.
6. "The Underdog" by Spoon from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.
5. "C Is The Heavenly Option" by Los Campesinos from The International Tweexcore Underground.
4. "Will You Return?" by The Avett Brothers from Emotionalism.
3. John Allyn Smith Sails by Okkervil River from The Stage Names.
2. Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová from The Once Soundtrack.
1. Flight 180 by Bishop Allen from The Broken String.
I spend so much time lost in my headphones; it helps me write anything from judge profiles to my novel.
Every year I make a long, long list of gorgeous writing music for my friends.
Here's the conclusion, complete with links and stories. In all, there are twenty songs on my Best Songs of 2007 list. This year, the whole mix is entitled: "Turn My Life Over and Over Again." (Free CD to the first person to spot which song contains that wonderful line).
The list is not ranked in order of my favorites, I put the songs in Ideal Listening Order instead.
5. "C Is The Heavenly Option" by Los Campesinos from The International Tweexcore Underground. Catchy song, catchy band--they'll cheer you up real good.
4. "Will You Return?" by The Avett Brothers from Emotionalism. A bluegrass song that takes a magical swing at happy-go-lucky pop halfway through.
3. John Allyn Smith Sails by Okkervil River from The Stage Names. This band bowled me over this year, and this mixture of Beach Boys and confessional poetry would be my top pick of the year--if it wasn't so effing sad!
2. Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová from The Once Soundtrack. This cheesy, gorgeous anthem from a great film will help you recover from the last sad song.
1. Flight 180 by Bishop Allen from The Broken String. "If you feel like dancing, dance with me." These are words to live by if you want to have a happy, happy new year.
Click here to see 16-20 of my Best Songs of 2007 list. Or click here to see 15-11 on my Best Songs of 2007 list. Or click her to see 10-6 on my Best Songs of 2007 List.
Wowsa. Long day at the dayjob.
Here's the highlight of the interwebs this evening: Salon.com's Best Books of 2007 List. They included two supercool writers who visited this site in 2007, including Vikram Chandra and Joshua Ferris. Also dig Caitlin Shamberg's video about Raymond Chandler's marriage, looking at one hardboiled writer I would have on this site, were he still alive.
In keeping with that happy reading spirit, here's part three of my happy writing music list for 2007.
10. "What Light" by Wilco from Sky Blue Sky. If you feel like you are writing something wrong, listen to this song.
9. "To the Dogs or Whoever" by Josh Ritter from The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter. If you feel like your metaphors are boring, then listen to this song.
8. "Satan Said Dance" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah from Some Loud Thunder. If you can't sit at your writing desk anymore, listen to this song.
7. "Ultimate" by Gogol Bordello from Super Taranta. If you need to dance some more, listen to this song.
6. "The Underdog" by Spoon from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. If you can't stop dancing, this song will chill you out.
Click here to see 16-20 of my Best Songs of 2007 list. Or click here to see 15-11 on my Best Songs of 2007 list. Tune in later this week for the conclusion of our official Best Songs of 2007 list.
You need some writing music. Right. Now.
Don't take my word for it, listen to the wise lit-blogger Maud Newton. A good soundtrack saved her novel:
"Listen to different music as you work on each section [of your novel], and make sure it’s the same music every time. And then, [my friend] said, the words will just flow out. In essence, you’re training yourself the way Pavlov trained his poor dogs. But with fewer harnesses and wires, and considerably less detachment."
Because I love music, here's part two of my holiday present for you, some of the best writing music I heard this year.
15. "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse from Back to Black
14. "Like Castanets" by Bishop Allen from Broken String
13. "In Our Talons" by the Bowerbirds from Hymns for the Dark Horse
12. "Up The Wolves" by The Mountain Goats from The Sunset Tree
11. "Forks And Knives (La Fete)" by Beirut from The Flying Club Cup
Click here to see 16-20 of my Best Songs of 2007 list. Tune in later this week for the conclusion of our official Best Songs of 2007 list.
Seriously, I would stop writing without music.
Hoping to save my friends and family, I make a compilation CD for the holidays, sharing the songs that I loved the year before. This year, my circle of friends and family has expanded to include you.
So happy holidays, here's a long, long list of gorgeous writing music. I challenge you to listen to these songs without scribbling some stories.
Here's the first part, complete with links and stories. In all, there are twenty songs on my Best Songs of 2007 list. This year, the whole mix is entitled: "Turn My Life Over and Over Again." (Free CD to the first person to spot which song contains that wonderful line. The list is not ranked in order of my favorites, I put the songs in Ideal Listening Order instead.
Feel free to add your own selections in the comments section...
20. "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe" from The Stage Names by Okkervil River This is a choice cut from my favorite album of the year. It took a week, but I woke up one morning humming this catchy tune--I never looked back.
19. "Missed the Boat" from Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse. A spectacular song from a so-so album. You will be wearing a big, big grin by the time that they start singing about "the tiny claps of tiny hands."
18. "One Two Three Four" from The Reminder by Feist. This lovely new singer will rock every "Best Songs of 2007" list this year. But you already knew that.
17. "Chemicals Collide" from The Meaning of 8 by Cloud Cult. This sweet song cheered me up when I needed it this year.
16. "If The Brakeman Turns My Way" Cassadaga by Bright Eyes. When I couldn't be cheered up, this song somehow nailed every single anxiety and sadness that came crawling to the surface.
“The rest of the band waits, they're letting the groove get in the pocket, hit bottom. It does; and now two drummers join in, they weave a polyrhythm that brings in one guitar and some pops from a banjo, oh this groove is young, but it's growing, and people are starting to move. Now a singer steps up to the mike, puts out some blues that two more singers turn to gospel, harmonies deep and wide that make you want to believe.”
That's a blazing passage from Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery, a first-time novelist who took his experiences with music, immigrants, travel, and politics, boiling them in a hallucinatory stew.
He's our special guest this week, talking about writing tips, day job survival, novel publishing, and musical language.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog:
Your novel sings. There are remarkable musical sections sprinkled throughout, and your sentences sound stunning when I read them out loud. You play music in real life. How did you inject music into your prose, thematically and line-by-line? Any advice for fledgling writers looking to make their prose sound more musical, more rhythmic? What did you listen to while you wrote the book?
Brian Francis Slattery:
I'm so glad you hear the groove in my writing--it makes it more fun for me to write like that, and I hope it's more fun for readers to read it. Continue reading...
Are you writing in the wrong genre?
Short story writer and essayist Steve Almond just wrote an essay about how he figured out he wasn't a poet. It's an unexpected tribute to C.K. Williams poetry:
"Somehow, in the midst of manifest suffering, he managed to capture the rescuing beauty of the world. The flashing yellow beak of a blackbird. A box of foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. The bulges and crevasses of his baby's naked body."
USA Today just named the Top 25 Headlines from the last 25 years. It's a good way to think about your writing--how can you account for these earth-shaking moments in your fiction and non-fiction?
Over at PaperCuts, Tom Perrotta just delivered a musical playlist for writers. He ties together a few seemingly unrelated songs, thematically and story-wise. Give it a listen.
Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.
We talk a lot about how music affects our writing, but today I'm thinking about how writers affect music.
I've spent the last two weeks obsessed with the Okkervil River song, "John Allyn Smith Sails." I won't ruin the tune for you, but it wrapped my anxious brain like a security blanket this weekend.
This morning, I realized why. He was singing about my favorite poet, the confessional writer, John Berryman. Berryman's The Dream Songs can change your prose style forever, showing you how to turn emotional experiences into gorgeous words.
This NPR article discusses the song with the band, teasing out a few more literary allusions lurking underneath the new album. Listen to the sample tracks, and take a writing break. I promise these songs will get under your skin and re-surface in your stories.
Last year, in The Great Writing Music List, Part One, I asked all my readers "what do you listen to when you write?" That's one of the most important questions anybody can ask a writer.
A great song can inspire you, and a great album can keep you inspired. Today we are lucky. We have a novelist and leader of the rock band, Richmond Fontaine, as our special guest this week.
In the conclusion of his interview, Willy Vlautin shares the music he listened to while he wrote his first novel, The Motel Life. Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog:
You just wrapped up a tour with your band. How do music and writing interact in your brain? Do you have favorite records you listen to while writing? If Motel Life had a soundtrack, what would be the three most key songs?
Willy Vlautin:
Writing music and fiction are two different games for me. Continue reading...
"Bad luck, it falls on people every day. It's one of the only certain truths. It's always on deck, it's always just waiting. The worst thing, the thing that scares me the most is that you never know who or when it's going to hit. But I knew then, that morning, when I saw the kid's frozen arms in the back of the car that bad luck had found my brother and me."
That's a gloomy passage from Willy Vlautin's novel, a hybrid of the American road trip book and the dark currents of pulp fiction. Vlautin wrote The Motel Life in between gigs with his rock band, Richmond Fontaine, bringing lonesome country music influences to his grim story of alcoholism and accidents.
He's our special guest this week, explaining how music influenced his writing and how his lyrical storytelling style evolved. Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog:
Your book depends on oral storytelling--the lead character is always telling other characters these fantastical adventure stories. How did you shape these tall-tales and how do you make it sound so good when it is read out-loud? Who are the writers/storytellers who influenced this side of your writing?
Willy Vlautin:
Well, thanks for saying it sounds good read out loud. Continue reading...
What can hip-hop teach us about writing?
I love writing with music. I love wandering around New York City with my personal soundtrack playing in my head. For me, storytelling and music are wrapped up together. If I'm looking for a little inspiration, I have a stockpile of writing music that I return to every time.
This week, LitKicks features an interview with Brian Coleman, a hip-hop historian who just published the book, Check the Technique--where he tells the stories behind some beloved hip-hop albums.
In the LitKicks interview, Coleman discusses why we can't treat hip-hop artists like poets, and talks about the literary influences of the best rap lyrics. As he reverse engineers some inspiring albums, we can find some poetic lessons to take home with us.
Check it out:
"Hip-hop lyricists still haven't gotten the poetic respect they deserve, in my opinion. But I don't think that a lot of the top lyricists out there – people like Rakim, KRS-One, Q-Tip – really care that they're not accepted as poets in the poetry community. They care that their fans and peers respect them as lyricists."
There are one hundred million websites (including this one) that will tell you how to escape the day-to-day grind of freelancing and move into a book writing career.
Today, I read an article that revealed the only fool-proof method to break out as a writer. The Big Top Secret Method for Becoming a Successful Freelance Writer is...WORK!
This little gem of wisdom came from rock & roll journalist Matt Diehl, as revealed on the writing blog, SlushPile.net:
"The lifelong punk rocker, art history major, and respected music critic says you shouldn’t hesitate to review 'someone on American Idol,' he says. 'It may be against your value system on some levels. But you actually might learn something. That is being a professional writer. Take writing assignments that you would normally turn down for whatever reason and see what you do with them.'"
Work. That's the secret. Work whenever you can. You build clips and build relationships with editors. That's the only way it happens, that's the only way people learn to trust you as a writer.
Check out the rest of that
invaluable essay for more tips about managing your day-job and freelance work, research, and insider music journalism gossip.
Still stuck figuring out what to buy your father for Father's Day? I have an idea that's kind of crazy, but crazy enough to work...
Papercuts just initiated a weekly series where writers list their favorite songs, beginning with short story wizard, George Saunders. While I don't think listening to Saunders' favorite music will help you write a perfect Saunders story (here's an example); I think writers can always use more music.
For me, writing and storytelling are always connected--my best ideas come while walking with my iPod and I play quiet music while writing.
Here's my idea: Why not make a playlist out of Saunders' father-friendly choices? Buy a copy of CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and wrap it up with the CD, it's the perfect combination of sentimental music and uncanny prose to please the writer in your life.
You can thank me later for this Perfect Father's Day Gift. Here's a taste:
"Love and Happiness, Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler. Do not listen to this song if your daughter has just left for her first year of college and you are driving alone across Texas, or you may have to pull off the road, due to sobbing."
I love writing with music. I love wandering around New York City with my personal soundtrack playing in my head. For me, storytelling and music are wrapped up together.
Today I'm listing my favorite, inspirational music videos for writers--chosen for musical content, video storytelling, and for the way they stuck in my brain for years and years. If I'm looking for a little inspiration, these are the videos I go to for help.
The order is arbitrary, and feel free to add your own favorites in the comments...
1. Sabotage -- Beastie Boys
Ever since I was a kid, I've played private detective in my head, running, leaping, and dodging imaginary bullets. This wonderful video will turn you into a secret agent all over again.
Over the weekend (entirely by accident) I met director Paul Rachman, the man behind the documentary American Hardcore as well as scores of music videos that my buddies and I would watch in high school.
He worked with some of my favorite bands--The Replacements, Temple of the Dog, and Alice in Chains (the trippy "Man in a Box" video!). Last night I dug through his website, interviews, and music videos. It took me back to a much simpler time, and I started writing about my hometown again.
If those bands mean something to you, you must check out Rachman's website -- the memories are priceless. If you don't know the music, read Rachman's reminder about the importance of community in this Evening Class interview:
"However small it was, we knew we were part of something intricate, that had this ethic of helping your friends. Everybody had to work hard to make that show happen on Sunday afternoon at the VFW Hall. Everybody. You had to show up. You had to help. You had to help the band get there. It was a sense of community. You really counted on each other to make it happen because it wouldn't if not. There were too many forces against you."
