I was thinking about people being ecstatically happy in the morning, so I wrote this tune. I hope you like it.
Will Atkins' Author Truths.
Will Atkins is publisher of MacMillan New Writing. Via the excellent London Writers Club.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Do you like having things? I like having things. And old people’s furniture.
Two authors try to catch agent Judith Murray’s eye in spectacular style.
This is the most literal record cover ever made.
Marlon Brando, typewriter, cat… What’s not to like.
Homemade bookstand. It’s amazing the lengths we go to to avoid work.
Soukous Ndombolo, fuck yeah!
I’m gonna dance my ass off in this car park and by this canal.
(via blackandwtf)
A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.
— The Economist (via mudd up, peterwknox)
![This is the most frustrating thing for unpublished writers to see. Cheryl Cole has revealed that until her “mega-deal” (see mega-bucks-deal) for her novels, she had never “thought of [her]self as a writer.” She probably didn’t know she was a singer either until her album was handed to her on a shiny disc. I suspect she may still not know she’s a singer judging by some of 3 Words. Wasn’t she a dancer before she was a singer? Where will it end? The rolling over into other areas of mediocrity.
What hope is there for beginners if publishers are just going to sign up ghostwritten (and I’m willing to bet mega-bucks it is ghostwritten) books by celebrities. In my writing class there is a girl endevouring to write chick-lit, but what hope has she if the pop-behemoth that is Cole moves into the territory? A slim one. It sets the bench mark. Publishers will spunk all their money up the Cole hole (sorry), and people of similar levels of stardom, and be left with less cash to spend on new talent. I know publishing is primarily a business and Cole is big business. So it makes sense in an immediate way but that is short sighted. It’s lazy and it narrows the publics taste even more until unless a book is written by a celebrity, supermarkets won’t stock it and it won’t sell. They are chasing a dream that makes every body more stupid. It retards all of us. It adds another wave to the shit-storm of crap writing that’s beating against are brains, leaving gross tide marks up and down the bookshops of England. I’m not intending to be a snob. I just want talented new writers to get their chance.
I hope the slew of ghostwritten celebrity books encourages new writers to compete and create truly exciting work that gives the industry a massive kick in the balls. My only fear is that they will be ignored in favour of Gordon Ramsey’s new series of thrillers about a crime fighting chef who says fuck a lot.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kwalh1N3md1qz9dm2o1_400.jpg)
This is the most frustrating thing for unpublished writers to see. Cheryl Cole has revealed that until her “mega-deal” (see mega-bucks-deal) for her novels, she had never “thought of [her]self as a writer.” She probably didn’t know she was a singer either until her album was handed to her on a shiny disc. I suspect she may still not know she’s a singer judging by some of 3 Words. Wasn’t she a dancer before she was a singer? Where will it end? The rolling over into other areas of mediocrity.
What hope is there for beginners if publishers are just going to sign up ghostwritten (and I’m willing to bet mega-bucks it is ghostwritten) books by celebrities. In my writing class there is a girl endevouring to write chick-lit, but what hope has she if the pop-behemoth that is Cole moves into the territory? A slim one. It sets the bench mark. Publishers will spunk all their money up the Cole hole (sorry), and people of similar levels of stardom, and be left with less cash to spend on new talent. I know publishing is primarily a business and Cole is big business. So it makes sense in an immediate way but that is short sighted. It’s lazy and it narrows the publics taste even more until unless a book is written by a celebrity, supermarkets won’t stock it and it won’t sell. They are chasing a dream that makes every body more stupid. It retards all of us. It adds another wave to the shit-storm of crap writing that’s beating against are brains, leaving gross tide marks up and down the bookshops of England. I’m not intending to be a snob. I just want talented new writers to get their chance.
I hope the slew of ghostwritten celebrity books encourages new writers to compete and create truly exciting work that gives the industry a massive kick in the balls. My only fear is that they will be ignored in favour of Gordon Ramsey’s new series of thrillers about a crime fighting chef who says fuck a lot.
The request
Brief met.
Unihorn.
Thanks Chelsey.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Australian band Cloud Control do their very best to throw their hat into the Fleet Foxes ring. Although to me it sounds more like if Animal Collective forgot to turn on their effects units. It has a semi-Beach Boys element a la Panda Bear. It’s great.
New Releases.
So the start of the year seems to be a bumper month for music. Yeasayer, Vampire Weekend, Spoon, Beach House, and Midlake are all releasing new albums. For me all exciting albums by exciting bands. But if I hear one more word about who I should be listening to in 2010 from the BBC or any other website that listens to the BBC, I will never listen to any of the bands on those fucking lists ever again. Never heard Ellie Goulding, already sick to death of her. I once saw a Banksie sticker that said “If you put your fastfood menus through this letter box we will never ever buy your food.” Or words to a similar effect. That’s how I’m beginning to feel about these annual taste making lists. I think Goulding might have even been on the list last year and now she’s returning eternally like a bad kebab.
Some research has shone that the public are getting sick of these lists as well with bands not immediately selling off the back of being listed. It appears that in some cases people want to decide themselves before they just buy whatever the list suggests they do. Most bands on the list, thankfully, sink without much of a struggle, but we are always left with a residual Florence & The Machine or a virulent case of the Little Boots. Or worse a nasty attack of the White Lies. And is it only last years list where Lady GaGa reared her wonky head? Yes, although it feels like she’s been scronking on the radio for decades. She is the one genuine superstar to appear though.
Of this years shower only Gold Panda and the peerless Joy Orbison look like an interesting proposition. The rest appear to be more wafting electro-pop and more (always more) sub-New Order guff.
It’s boring and it’s annoying.
Like Ellie Goulding.
The End of Everything Soft and Kind...
... and the Start of Hard Times To Come. A writing (time wasting) diary by Tom Watts. This is the scrapbook of a writer who should be writing. If you like great poetry avoid this blog.
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