Let me put something to you.

We all take it as a given that, in order to excel at a certain art, you have to enjoy consuming that art. If you're a writer, you have to enjoy reading, and if you want to make films, you have to watch a ton of them.

But is there a limit to that?

To put it another way--could there be a point where watching too many films, reading too many books, or what have you, hinders development as an artist?

I wouldn't give up reading for anything. But I could see a time where I wasn't reading as much. In fact, I kind of look forward to that time.

Is there something to be said for immersion? Of course. But couldn't there also be benefits to deprivation?

At a certain point, does it really matter what other people have done?

I know a few writers, James Ellroy and Kurt Vonnegut among them, who make a point of refraining from engaging with other writers. That comes up a lot in interviews: older musicians don't listen to a lot of new music, and older filmmakers tend to be ignorant of up-and-comers.

That may be weariness, or it may be part of maintaining a unique voice. If you know what everyone else is doing, it constrains you, because you're either agreeing with it or disagreeing with it. Either way it shapes you.

I don't have an answer, but it's interesting to consider. The internet tends towards information overload. Maybe the best thing to do is to shut the world out. At least for a while.

"It is doubtful anyone with an internet connection at his workspace is writing good fiction": Top Ten Pieces of Advice

Entire list here.

So it goes.*

According to Kierkegaard, despair is the sickness unto death. Despair is also the writer's sickness, what Michael Chabon calls the Midnight Disease. It's an enterprise funded on confidence, that saps said confidence when you do it poorly. And when you do it right, more often than not nobody gives a shit.

I finished the second draft on Monday. It came in at 89,000 words and change, which is perfectly satisfactory (meaning I don't have to monkey with it). I've spent the last year on this, forsaking an awful lot of video games. The minute after I finished I was struck with two thoughts that absolutely leveled me for a day: the first chapter is shit and I don't know how to fix the first chapter and make it less shitty. That stumped me for a whole day.

It doesn't help that I've been reading Ian Rankin and Lawrence Block, masters of the kind of book I want to write, or that I've been watching the original British version of Edge of Darkness** and introducing my family to The Wire. In all cases that's crime drama taken to its summit. Anything less than brilliant looks rotten by comparison.

Anyway, I'm into draft three, and hoping to have it readable by the end of the Olympic boondoggle. The new beginning is sitting really well with me, and I know the areas it's deficient in (setting, which always fucks me up because I hate lengthy description) and problems (police procedure, which, surprise surprise, is actually pretty boring).

To get back to Kierkegaard (the second most famous melancholy Dane), the antidote for despair is to rest transparently, which is an indicatio of faith. Faith in what I haven't figured out, but half of writing--no, more like ninety percent--is a fucking slog. But it's worth it, even if it limits my Mass Effect playing time. You gotta do something worthwhile with the time you're given.

* It's a refrain from Vonnegut, who doesn't factor at all into this post. I just like the saying. It's better than those creepy Hunter Thompson acolytes who end forum posts with "Mahalo," isn't it? Or people who quote blocks of Bill Hicks comedy routines and pass them off as their own thoughts. I mean, by all means, steal from the masters, but don't, y'know, rape them.

**The British Edge of Darkness is in many ways superior to the film, though it lacks Ray Winstone and includes an uber-creepy scene where Craven finds his daughter's vibrator and gives it a sniff. Yes, you read that, and you can't unread it.

The Saddest thing you will read today

After Roeper announced his departure from At the Movies in 2008 — Disney wanted to revamp the show in a way that Roeper felt would damage it — Ebert disassociated himself from it, too, and he took his trademarked thumbs with him. The end was not pretty, and the break was not clean. But because Disney was going to change the original balcony set as part of its makeover, it was agreed, Ebert thought, that the upholstered chairs and rails and undersized screen would be given to the Smithsonian and put on display. Ebert was excited by the idea. Then he went up to visit the old set one last time and found it broken up and stacked in a dumpster in an alley.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310-5#ixzz0fjaGjgov

Reading list for the Olympic Break

I was going to read something Mammoth over the break, either War and Peace or Don Quixote, but I'm bloody fagged out, guv, and the list has split into crime thrillers and short masterworks.

The Short Works of Genius list looks like this:

Flannery O'Conner - A Good Man is Hard to Find

Cormac McCarthy - Outer Dark

Nathanael West - Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts

Nick Cave - And the Ass Saw the Angel

Henry James - The Spoils of Poynton

Edith Wharton - Ethan Frome

Samuel Beckett - Malone Dies and The Unnameable

Aside from the top three I probably won't glance at them until the end of the semester.

My crime thriller list looks like this:

Stieg Larsson - Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Will Beale - L.A. Rex

Benjamin Black - The Silver Swan

James Crumley - The Last Good Kiss

Lawrence Block - Eight Million Ways to Die

John McFetridge - Everyone Knows this is Nowhere

Ian Rankin - Resurrection Men

Michael Connelly - The Narrows

I love writing the way Winston Zeddemore loves this town.