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Gertrude Stein, with Alice B. Toklas in their famed Parisian literary salon.
The problem with Storyboard and FacebookStories isn’t that Tumblr or Facebook wanted to generate editorial content, or even that they only wanted to do so to draw attention to their own users. It’s hard to sift through social media sometimes, and platforms should highlight the best content they host. Rather, the problem was that both companies misunderstood their most valuable journalistic product: not puffy human interest stories, but the aggregate data they gather about how people behave online.
The New Republic
(Source: newrepublic.com)
Ebooks accounted for 22.55 percent, or nearly a quarter, of U.S. book publishers’ sales in 2012, according to a full-year report released by the Association of American Publishers Thursday. That’s up from 17 percent of sales in 2011 and 3 percent in 2009. Ebook growth continued to plateau, however, suggesting that the industry is maturing.
Ebooks made up 23 percent of US publisher sales in 2012, says the AAP — paidContent (via infoneer-pulse)
(via futurejournalismproject)
When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just there. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.
RIP, Roger Ebert – the beloved critic on writing and life. (via explore-blog)
(Source: , via explore-blog)
[I] imagine that there’s some secret to writing, and no one will tell me what it is. I know it’s not true, but still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, all the years of working on my books, part of me does still feel that if I ever really learned how to do this, I would stop writing such crazy material, such bad first drafts, and get it right the first time.
Andrea Barrett (via theparisreview)
Giving shape to a painful experience is powerful because it helps us to see first, how we got through it; second, how we can share it. The experience doesn’t stay trapped within us, unspoken, curdling — instead, the art of arranging and transforming it reduces the burden. It no longer belongs to only you. The process of assigning the experience a beginning, a middle and an end, of giving it form, is a way of mastering it. Each sentence contains the chaos — our experience becomes what we perceive. And the honesty in these perceptions, whether true or invented, creates a bridge to another person.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/books/review/the-accidental-writer.html?pagewanted=1
The best advice I can come up with is this: Keep your living expenses LOW. The smaller you live (materially-speaking), the bigger you can live (creatively-speaking). This way the stakes aren’t so high…you aren’t demanding of your passion that it keeps you living a rich life. Then you can stretch and grow with the most possible freedom. This was my strategy in my 20’s, and it’s the reason I worked really hard to avoid all debts, and to keep my lifestyle really manageable. If I’d been saddled with a big life, I don’t think I ever could have found my way forward to the freedom I have now.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s advice for people who want to turn their passion into a career, a fine addition to our ongoing archive of sage advice.
Also see how to avoid work and do what you love.
TRUTH
(Source: , via gracebello)
Righteousness is gross on the page. Certitude is a turnoff. Moral agendas scream. Failure, choice, and discovery are more interesting. Flawed characters are real. I like my progressive protagonists riddled with fatal flaws, with a helping of dysfunction and single-mindedness that borders on self-destruction.
Megan Mayhew Bergman, Birds of A Lesser Paradise.
(via Nouvelliste’s Tumblr)
(Source: juliafierro)
“I think, at its best, this sort of reporting shows how journalism and narrative non-fiction can share space with art. Journalism tends to revel in this sense of being involved with people but separated from them by objectivity. We’re supposed to be rational observers of the public and not personally affected. It’s all very high-minded. But I like people, and I love stories. I think there’s something very personal about using someone’s words and likeness to tell their story. It involves a trust and closeness that you don’t get parachuting down for a news story where all you need is a quote or two so you can file by deadline. I think, ideally, comics journalism creates new layers of dialogue and understanding between readers, writers and subjects/sources. I like to think new media is increasingly open to exploring that idea.”
The Illustrated Press: Chicago
