Hey, you punks. If you want to write, you oughta read. Read this, you punks! is a jaunty list of recommendations directing you to creatively fulfilling pieces. These posts are typically for paying subscribers. If you enjoy the newsletter, please consider subscribing. It helps a ton and gives ya access to more resources and chats to help you improve your writing craft.
Directions: Write, Read, Rewrite. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed.
This first recommendation was given to me in a Dallas area bookstore by a lesbian shopkeeper and her cowboy companion.
It’s a Susan Sontag piece on the benefits of rewriting. One of my favorite things about it is that she frames rewriting as a way that we can allow our writing to be smarter than we are. It’s a good addition to your writing about writing diet.
“Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To invent. To leap. To fly. To fall. To find your own characteristic way of narrating and insisting; that is, to find your own inner freedom. To be strict without being too self-excoriating. Not stopping too often to reread. Allowing yourself, when you dare to think it’s going well (or not too badly), simply to keep rowing along. No waiting for inspiration’s shove.”
Aside from or perhaps including my own, Writerland is my favorite newsletter about writing. This letter by Michael Shapiro covers the annoyance of editors who just don’t know when to leave it alone. I’ll add that it is important for any editor to first read a piece without thinking about what they think the piece should be. Read first to understand the intention, then see where the writer may be lacking in delivering on that, or if that intention needs scrutiny.
“I have seen too many editors who convince themselves they are improving the writing by working it and working it and working it like a baker kneading dough. The dough needs it. The writing, not always. Because there comes a point when, well intentioned as that editing may be, the result is to leech the life out of the story. Each successive edit takes the story ever further from the power the writer brought to it, the need to tell it.”
In a previous Read this, you punks!, we discussed The “Pity Me!” Personal Essay. It’s an excellent piece that covers the trend of inappropriately self-serious personal writing. Give it a read when you get the chance. In it, the author Rachel Connolly gave this new recommendation as an example of what the personal essay genre can be at its best. I Class Up A Joint is a breezy and hilarious piece that reminds us that essays don’t have to look one particular way. Check it out.
“I’ve never worked a day in my life. If I did it would probably ruin my career, which at the moment is something of a cross between a butterfly and a lap dog. I never went to high school either.”
Designing the Characters of ‘Cowboy Bebop’
My greatest sin as an anime fan is that I’ve never finished Cowboy Bebop. But that continuing failure didn’t stop me from appreciating this character design breakdown from Animation Obsessive, a biweekly newsletter devoted to animation from around the world. I love anything that gives a lowdown on a particular craft. And Animation Obsessive continues to do great work in that field on a regular basis.
“The early meetings were inconclusive, but Kawamoto got the general idea that the characters should feel hardboiled. Still, he didn’t have much material. “‘Just draw something to start off with,’ I was told by the producer,” Kawamoto recalled, laughing.”
Influencer Courses are Garbage: The Dark Side of Content Creation
I’ve reserved this last spot as an experimental space. This is a video essay and a long one at that. So listen to this, you punks. This is an excellent takedown by creator Super Eyepatch Wolf of predatory influencer classes that claim to have some kind of insider information that simply does not exist. If you have any ambitions related to social media, I think this is well worth your time.
“Say you decide you want to become a carpenter, and particularly [learn] how to build a nice chair. Think about the kind of person you would want to learn that skill from. Would it be from someone who has built nice chairs every day for 20 years? Or would it be the guy who built one nice chair five years ago out of a special kind of wood that doesn’t exist anymore, who has no experience with the kind of wood available to you now?
Well, here’s the problem with online influencer courses — it is a field where that first guy does not exist, only the second. Anyone considered a social media influencer has achieved a degree of fame, but the problem is that they’ve done it precisely once and likely under a specific set of conditions that were unique to the time period of their rise.”
Thanks so much for the shout-out!
Regarding predatory influencer courses, I see this phenomenon proliferate online among financial experts, whom I seek out as research for my newsletter. Unfortunately, there are some who claim to be something they're not, taking people's money for bogus courses.
Also, I'm definitely going to check out Writerland. Thanks for the roundup, Jade.