I was walking towards a building this morning trying to think of good way to describe it in writing but I drew a blank. However, while I was sitting on a wooden bench after having a banana for lunch a clear description of the building flashed into my mind.
This evening, while I was looking for a reference that Nassim Taleb made about Balzac's Lost Illusions, I stumbled upon this excerpt that I had highlighted in The Black Swan backin 2007. Furthermore, we think that if, say, two variables are causally linked, then a steady input in one variable should always yield a result in the other one. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, if you study every day, you expect to learn something in proportion to your studies. If you feel that you are not going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized. But modern reality rarely gives us the privilege of a satisfying, linear, positive progression: you may think about a problem for a year and learn nothing; then, unless you are disheartened by the emptiness of the results and give up, something will come to you in a flash.
I've given a number of mentees and colleagues copies of Sam Anderson's "The James Franco Project" which was a 2010 New York magazine profile on the polymath, because I was impressed by Franco's uncompromising work ethic. Here are some highlights from the piece: He’s just flown back from Berlin this afternoon, he says, and he has a 35-page paper due tomorrow. Next weekend he has to shoot a student film, because in two weeks he’ll be flying out to Salt Lake City to start acting in a movie called 127 Hours Revisions are due soon on his book of short stories, which will be published in October by Scribner. He’s trying to nail down the details of an art show that will be based, somehow, on his recent performance on the soap opera General Hospital. Also, he has class every day, which—since he’s enrolled in four graduate programs at once—requires commuting among Brooklyn, Greenwich Village, Morningside Heights, and occasionally North Carolina. He persuaded his advisers [at UCLA] to let him exceed the maximum course load, then proceeded to take 62 credits a quarter, roughly three times the normal limit. When he had to work—to fly to San Francisco, for instance, to film Milk—he’d ask classmates to record lectures for him, then listen to them at night in his trailer. He graduated in two years with a degree in English and a GPA over 3.5. He wrote a novel as his honors thesis. As soon as Franco finished at UCLA, he moved to New York and enrolled in four of them: NYU for filmmaking, Columbia for fiction writing, Brooklyn College for fiction writing, and—just for good measure—a low-residency poetry program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. This fall, at 32, before he’s even done with all of these, he’ll be starting at Yale, for a Ph.D. in English, and also at the Rhode Island School of Design. According to everyone I spoke with, Franco has an unusually high metabolism for productivity. He seems to suffer, or to benefit, from the opposite of ADHD: a superhuman ability to focus that allows him to shuttle quickly between projects and to read happily in the midst of chaos. He hates wasting time—a category that includes, for him, sleeping. (He’ll get a few hours a night, then survive on catnaps, which he can fall into at any second, sometimes even in the middle of a conversation.) He doesn’t drink or smoke or—despite his convincingness in Pineapple Express—do drugs. He’s engineered his life so he can spend all his time either making or learning about art. Vince Jolivette, Franco’s roommate and general right-hand man (he runs Franco’s production company and plays bit parts in many of his films), met Franco in acting class in 1996. “Our teacher made us rehearse at least once a day outside of class,” he told me. “James would get eight or nine rehearsals. Everyone else would do, at most, one. If we didn’t rehearse, or if I had to cancel, he’d be pissed.” According to his mother, Betsy, Franco has been this way since he was born. In kindergarten, he wouldn’t just build regular little block towers—he’d build structures that used every single block in the playroom. At night, he would organize his Star Wars toys before he slept. When Franco was 4 years old, a friend of the family died. Betsy gave him the standard Mortality Talk: no longer with us, just a part of life—yes, but hopefully not for a very long time. Little James burst into tears. He was inconsolable. Eventually, he managed to choke out, between sobs, “But I don’t want to die! I have so much to do!” One of Franco’s most serious productivity advantages is his personal assistant, Dana Morgan. “I tease him when people say, ‘How do you do it?’ ” she tells me. “ ‘You don’t! You do all the things they know about, but you don’t do the normal human-being things.’ ” Morgan [...] makes sure he wakes up, gets dressed, eats. “I guarantee you he would not eat unless I fed him.”
And here are some excerpts from Rolling Stones' 2016 cover story "The Mystery of James Franco: Inside His Manic Days and Sleepless Nights" (I feel compelled to warn that the reference to "G_d's p_ssy" by Seth Rogan and Franco is possibly the absolute worst form of blasphemy I've ever heard!): The Cranston fight in Why Him? involves a ton of choreography performed by stunt doubles, which translates to a ton of sitting around for Franco. Since he hates wasting time, the result is an absurd tableau: As the stuntmen scuffle right in front of him, he sits cross-legged in a canvas folding chair, calmly sips coffee and reads not one but two different paperbacks at once – a Jackson Pollock biography and Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Franco takes in several pages from one, then switches to the other, paying no mind to the cacophony mere feet away. "On comedies, usually everybody's fucking around between takes, but that's not James' process," Hamburg says. "He's making use of every single moment. The other day he was in hair and makeup, typing on a laptop. I said, 'What are you doing, writing a novel?' He said, 'Yep.' And he actually was!"
In all my conversations with Franco, he seemed locked in – fully present to what I was saying, pressing me for clarification and nuance even when it was small talk. Other collaborators attest to his powers of concentration amid the feverish multitasking [...]"Other producers and directors would praise the talent in one breath and then tell you a story about him falling asleep between camera setups with some annotated copy of a Faulkner novel in his lap. But then he came to work, and he had both of his characters surrounded. He didn't let slip a line or a gesture."
If you're having trouble completing your projects you may want to use Franco's work ethic as motivation to sleep less, work longer but smarter too (i.e., Don't waste time. e.g., You can read while you're waiting on line at Trader Joe's.)
Approximately six years ago a black hardcover library copy of Henry Miller'sTropic of Cancer (above near upper left hand corner) was stolen from my "desk". In the lower right hand corner is a stack of manuscripts for, Yes Dear!, a children's book that I wrote that were waiting to be mailed. The book was never published, but an eerily similar book, Yes Day!, was published. Last Tuesday I left my tattered and copious notes filled copy of Miller's Plexus in the bathroom of the same establishment in Manhattan. I was planning to add additional points from Plexus to the second edition of The Allure of Nymphets. However, the novel was gone when I returned the next morning. The janitor said that he saw Plexus, but that he had left it in the john. I ordered a non-Prime used copy from Amazon\Free States Books today and until it arrives I will benefit from Miller’s 12 Commandments for Writers: 1. Work on one thing at a time until finished. 2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring." 3. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand. 4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time! 5. When you can't create you can work. 6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers. 7. Keep human! See people, go places [...]. 8. Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only. 9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. 10. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude. 11. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
12. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
I did a post on how The Tenants, the novel and the film, can be inspiring for writers. And I would add that, for artists and for creative types in general, Something in the Air (2012) [French: Après mai] is just as inspiring. The inspirational key appears to be that both films actually show that artists creating and discussing the strife that accompanies the push to create. In The Tenants, Lester and Bill are repeatedly shown typing while struggling to complete their novels. And in Something in the Air, Gilles is regularly shown painting, drawing and reading. However, I haven't been able to find any other films with artists as the protagonists that are actually shown creating anything i.e., that are inspiring. A far third on my list would be La Belle Noiseuse (1991) which is about Frenhofer, a former famous painter, who restarts a neglected project after discovering an exhilarating younger muse. But that's about it. What films have you found to be inspiring?
I'm convinced that the inventor(s) of the Undo button should receive a Nobel Prize. Can you imagine how much pain, sorrow and frustration the God given Undo button has prevented for writers? Join me in starting a petition to have the name(s) of the inventor(s) be nominated for the prestigious award. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from Undo's Wikipedia entry:
The Xerox PARCBravo text editor had an Undo command in 1974.[1]Behavioral Issues in the Use of Interactive Systems, a 1976 research report by Lance A. Miller and John C. Thomas of IBM, noted that "It would be quite useful to permit users to 'take back' at least the immediately preceding command (by issuing some special 'undo' command)."[2] The programmers at the Xerox PARC research center assigned the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Z to the undo command, which became a crucial feature of text editors and word processors in the personal computer era.[3]
Multi-level undo commands were introduced in the 1980s, allowing the users to take back a series of actions, not just the most recent one.[3]AtariWriter, a word-processing application introduced in 1982, featured undo. NewWord, another word-processing program released by NewStar in 1984, had an unerase command.[3] IBM's VisiWord also had an undelete command.
Seth Godin's The Dipmay be a helpful principle for writer's to follow to deal effectively with rejection. In general, the principle is that it's naive to think that one will have a linear rise to reaching the New York Times Bestseller list. Realistically, a writer may have to experience The Dip where rejection will be the norm; however, the longer one writes the better the chance that he will be published. In general, one will (eventually) see a direct correlation between effort and returns; however, like Ben Fountain, it may take up to 18 years. Here are some quotes from writers that may help you get through The Dip: Sylvia Plath, "I love my rejection slips. They show me I try." F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story."
Isaac Asimov, "Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil — but there is no way around them."
I recently submitted five poems via snail mail to The Paris Review . (Surprisingly, the editors don't accept online submissions.) And I received a rejection "letter" today. The "letter" is a bit disingenuous, because I doubt that the editors at the prestigious literary journal "regret" not being able to publish my verse. Kathryn A. Higgins, who interned at the journal, shared, "The Paris Review gets many unsolicited manuscripts every day and publishes I believe about one each year.
Depressing and yet encouraging — the work is definitely read, although not published." However, I'm proud to join the likes of other poets such as Charles Bukowski whom were never published in the The Paris Review. Here's one of the poems that I submitted:
Chaplin had a crush on 12-year-old Maybelle Fournier before he met Mildred Harris at 14 and at 16 his child she bore. And he was smitten with Hetty Kelly and fertilized Lillita when they were 15, after Casanova took the virginity of Nanetta and Marta; a true libertine. Seidel wrote in Ooga-Booga about maidens and Ducatis; only the best. “But this woman is young. We kiss. It’s almost incest.” The Pretty Little Liars were dressed in minis and panties that they flashed at the “fortysomething guy” before he hastily left the mall abashed. Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany’s 13-year-old Holiday Golightly married [a much] older man and no one opined she was crazy. At 15 she lived with a college jock whose eyes could have been blue. At 18 she said, “I can’t get excited by a man until he’s at least forty-two.” Californication’s Frank Moody had sex with his step-daughter who was 16. Bored to Death’s Ray was sad as the writer didn't sodomize the coed who was 16. While On the Road Neal Cassady of the 15-year-old Marylou said, “...so sweet, so young, hmm, ahh.” But it was Dean who took her to bed. In The Dark Side of Camelot Kennedy Sr. had sex with his 17-year-old caddie, while his wife, LBJ and Lady Bird listened to the action [over tea]. Frank Sinatra had the confidence to beseech an affair with 14-year-old Tuesday Weld who turned down the role of Kubrick’s Lolita before her meltdown that was uncompelled. And what did the 16-year-old write on her FB wall? It was her New Year’s resolution. “I’m going to fuck my history teacher!” At least she wasn't a damn freshman. Gossip Girl’s Dan asked, “Who doesn’t like school girls?” Case in point, take the homeless man, who whistled at the Catholic school girls. That was on the Grand Central platform. All the while, the Pope approves of the length of their skirts that are enticing to an ephebophile
A number of famous writers smoked while they wrote. For example, Moliere said, “Whoever lives without tobacco doesn’t deserve to live.” And Oscar Wilde related, “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”
And a studyconducted by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences found the writers may smoke because smoking may have the ability to "boost concentration and imagination". However, the researchers also found that "heavy smoking damages the brain overall".
Like Mark Twain and Freud, to possibly have the best of both worlds, you may want to consider giving up cigarettes like Andrey Vinelander, Ada's husband, who "had for years a two-pack smoker's fruity cough, but [...] when he spat a scarlet gob into his washbasin, he resolved to cut down on cigarettes and limit himself to tsigarki (cigarillos)."
...the Kaiser Medical Care Program, one of the nation's largest health care maintenance organizations, provided the answer in 1999 by publishing an excellent study on cigar smoking in the New England Journal of Medicine. They followed 16,228 never smokers and 1,546 cigar smokers - all men - for 25 years, and compared rates of several diseases among them. Cigar smokers were divided into those smoking less than 5 cigars a day (let's call them moderate), and 5 or more (heavy).
Compared with never smokers, heavy cigar smokers were shown to have increased risks for several smoking related diseases. They had higher risks for heart disease (Relative Risk, RR = 1.6, 95% confidence interval, CI = 1.2 – 2.0), emphysema (RR = 2.3, CI = 1.4 – 3.7), oral and pharynx cancer (RR = 7.2, CI = 2.4 – 21.2), and lung cancer (RR = 3.2, CI = 1.01 – 10.4).
The good news: Moderate cigar smokers had only a slightly higher risk for heart disease (RR = 1.2, CI = 1.03 – 1.4). Those smoking fewer than 5 cigars daily had no significantly increased risks for stroke, emphysema, oral/pharynx cancer or lung cancer.
The comparable health risks of smokeless tobacco (ST), cigars and cigarettes are shown below.
Thus, just like with most things, moderation appears to be the key. It's advisable to smoke less than or equal to five cigars per day and not 22 like Twain.
If you decide to smoke cigars while you write, I would additionally advise you to follow Mr. Bill's advice:
Beverages (e.g., espresso) are good accompaniment for a cigar
If you find yourself salivating...spit most of it out as opposed to swallowing it
Do not smoke a cigar as you would a cigarette. (i.e., Like Clinton, do not inhale.)
Take a puff every 30-90 seconds
Lastly, and arguable most importantly, never smoke on an empty stomach or you'll end up like the Berlin clerks in Nabokov's "Beneficence": [...] Berlin clerks were leaving their offices...in his eyes, the turbid nausea that comes when you smoke a bad cigar on an empty stomach[...]
If you're concerned about the effects of smoking cigars on your stamina, Micheal Jordan shared the following in the July/August 2005 issue of Cigar Aficionado, "Not many people know about it. When they read this, they'll know that each and every day for a home game, I smoked a cigar. I wanted that feeling of success, and relaxation. It's the most relaxing thing." That's correct, the greatest basketball player to, thus far, ever play the game smoked a cigar before every home game. And he mentioned that before the interview he worked out after he had a cigar.
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (1942) Featuring Phillies Cigars
If you're a starving artist, you may want to smoke Macanudo Ascots cigarillos (i.e., mini cigars). They're more expensive (e.g., $18.95/10) than machine made cigars like Phillies and Garcia yVegas, but they're less expensive than premium cigars, which can go for more than $18.95 for a single cigar.
(Phillies have a processed wrapper which according to Famous Smoke "are made from so-called sheet binder, a homogenized tobacco product in which large quantities of tobacco are broken down and reconstructed into a sheet of “tobacco paper,” as opposed to an actual tobacco leaf, which has been cured, fermented, and aged." Consequently, the Phillies "leafs" leaves an extremely strong tobacco smell on the hand(s). The Garcia yVegas are made with a natural leaf wrapper, but the tobacco may be mixed with paper and other chemicals.)
It's important that one "toast" his cigar before (fully) lighting it, which in many cases is very difficult to do especially with the winds coming off the Hudson and East rivers. A butane wind resistant cigar lighter is a more realistic lighter for use outdoors. (Cigar aficionados swear by butane lighters, which they claim doesn't harm the taste of the cigar.) But a regular lighter will suffice.
Ranald Macdonald of Boisdale London:
How to Light a Cigar via The Wall Street Journal
Interestingly, Kipling's "The Betrothed" is a poem about a poet who decides to cancel his marriage ceremony after his fiancée forces him to choose between tying the knot and smoking cigars.
Lastly, 111-year-old Richard Arvin Overton is the oldest verified surviving U.S. World War II veteran, he is the oldest living man in the United States, and he, counter-intuitively, smokes twelve (12) cigars per day.
Joyce Carol Oates reportedly said, "Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom."
Richard Ford reportedly said, "Writing is indeed often dark and lonely...."
But Hilma Wolitzer reportedly related, "Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared."
And in terms of having friends, Proust scorned friendships and according to Szeftel in Pniniad, other than attending a few soirees with other Cornell professors, Vera was enough of a friend for Nabokov.
