By the way, I completely forgot that I was going to turn this into a music blog and post music I’ve been listening to. So here’s a tune I’ve liked a lot lately — Metric’s last album was kind of boring, I thought, but in this new one, they focus more on Emily Haines, and the whole album is much better for it (her solo album is also great, too, if you’ve never heard it). Anyway, I guess this is their first single, and I pretty much agree — it caught my attention on the first listen-through and I’ve been enjoying it since.

Also Beatles > Rolling Stones. Sorry.

Just wanted to update you with a few things going on with me. First of all, I think I’ve told pretty much everyone I know already, but just in case you haven’t heard, last Sunday I ran the Ravenswood Run here in Chicago. Which means I ran a 5k, which is 3.1 miles. Let me repeat that: I *ran* a 5k, as in I started running (well, jogging, but still, I made the running motions in a steady pace) in one place, and I didn’t stop running until 3.1 miles later.

I don’t want to get too misty here (though I won’t lie: I did get a little misty right after I finished the race), but this is a pretty big deal. I’ve never been a physical guy — if skinny is New York and “overweight” is somewhere in the beautiful vistas of Denver, I’ve been hanging out on the California coast most of my life, for various reasons. And for more various reasons which I won’t go into too deeply here, though maybe someday I’ll tell you all of them, I’ve decided to change that: since January, I’ve been working out and eating better and just generally taking care of myself much more. This has hardly reached its climax (I’ve got a lot more of the gameplan to carry out), but it has reached a definite first peak with this 5k thing. Back in January, and indeed, back since high school, I’d have been hard pressed to run a quarter mile without falling over in a sweaty heap. Nowadays, after lifting some very heavy weights and putting some major treadmill miles under my feet, I’m routinely finishing off three miles, and am now aiming to try and do it in just a half hour, and then go for a 10k after that. And who knows — I may eventually try running a half marathon. It seems impossible to me now, running for that long without stopping, but back in January, running three miles seemed impossible, and now I do that whenever I want. Anyway, just wanted to let you know, blog readers. Stay tuned for more.

Also, Brigwyn is a World of Warcraft blogger who runs a site called The Hunting Lodge, and he kindly asked me to answer twenty questions, some of them about Warcraft, and some about me personally (and even one about this site — boy it was crazy going back through the archives of some of the things I’ve written here). I answered them for him, and you can read my answers and his questions over on his blog right now. I don’t know if I reveal any major secrets, but anyone who’s interested in me might find it a good read. Also, Brigwyn is running this amazing auction for the great Child’s Play charity, and in there, you’ll find the chance to bid on a guest spot on the WoW Insider Show, which is a podcast that I help run. In other words, if you’ve got some money burning in your pocket that you’d really like to donate to a worthy charity, you could do a lot worse than spending it on a chance to chat with me and a few friends on a Saturday afternoon about World of Warcraft. In fact, even if you’re not a WoW fan, you should probably bid on it — it would be really funny to have someone on the show who’d never played the game, just loved doing great things for kids.

And finally, assuming that you’re interested in interviews of me, Stompalina, who is another figure around the WoW community, will be hosting me live on her Rawrcast podcast this Saturday afternoon. I don’t want to ruin anything she’s got planned, but believe me when I tell you that it will be wild and crazy and strange things will happen.

And finally, speaking of podcasts, stay tuned for episode two of The Modern World, coming to this very site next Sunday afternoon. I’ve lined up two really good interviews with two people I’ve really been impressed by lately, and I think you’ll enjoy them both.

Here is the first episode of my brand new podcast. Some of you may have heard my little stint on The Mike Schramm Shoe, which I considered a rousing success, but it was kind of like the first batch of cookies you make from scratch — they are good (they’re cookies, after all), but you realize that there are a few things you could have done with the recipe that you didn’t, and one of the trays was in for just the exact right amount of time and you could have done them all like that, and you realize that if you just added some walnuts, they’d be really excellent. So this is my second batch of cookies. I’m calling it “The Modern World.”

It’s currently seeking a home, actually — if you have (or even better, run) a site that often hosts podcasts about interesting technology and want me to do a podcast like this for you every week, let me know. Pay wouldn’t really be required — though it would be nice, I’d really just like to have a nice chunk of bandwidth to share these on, and a built-in RSS feed that I could easily post into iTunes. Email me and let me know if you have any ideas. Meanwhile, big thanks to my friend Josh Gray, who has always been there for me every time I’ve come up with wild Internet-based ideas and then realized I don’t know anything about how to make them a reality.

Show notes

-While @aplusk and CNN were fighting over who would get to a million Twitter followers first, the folks over at 4chan were aiming to make @basementdad famous instead.

-Yahoo is finally shutting down Geocities. Which makes most web developers cheer, but I think the beginning of the “anyone can do it” Internet deserves a more fond farewell.

-The video above is assembled by a guy named Michael Gregory, with help from his brothers (and sister-in-law). Big thank you also specifically to Andrew Rose Gregory, who helped me get the interview together.

-Finally, here is the must-watch Elevated demo, which is a procedurally-generated demo, all contained within just 4k. Thanks to Inigo “IQ” Quilez from RGBA for speaking with me.

Listen to the show: Click here to download the mp3. iTunes and RSS feeds are coming soon.

I’m going to say that you can expect a new show here every Sunday, though as I learned this week, coordinating interviews on a deadline is a tough thing to do (especially when people have no idea who you are). But I will do what I can to get these out weekly. And as I said in the show, they’ll be a little shorter (this one clocks in around 50 minutes or so), and hopefully will have less of me talking and more of interesting people speaking passionately about what they do. Should be fun, thanks for listening, and tell your friends!

 

 The Modern World episode 1: Play Now | Play in Popup

Last week, I was invited onto a panel at Shimer College, where my friend works in the Admissions office. It was supposed to be about careers, and I thought that I’d be mostly talking about being a freelancer and how to make it as a writer. But it turned out that I was on a panel with a bunch of alumni, and the whole thing was much more general — instead of talking about clips and pitching, we talked about resumes and job interviews.

But I had asked my Twitter and Facebook friends if they wanted to see video of me there, and there was a lot of interest. So, since the actual event didn’t apply much to freelance writing (and there was no real good chance to get video — you guys would have been bored by it if I’d gotten it), but I’d already done a lot of thinking about how I got to where I am, I figured I’d write these up. If you’re interested in working professionally as a writer, maybe these will help.

1. Write! I got to see Warren Ellis speak at the Chicago Comiccon last year, and he put this advice (which I’ve heard many, many times before from lots of people) in the most relevant form: “I’ve always believed that writers write. If you’re a guy who calls himself a writer but who sits around in his underwear watching TV all day and wondering what themes to include in a novel, you’re not a writer. You’re a guy who sits around watching TV all day.” If you want to be a writer, you have to write, a lot. And of course it’s easier than ever to get published, even if you aren’t paid: start a blogspot blog, and start writing, every single day. That may sound easy, but it’s really not: you’d be very surprised how many blogspot blogs consist of one post: “Hello and welcome! I’ve just started this blog, and there will be more posts here soon!” The truth is, for the first year or so of any blog you start, no one will read it, you’ll get no comments, and it’ll feel pretty pointless. But the most important thing is to be consistent and constant. Write every day, no matter what it’s about, and you’ll learn to be a better writer.

2. Work for free, but not for too long. The worst advice I ever got, coming out of college, was this: “never work for free.” The person who gave it to me had good intentions — they believed that my work was valuable, and that I shouldn’t ever give it away. And they were right: my work and my time are valuable, and I shouldn’t spend either one frivolously. But saying “never work for free” locks too many doors — especially with the economy the way it is, and especially because, when you’re first starting out, editors will doubt your conviction unless you show them that you can put in a day’s work or deliver x number of words on deadline, working for free is often more than worth it, whether it’s working an internship at a local paper or publishing a weekly column on an unpaid blog. In terms of getting your name and reputation out there, in terms of the experience of meeting a deadline for a bigger team, and in terms of getting clips with your name on them, working for free is often a necessity. You don’t have to do it for too long — once you’ve proven yourself and have a few solid clips in hand, then you can start asking for money. But don’t take the advice I got and say you’ll never work for free, because not all payment is monetary.

3. Rejection means nothing. This is actually solid advice for any job, and I did say this on the panel: rejection should mean absolutely nothing to you. I was just listening to Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcom in the Middle who’s now doing a great job acting on AMC’s Breaking Bad) on Adam Corolla’s podcast, and he said that before Malcolm in the Middle, he got denied two different acting jobs that he was really counting on. He was really bummed out, because he’d really hoped for something big from those two, and they hadn’t chosen him. But not a day later, he got invited in to audition again, and that third one was Malcolm in the Middle, which was on TV for seven years and made him a millionaire. We work ourselves up with big auditions or big job interviews, thinking that “if I don’t get this job or land this gig, that’ll be it.” But it never is — there’s always another opportunity around the corner, or something else that will come along and be even more perfect.

4. Deliver. This is good advice for almost any job as well, though one of the things I like about writing is that it’s not that hard to be really good. Most editors are looking for one thing: a properly formatted, correctly spelled piece with the right amount of words in the right order before the deadline. That’s it. They’re usually not looking for Shakespeare or Joyce, though there’s no harm in aiming to be one of those guys. All they’re looking for is someone who can do what they say they can do, someone who they can turn to and say “2000 words on this by Friday,” and then have it be so. It’s even OK if they say that and then you say “I can do 1500 by Friday, but for 2000, I’ll need Saturday,” as long as come Saturday, you’ve got the 2000 all set. Originally, I wanted to be in radio, and I still kind of do, but the problem is in radio your job depends on so many different people — the program director who’s breathing down your neck, the ad sales people who have to get you the money to stay on the air, and even the engineer in overalls who has to keep the transmitter running. When you’re a writer, your job depends on you. Sure, an editor might make changes to what you write, and there are still usually ad sales people lurking around somewhere making sure there’s money in the payroll account. But when you have to turn in 2000 words, those 2000 words come from your head, and the only one responsible for making sure they appear on paper by the time they’re supposed to is you. Making that happen is all that’s really required to be a solid writer, and once an editor sees you can do that, then you’ll become such a valuable asset that they’ll throw work at you.

5. Endure. And this, I personally believe, is the most important thing about making it in any profession, especially something creative like writing. The way that you get successful at something is usually just that you do it for a long time. There are actors in Hollywood who’ve been doing commercials and training videos for twenty years, and then get one movie part that turns them into a big success. Likewise, writing is a “keep at it” job — there are almost no overnight successes, and even most first-time novel writers who make it big have been working in newspapers and magazines or just writing on their own for years ahead of time. They way you become really successful is just to be the guy still doing whatever it is you want to do when everyone else decides it’s not worth it any more. Sure, it takes talent, and you can’t stick to doing something for a really long time unless you have a strong conviction or a passion about doing it. But the truth is that the more you write, the better you get, the more people see your work, the more editors hear you name, and the more success you have. Too many people sit down to write, try it out for a while, and then decide there’s something else they’d rather do with that time. If you’re one of the crazy ones who keeps writing even after that feeling passes, then you’re on the right path.