Category: Writing Life

The incomprobable A.M Homes had this great piece in the Financial Times about the incomprobable Chateau Marmont Hotel high above Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles…

Built in 1929 as LA’s first earthquake-proof apartments – modelled after Chateau Amboise in France’s Loire Valley, this “residence” hotel has quite a history – everybody who is anybody has stayed here. Infamous for being the spot where John Belushi died of a drug overdose and where long before that Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures, uttered the infamous and accurate phrase: “If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.” And they did, all of them: Howard Hughes lived in the penthouse, Elizabeth Taylor brought Montgomery Clift here after his car accident, James Dean hopped in through a window to audition for Rebel Without a Cause. More recently, the Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded most of an album while in residence.

The hotel is a well-known hideaway for both those who live here and those who come in from around the world, and with all that comes an oxymoron – privacy and exposure in equal doses. The rooms and public spaces are a safe haven for people who are perpetually over-exposed, the building’s architecture and decor like a heavy drape to cloak oneself. The hotel is a little bit of paradise, a perfect stage set for the fantasy narrative we tell ourselves about who we are and what we are doing in this place.

On the city itself…

Los Angeles is like a mistress who cannot be fully possessed – beautiful, elusive, ever changing; the most thrilling of seductions. Languid, laconic, especially in summer, the humid haze lulls me into a stupor of attraction and desire. It can be experienced in a seemingly inexhaustible number of ways – think of the noirish world of James Ellroy, the decadence of Bret Easton Ellis, the urbane insight of Mike Davis and Joan Didion. It is a city of many cities, vast in its sprawl with great depth of cultures and fast becoming an international destination for art, music, architecture.

(via LA Observed)

An interview with Sarah Vowell. Haven’t read it yet but looks interesting.

Perhaps you’re an aspiring writer with a book either in you, in process, or done. Then you’ve certainly heard the cry of "You need an editor," because ultimately, everybody does.

My friend Tara Weaver is a developmental editor which means she mostly looks at finished manuscripts and edits not just for mechanics but for style, narrative, literary merit and "saleability" to agents and publishers. She breaks it down in this interview.

Althought Tara and I haven’t worked together, I can say that I’ve met scores of her happy clients. I’d recommend her in a heartbeat.

My old friend Judy B has got a neat writing project going on. She’s set up a blog where she takes images, words, ideas from the ether and works it into a short story several times a week. It’s a remarkable feat of a kind of literary endurance I don’t have.

So I’m in L.A. And I’m so tired I can barely see. I need to go to bed. I have two talks to give tomorrow and I don’t feel ready. Not at all.

But I had to write something, just a little something. Because I miss it. I feel emptier when I don’t do it, feel like I’ve missed a meal or not stretched a muscle that groans from tightness and atrophy.

So this is my little something: I just wanted to say hello and that I wish I had more time to talk to you. I’mc going to try and carve some out before I leave on Tuesday but I can’t promise anything. Not with the way it’s looking. So for now, let me just say that I miss you all a lot and I’ve got a lot I want to share. I hope you’ll hang loose for a few days until I can come back.

My cousin was visiting last week and asked “Now that your book is done, what are you writing?” I got very nervous when he asked me because I didn’t have a ready answer. I hadn’t started on the proposal for my second book and no editor was holding a deadline over my head. What was I writing? You have to say something. Or at least I felt like I had to say something. That is what I tell my clients and what I say when I speak to groups. Always be writing something. It’s the only way to keep yourself honest.

In that spirit and because I promised in the last ‘Shards’ that my writing here would more closely tie to my writing in the real world. I’m going to use WTS to keep tabs on writing ideas and projects. By posting about them every so often, I’m hoping it’ll keep me straight about working my way through them.

What I’m Writing

1) An essay called “Why I Don’t See Live Music”

Where it could go: San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly.

2) A reported piece on MP3 blogs

Where it could go: Paste Magazine

3) A reported piece on author blogs

Location: Poets & Writers

4) An essay on unconventional book groups

Location: Pages Magazine

5) A series on the history of the streets of San Francisco

Location: SFist has asked for it. I need to do it.

6) Another ‘Light’ or ‘Tool’ piece for The Believer

Location: The Believer

7) Book and movie reviews:

Location: San Francisco Chronicle, SF Station.

I know it’s an ambitious list. Trying to aim big.

Kristin of Booboolina fame has sent me several links to cool paper and stationary stores, in honor of my new letter writing habbit. Why? Because she rocks.

Today’s letter: I think I’m going to write to Matt Nathanson whom Suzan and I saw in concert last night. Matt’s one of those musicians who doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary (singer/songwriter, white guy with a guitar, that thing) but does it about 10 times better than most others in his genre. We batted around "why?" for a while and came up with 1) his voice is not that of an ordinary folk troubadour, soulful but politely so, but rather a full healthy rasp like Bruce Springsteen or hell, Neil Diamond. Anything he puts over gets elevated by the passion and the sincerity his voice gives it. 2) Matt knows he’s a white guy with a guitar who used to have a mullet and acne and has a great time playing with it.

I first heard one half of one song he did at a private party seven years ago in L.A.  I liked him when we chatted afterward and bought his CD to be nice. I didn’t know his music at all. It wore out after I listened to about 5,000 times and loaned it to everyone I knew.

I heard a few years ago that he had moved to San Francisco to be closer to his girlfriend-now-wife Bridget. I wrote him a letter when I got here and told him of our abstract history together. He wrote back and invited me to his next show. I’ve seen him three times since I got her and will whenever I can.

Check him out. You won’t be disapointed.

For some time now, I’ve felt the urge to write a letter. I can’t exactly say why but vaguely I can speculate that I sometimes find writing on a computer a bit cold, too easy to erase all traces of myself. I dig the gentle scratching of a pen against paper, crossing out (visual indicators of my thoughts wrestling with each other), and the removal of guilt around buying really cool stationary. Plus, my friend Eli recently told me that his grandfather, a retired law professor, has been corresponding with Supreme Court Justices for nearly four decades. My friend Arthur Bradford became pals with David Sedaris when they started sending funny letters to each other. I think that’s neat.

So on Sunday I made a quick list of all the bright, interesting people I’ve met during the short history of Central Booking, dug up some old stationary and scrawled out a letter asking one of them if we could write each other every so often. I might make this some sort of ritual, as I’ve been thinking about how much fun it was since then, and telling everyone I run into "I wrote a letter!."