People are not machines. This may seem obvious on paper, but it’s a bit harder to discern when applied to real life. Many people feel they are put on this Earth to do one very specific thing, and every morning they set to doing that one thing over and over, again and again, until they whither and die. If they’re an accountant, they account. If they’re a teacher, they teach. Like machines, these people feel the only have one task and that is the only task they set to do. While this method of living may work in some careers, it is a recipe for disaster, or at the very least lethargy, when it comes to the creative arts. Whether you’re a writer, artist, poet, musician, filmmaker, or working under some experimental title I don’t even know exists just yet, variety is key to your success, and not just in the work you do. Let me explain:
A toaster’s sole purpose is to toast, and in order to do this it needs electricity. You can toast anything you can fit into your toaster, but virtually every toaster on this planet only functions if it has power provided through an electrical. There is no variety in the diet of your toaster. It needs one thing and one thing only to work. If you try and run your toaster of something else, like water or wind, you’re not going to toast anything anytime soon.
People are not toasters, or any other machine for that matter because we cannot rely on a single source of any kind to survive. We need a variety of foods in order to gain energy, just like we need a variety of influences in order to feel consistently inspired. We all have our go-to foods and sources of inspiration, but if we only rely on those things our palettes will tell us they have grown stale in a very short matter of time.
The same idea also applies to writing: If all you do day in and day out is write about the same thing the same way your creative drive will stall long before it should. If you’re a pop-punk critic who only listens to pop-punk your ability to denote the small differences between various artists will abound, but after several months or maybe even years you will find yourself becoming increasingly burnt out on the genre that once felt like your musical home. This is because all great writing, and by that I mean everything from criticism to novel writing, thrives on original ideas born from a variety of life experiences. Writing solely about pop-punk is perfectly acceptable, but if the only thing you’re putting into your ears is the sound of three chords and gang vocals your mind and body will begin to hate the idea of continuing to rely on that musical diet. You brain can only take so much of the same input before it stops responding as it typically would, and the only way to prevent that from happening is by diversifying your musical and/or entertainment palette.
It’s important to remember when you find yourself stuck on a creative plateau that literally every other person who has tried to create something from nothing has found themselves in the exact same place. Creativity stems from original thought, and those are born from your personal experiences, including all the media you consume throughout the day. Your creativity needs nourishment just like your body, and it can only survive on a single source for so long before it begins to breakdown. The responsibility to prevent that from happening rests entirely on your shoulders, and that is something you should never take for granted. We live in a big, beautiful world of creativity, and you owe it to your own career to experience as much of it as possible. So next time you’re feeling down, stuck, or otherwise lethargic toward your passion, step outside your comfort zone and take in something radically different. Truth be told you might not like what you find, but even if that is the case you will walk away with a new influence and a bevy of new ideas born out of what you have just experience. In those ideas you might find your next big move, and if not at least you’ll have a new story to share with those around you.
Life is short. Take my advice and experience as much of it as possible.
If you’re interviewing bands, reviewing albums, or posting news on your blog, you need to have some sort of time-stamp on your piece.
See, other writers make posts and articles about bands and albums, and they might come across your website during their research. If your article has no time stamp, however, it’s damn near worthless.
If you interviewed someone but failed to include what YEAR the interview was conducted, how could I ever cite your article as a source? When did the interview take place? Last week? Last year? 2012?
Dates are important. When strung together, they create a narrative. The same band involved in two robberies in the same year – that’s a story. A band hinting at a new album on Facebook two years before the label sends a press release is news-worthy because of dates.
Think about it – if a band announces they kicked out their guitar player, and you have an interview from two years prior with that guitar player, you can now add something EXCLUSIVE to your news post. While everyone else is just reposting a press release, you’re able to say, “when I talked to that guitar player in 2013, she had this to say…"
Also, site owners: make sure you use the whole date. There was a time recently when Alternative Press didn’t include the YEAR in their published date. Just month and day. The year is pretty important when talking about something big, like say, former As I Lay dying vocalist Tim Lambesis doing an interview about his murder-for-hire trial (that was published in 2014, in case you were wondering). There’s no reason why any writer should have to email an outlet and ask, “hey, when was this published?”
This is music-blogging 101, folks. It ain’t rocket surgery.
So when you’re hacking away at your WordPress theme or whatever for your music blog, be sure to keep the time-stamps in there. They’re worth it not just for future reference, but for preserving the history of all this music media we work on every single day.
Seth Werkheiser is the quiz master of metal trivia at Skulltoaster. He’s also the founder of some music sites you may have heard of, including Noise Creep (2009) + Buzzgrinder (2001). He’s anti-Facebook, anti-clickbait, and anti-growth hacking. You should most definitely follow him on Twitter. Yes, right now.
They say best way to learn about the realities of life in the music business is by talking to the people who spend each and every day working in music, so that’s what we did for this piece of content. The following tips and tricks were pulled from a music writing group on Facebook that boasts over 1200 members who write about everything from punk to hip-hop, grunge, metal, pop, country, and any niche genre in between. We posed a question to the group earlier this week seeking the best single piece of advice anyone had received, and we’ve collected our favorite replies for you to enjoy:
“Find your own voice.” – M.J. Rawls, Mind Equals Blown
“Take risks and stop worrying what others think (within reason)” – Jordan Mohler, Kill The Music
“Sometimes you have to say no to the “maybes” so you have time to say yes to the “sure things.” – Josh Hammond, PunkOut
“Don’t ask anything you can Google.” – Alyson Stokes, Alternative Press
“Musicians are people, not gods.” – Joseph Tucker, The LP Collective
“Be true to yourself. If you don’t like something, either write nothing, or be ready for backlash.” – Alison Toon, Toon’s Tunes
“Don’t just write about one genre or you’ll get pigeon-holed.” – Sareth Ney, Examiner
“Ride the highs and remember them during the lows.” – Bill Knowlton, WeLoveMetal
“Give honest feedback. Artists hate being told "it’s so good!” They want constructive criticism so they have a direction to grow in.” – Jessie Frary, Vinyl Mag
“Be consistent. If you want to succeed, especially if you own your own press outlet, you have to commit yourself to keeping a constant flow of content releasing.” – Joshua Weidling, Digital Tour Bus
“Write about music that you think is worth writing about” – Molly Louise Hudelson, Circles & Soundwaves
“Be patient. This is something I still struggle with but sometimes you just have to be patient with things, whether its a press request, waiting on a writer to finish up a piece, or anything else.” – James Boss, Babetalk
“Don’t pander. The very first time I posted something on the Babetalk Facebook, I was trying too hard to be cool and bouncy. I was trying too hard to “internet speak” (I called All Time Low “pop punkers”). And when we started sharing the post, people in our target Facebook groups definitely took notice. It made me realize that your audience is smarter than you think, and if you’re just honest in your writing and engaging naturally, your audience will come, you don’t have to pander to them to bait them in.” – Carly Rios, Babetalk
“Do it for yourself and have fun. Don’t do this just to be “cool” or “to get hot guys or hot chicks”. That sounds so fucking stupid, but you would be surprised by the amount of people who have that mentality after they interview a few bigger bands like they are celebrities or gods.” – Patrick Walford, Rock The Walls / idobi
“Just do it. Thanks, Shia” – Kyle Gaddo, Save/Continue
Working in the music industry has provided me with the opportunity to attend numerous industry conferences, panels, and events. I’ve spoken at some places, but more often than not I’ve sat in the same crowd alongside many of you, hoping something would be said on stage that related to my career. What I have found however, is that the vast majority of music conferences do not put much time or effort into engaging music writers, despite the fact a good portion of these events are attended and covered by people currently trying their best to make a living with words. I think a change is needed, and I’m writing this today to see if I am alone in my belief.
I believe we need a yearly music blogger conference. This event would start as a one day gathering, but in time it would ideally become something much bigger. The day would be filled with panels, workshops, and a keynote from an influential industry figure, as well as a few performances to cap off the night. I have brainstormed a few topics/events to provide a better idea of what might be covered at this event:
Monetization Is The New Selling Out: Making money without betraying your readers
How To Handle Controversy: A beginner’s guide to breaking news, checking facts, and telling the whole story.
You’re Here To Work: Maintaining professionalism at shows and events
Tour Sponsorships: What are they, what do they entail, and why should I care?
Embracing Video: A crash course in creating great visual content
Branding: The Dos and Don’ts of Marketing Your Blog
Keeping Exclusives Exclusive: Making the most of every premiere you get
Conflicts Of Interest: How to keep your projects separate, yet equal
It’s Bigger Than Me: Building a community with your readers
Stop Asking Bad Questions: Interviews tips, tricks, and pitfalls
These are literally the first things that came to mind, but I think it provides a good range of topics and possibilities. Given the number of controversies that have arisen in 2015 alone, the need for a formal workshop on properly reporting such stories is very much needed in blogging right now. Likewise, I think we all have seen a blogger who was less than professionals when covering a live event. Maybe they want a selfie with the band, or maybe they blow off interviews to catch their favorite artists’ set. Whatever the case, we need to try and stop that trend before a select few make us all look like fools.
Having given almost a decade of my life to music blogging, nothing bothers me more than when people treat my chosen career path as a hobby or something to be laughed at. I have dedicated myself fully to this craft for a very long time, and though I am still not where I want to be I take great pride in everything I have accomplished. I know many of you do as well, which is why we should find a way to come together as an industry and push for real, meaningful change. I know not everyone who needs a conference like this will attend, but simply have the option available to people would be better than what we have now, which is essentially nothing.
I understand that the beauty of blogging stems from its ability to give anyone a voice, but as music writers trying to make a living with our words we need to hold ourselves and our peers to higher standards than simply doing whatever makes us happy. If we want people to take us seriously then we need to be serious about what is happening in our industry as well as what we as individuals are doing to make it better. So far, I see a lot of people complaining that things need to change, but no one is actually doing anything to make a difference. I want to change that, but only if you are willing to help me make it happen.
So tell me, what do you think?
James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
Every music writer today, regardless of experience or genre preference, deals with stress on a daily basis. Whether you’re fretting over the quality of content posted, the happiness of your fellow staff, the happiness of your readers, or worried you may have simply not posted enough, there seems to always be something worth losing sleep over. At least, that is how we see things. Writers, just like site owners, have a big problem with internalizing every single thing that could possibly frustrate them and never taking the time to actually deal with any of it. We just keep going, day in and day out, with the hope that one day we will feel the increasingly heavy weights on our shoulders being lifted off. We don’t know when that will happen, and most probably couldn’t tell you a single scenario where they would actually be able to stop stressing for good, but it’s a lie that has helped countless creatives push through and it will continue to serve its purpose for the foreseeable future.
Having spent nearly a decade of my life writing, it wasn’t until I had already put five years of hard work in that I really began to notice the impact stress and its constant presence in my life took on everyday existence. My brain had rewired itself over time to revolve around the internet and what I saw as the time of day when posting ‘must’ happen. The first thing I thought about when I woke up was whether or not any headlines had broke while I was asleep, and the last thing I did before bed last night was a scroll through my RSS feed for any late breaking headlines. “If I could just be on top of the next story,” I thought. “Then I will be satisfied.”
What I eventually realized, and what I still struggle with today, is that there is no true end point for creative people. Our drive to create content the world enjoys will never be satiated with a single post, or even a single day’s worth of great content. Our pursuit is one that seeks for to create high quality work over an extended period of time, and no amount of day-to-day success is ever going to subdue that desire. The best we can do is learn to live with our drive rather than letting it rule over us, and that begins by learning to relax. I know that may sound like a foreign concept to many writers reading this now, but it’s true. If you cannot relax then you cannot create your best work, and if that happens that constant itch to create something truly great will slowly begin to eat you alive.
Before your passion gets the best of you, use the tips below to shake off the stress of creating content and find what I assume I probably some much needed rest. You deserve it.
It’s never a bad idea to have a plan. In fact, it’s a damn good idea.
I wish someone had told me when I was just starting out that life as a writer is 100x easier when you have a plan. More specifically, life is easier when you have a content calendar that outlines every major feature and piece of content you will need to create in the next several weeks, as well as the deadlines to complete each item. Doing this periodically makes it easier to plan your day-to-day work load, which in turn lowers your stress. You know what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and exactly how much time you have to get everything accomplished. For added help, I suggest making daily to-do lists as well. I use Asana to make mine, but you can use whatever works best for you.
Even if you have a plan, be careful not to take on too much at once.
When I first started making calendars and to-do lists I thought it best to try and see just how many things I could accomplish on any given day. I would make lists with twenty or thirty tasks, and anything left incomplete at the end of the day would be the first thing tackled the following morning. What I didn’t realize at the time, and what I hope to save you from now, is that leaving so many tasks unfinished made it impossible for my mind to fully shutdown at the end of the day. Whenever I wanted to get up from my desk and walk away I would see them, mocking me from the page, and I would feel as if I had somehow failed myself by leaving them incomplete. Sometimes this forced me to stay up late, cranking away on subpar content because at least it would be completed, but other times I would walk away online to find the need to do more work keeping me up at night. No one was telling me I wasn’t doing enough other than myself, but that was the only voice I needed to hear to feel inadequate.
Educate yourself
The more you know about how the independent music and digital journalism world works, the better prepared you’ll be to conquer it. This is the entire reason the Haulix blog you’re reading right now even exists: Education. Every member of our staff learned about the industry through trial and error. No one held our hand or showed us what to do. We simply woke up every morning and dedicated ourselves to improving what little skills we had and in time things slowly began to improve. Looking back now we realize that was the hard way to learn about life in music, so we created this blog to make life in music easier for future generations.
Step away from the laptop. Put down your phone. Walk outside. Breathe.
Chronic stress is the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period over which an individual perceives he or she has no control. This is a good way to explain how most writers feel in the digital age. We know we can create great content given time and space, but there is a constant demand from the world at large to produce more and more content and it’s easy to perceive that cry for posts as a call that must be answered. After all, it’s because of our readers that we creatives have a purpose in the first place.
Before you can give your readers what they need you must first care for your own well being. Planning and organizing will get you far, but in order to truly shake off the stress and worries of life in writing you need to disconnect. You need to close your laptop, put your phone in ‘airplane’ mode, step outside, and breathe. Take a walk, take a nap, catch a movie (that you don’t review), or call a friend and catch up. Find something that has nothing to do with your writing and let it be the only thing you focus on for a period of time. Your mind needs time to rest, just like your body. You can only push yourself so far before your work will begin to suffer, and if you continue to push beyond that point things will only go from bad to worse for everyone involved. Trust me – it’s okay to unplug. Just do it.
James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
Let me preface this article with two caveats. Firstly, there’s no right way to conduct an interview (aside from maintaining some professionalism). Everyone develops their own style, and what’s right for me might not be right for you. My style tends toward the conversational. It’s not that I don’t prep questions. I actually prep a lot of them, more than I could reasonably ask. But I treat those questions as guideposts – they’re places to stop at and explore along the journey of a conversation, not turn-by-turn directions to be followed in strict linear sequence. Sure, I make certain to hit on the points I want to hit on, but I don’t worry too much about how I’m going to get to them – if things go as planned, I generally find I wind up in those places without really having to try. If it’s interesting to you, it will be interesting to your readers, so trust your gut and go off-script if you’re onto something interesting.
That leads to the second caveat: I abhor email interviews, because they don’t offer any interplay. (I don’t even like phoners; so much is said in body language). They’re craft, not art; they’re classical, not jazz. Useful for gathering basic info, to be sure, but no fun, and your readers will snuff it out in a heartbeat. The original premise of this article was going to spend time on how to make the most of an email interview, but it turns out I don’t really have any good advice. You have Google, you have Facebook and Twitter, you know how to find whatever info about a band is already out there – I don’t need to tell you how to do your homework. Just try and ask the questions you’re genuinely curious about, in a way that lets the interviewee elaborate, and trust that your readers want to know the same things you do.
Email interviews aside, the best tip I can give for garnering a revealing interview is to let your subject do just that: reveal themselves. Give them room to answer; let them ramble. Let your interviewee follow their own train of thought – if they briefly touch on something that merits further exploration, make a mental note to come back to what they said, but don’t interrupt their flow.
If there’s a pause in the conversation, I try to hold back, to let the moment breathe for a second rather than jumping in with another question right away. In doing so, I’m creating silence. Why? Because silence is awkward, and that awkwardness is something you can use to your advantage. Nobody likes awkward silences, and if you don’t fill that silence, odds are your subject will, often with things they would never have said otherwise. I’ve frequently found that the best, most interesting answer is the one that comes after the stock answer, when my interviewee suddenly finds themselves unexpectedly digging for something more to say. Sometimes, they even surprise themselves with what they reveal in those moments. My best interviews are the ones where I manage to make my subject feel comfortable while simultaneously keeping them ever-so-slightly off-balance. It’s definitely not a technique that comes easily or naturally, but it’s well worth practicing.
Yes, practicing. Especially when you’re first starting out, take every interview opportunity you can get, and pursure the ones that aren’t presented. There are a million bands out there dying to have someone talk to them, even if the results are just going to end up on a personal blog that nobody but their friends will ever see. There are plenty of times I’ve interviewed bands whose music I don’t care for, or about. Remember, your interview isn’t about the music, not really; it’s about the musician, and people are endlessly fascinating. Every artist has a story to sell, but there’s always a story behind the story, too. That’s the part that I find compelling, and it’s the part your readers will find compelling. The facts are important, sure, but – unless you’re getting an exclusive – every interview that artist does will contain those same facts. It’s the other stuff that will make your interview worth reading. I love the challenge of trying to unearth that hidden substory. The more interviews I do, the better I get at it.
There are even occasions where I’ve interviewed bands whose music I haven’t even heard. Usually, that involves a publicist throwing one of their baby bands in front of me while I’m waiting on the artist I’m scheduled to chat with. It’s a dirty trick, but it happens. Instead of treating it as an annoyance, treat it as an opportunity to practice your skills. Even if it goes terribly, what have you got to lose aside from a couple minutes of your day? Also, it will keep you in said publicist’s good graces, which is always a plus, because access is everything.
When you’re done, take the time to listen back to your interviews. There’s nothing I hate more than transcribing a long audio interview, and yet it’s a vitally important part of my process, because it forces me to rehear as a third party what I originally heard as a participant. Generally, I give one listen while I transcribe; a second listen after transcription is done, to make sure that what I’ve written is accurate and captures the context and mood in which things were said; and then, finally, a full read through of the written interview to ensure for clarity and flow. Remember, it’s not just about getting a good interview, it’s about writing a good interview, and those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Throughout, I’m not just listening for accuracy. I’m paying attention to what I should have asked but didn’t; noting where I jumped in when I should have let my subject talk; and listening for things I should have keyed in on for follow-up, but missed. Every mistake is a learning opportunity, a chance for me to do better the next time out. Because ultimately, interviewing is like any other skill – the more you work at it, the better you will be.
Jesse Richman is a contributor to PropertyOfZack and someone you generally need to know in the alternative music scene. If you would like to learn more about Jesse’s efforts, be sure to follow him on Twitter.
Hey there, everyone! Over the weekend we fell in love with a post on Medium from writer James Altucher. As with everything on the internet, we were neither the first nor last to discover the page in question, but it was a rewarding find for us nonetheless. As much as we like to pretend we know a lot about writing, we are always excited to learn tips and tricks from others in our field. Altucher has prepared a great set of guidelines to better creativity, and we thought it was something we absolutely had to share with you. Enjoy.
Back in college, Sanket and I would hang out in bars and try to talk to women but I was horrible at it. Nobody would talk to me for more than thirty seconds and every woman would laugh at all his jokes for what seemed like hours. Even decades later I think they are still laughing at his jokes. One time he turned to me, “the girls are getting bored when you talk. Your stories go on too long. From now on, you need to leave out every other sentence when you tell a story.” We were both undergrads in Computer Science. I haven’t seen him since but that’s the most important writing (and communicating) advice I ever got.
33 other tips to be a better writer.
– Write whatever you want. Then take out the first paragraph and last paragraph. Here’s the funny thing about this rule. It’s sort of like knowing the future. You still can’t change it. In other words, even if you know this rule and write the article, the article will still be better if you take out the first paragraph and the last paragraph.
– Take a huge bowel movement every day. And you won’t see that on any other list on how to be a better writer. If your body doesn’t flow then your brain won’t flow. Eat more fruit if you have to.
– Bleed in the first line. We’re all human. A computer can win Jeopardy but still not write a novel. You want people to relate to you, then you have to be human. Penelope Trunk started a post a few weeks ago: “I smashed a lamp over my head. There was blood everywhere. And glass. And I took a picture.” That’s real bleeding. My wife recently put up a post where the first line was so painful she had to take it down. Too many people were crying.
– Don’t ask for permission. In other words, never say “in my opinion” (or worse “IMHO”). We know it’s your opinion. You’re writing it.
– Write a lot. I spent the entire 90s writing bad fiction. 5 bad novels. Dozens of bad stories. But I learned to handle massive rejection. And how to put two words together. In my head, I won the pulitzer prize. But in my hand, over 100 rejection letters.
– Read a lot. You can’t write without first reading. A lot. When I was writing five bad novels in a row I would read all day long whenever I wasn’t writing (I had a job as a programmer, which I would do for about five minutes a day because my programs all worked and I just had to “maintain” them). I read everything I could get my hands on.
– Read before you write. Before I write every day I spend 30-60 minutes reading high quality short stories poetry, or essays. Books by Denis Johnson, Miranda July, David Foster Wallace, Ariel Leve, William Vollmann, Raymond Carver, etc. All of the writers are in the top 1/1000 of 1% of writers. It has to be at that level or else it won’t lift up your writing at all.
– Coffee. I go through three cups at least before I even begin to write. No coffee, no creativity.
– Break the laws of physics. There’s no time in text. Nothing has to go in order. Don’t make it nonsense. But don’t be beholden to the laws of physics.Advice I Want to Tell My Daughters is an example.
– Be Honest. Tell people the stuff they all think but nobody ever says. Some people will be angry you let out the secret. But most people will be grateful. Else you aren’t delivering value. Be the little boy in the Emperor Wears No Clothes. If you can’t do this, don’t write.
– Don’t Hurt Anyone. This goes against the above rule. But I never like to hurt people. And I don’t respect people who get pageviews by breaking this rule. Don’t be a bad guy. Was Buddha a Bad Father? addresses this.
– Don’t be afraid of what people think. For each single person you worry about, deduct 1% in quality from your writing. Everyone has deductions. I have to deduct about 10% right off the top. Maybe there’s 10 people I’m worried about. Some of them are evil people. Some of them are people I just don’t want to offend. So my writing is only about 90% of what it could be. But I think most people write at about 20% of what it could be. Believe it or not, clients, customers, friends, family, will love you more if you are honest with them. So we all have our boundaries. But try this: for the next ten things you write, tell people something that nobody knows about you.
– Be opinionated. Most people I know have strong opinions about at least one or two things. Write about those. Nobody cares about all the things you don’t have strong opinions on. Barry Ritholz told me the other day he doesn’t start writing until he’s angry about something. That’s one approach. Barry and I have had some great writing fights because sometimes we’ve been angry at each other.
– Have a shocking title. I blew it the other day. I wanted to title this piece: “How I torture women” but I settled for “I’m guilty of torture”. I wimped out. But I have some other fun ones. Like “is it bad I wanted my first kid to be aborted” (which the famous Howard Lindzon cautioned me against). Don’t forget that you are competing against a trillion other pieces of content out there. So you need a title to draw people in. Else you lose.
– Steal. I don’t quite mean it literally. But if you know a topic gets pageviews (and you aren’t hurting anyone) than steal it, no matter who’s written about it or how many times you’ve written about it before. “How I Screwed Yasser Arafat out of$2mm” was able to nicely piggyback off of how amazingly popular Yasser Arafat is.
– Make people cry. If you’ve ever been in love, you know how to cry. Bring readers to that moment when they were a child, and all of life was in front of them, except for that one bittersweet moment when everything began to change. If only that one moment could’ve lasted forever. Please let me go back in time right now to that moment. But now it’s gone.
– Relate to people. The past decade has totally sucked. For everyone. The country has been in post-traumatic stress syndrome since 9/11 and 2008 only made it worse. I’ve gone broke a few times during the decade, had a divorce, lost friendships, and have only survived (barely) by being persistent and knowing I had two kids to take care of, and loneliness to fight. Nobody’s perfect. We’re all trying. Show people how you are trying and struggling. Nobody expects you to be a superhero.
– Time heals all wounds. Everyone has experiences they don’t want to write about. But with enough time, its ok. My New Year’s Resolution of 1995 is pretty embarrassing. But whatever. Its 16 years ago.. The longer back you go, the less you have to worry about what people think.
– Risk. Notice that almost all of these rules are about where the boundaries are. Most people play it too safe. When you are really risking something and the reader senses that (and they WILL sense it), then you know you are in good territory. If you aren’t risking something, then I’m moving on. I know I’m on the right track if after I post something someone tweets, “OMFG”.
– Be funny. You can be all of the above and be funny at the same time. When I went to India I was brutalized by my first few yoga classes (actually every yoga class). And I was intimidated by everyone around me. They were like yoga superheroes and I felt like a fraud around them. So I cried, and hopefully people laughed. It was also a case where I didn’t have to dig into my past but I had an experience that was happening to me right then. How do you be funny? First rule of funny: ugly people are funny. I’m naturally ugly so its easy. Make yourself as ugly as possible. Nobody wants to read that you are beautiful and doing great in life.
– The last line needs to go BOOM! . Your article is meaningless unless the last line KILLS. Read the book of short stories “Jesus’ Son” by Denis Johnson. It’s the only way to learn how to do a last line. The last line should take you all the way back to the first line and then “BOOM!”
– Use a lot of periods. Forget commas and semicolons. A period makes people pause. Your sentences should be strong enough that you want people to pause and think about it. This will also make your sentences shorter. Short sentences are good.
– Write every day. This is a must. Writing is spiritual practice. You are diving inside of yourself and cleaning out the toxins. If you don’t do it every day, you lose the ability. If you do it every day, then slowly you find out where all the toxins are. And the cleaning can begin.
– Write with the same voice you talk in. You’ve spent your whole life learning how to communicate with that voice. Why change it when you communicate with text?
– Deliver value with every sentence. Even on a tweet or Facebook status update. Deliver poetry and value with ever word. Else, be quiet. (And, of course, follow me on twitter for more examples)
– Take what everyone thinks and explore the opposite. Don’t disagree just to disagree. But explore. Turn the world upside down. Guess what? There are people living in China. Plenty of times you’ll find value where nobody else did.
– Have lots of ideas. I discuss this in “How to be the Luckiest Man Alive” in the Daily Practice section. Your idea muscle atrophies within days if you don’t exercise it. Then what do you do? You need to exercise it every day until it hurts. Else no ideas.
– Sleep eight hours a day. Go to sleep before 9pm at least 4 days a week. And stretch while taking deep breaths before you write. We supposedly use only 5% of our brain. You need to use 6% at least to write better than everyone else. So make sure your brain is getting as much healthy oxygen as possible. Too many people waste valuable writing or resting time by chattering until all hours of the night.
– Don’t write if you’re upset at someone. Then the person you are upset at becomes your audience. You want to love and flirt with your audience so they can love you back.
– Use “said” instead of any other word. Don’t use “he suggested” or “he bellowed”. Just “he said.” We’ll figure it out if he suggested something.
– Paint. Or draw. Keep exercising other creative muscles.
– Let it sleep. Whatever you are working on, sleep on it. Then wake up, stretch, coffee, read, and look again. Rewrite. Take out every other sentence.
– Then take out every other sentence again. Or something like that.
Sanket didn’t want to go to grad school after we graduated. He had another plan. Lets go to Thailand, he said. And become monks in a Buddhist monastery for a year. We can date Thai women whenever we aren’t begging for food, he said. It will be great and we’ll get life experience.
It sounded good to me.
But then he got accepted to the University of Wisconsin and got a PhD. Now he lives in India and works for Oracle. And as for me, I don’t know what the hell happened to me.
This morning I was listening to the latest episode of Inside Music and checking for any remaining edits that needed to be made when an article from The Awl caught my attention. The title of the piece was “All My Blogs Are Dead,” and within two paragraphs author Carter Maness had me on the edge of my seat. You can find the whole piece here, but I wanted to focus on this key portion for the rest of this post:
“Most of the media outlets I’ve written for have folded and then were flat-out deleted. In 2009, I had started blogging for AOL Music’s Spinner and The BoomBox, averaging three posts per day about indie rock and hip-hop. By 2010, I was writing approximately two print features and twenty blogposts per month on local music acts for New York Press. After that, in 2011, I joined the boutique MP3 blog RCRD LBL as the site’s lead editor/writer, publishing five posts per day. None of these outlets exist in 2014 beyond stray citations, rotten links and Facebook apparitions.”
When a music blog dies, the content created for that publication will remain online only as long as the person owning the URL continues to pay the site’s hosting fees. In my experience, that time is often quite short, and as soon as the metaphorical switch is flipped to shut down the site for good all of your hard work disappears faster than the blink of an eye. The internet time machine may save a post or two for you, if you’re lucky, but more than likely the bulk of your hard work will vanish from existence. This brings us to the same question Maness addresses when writing his article: If it’s deleted from the internet, did it ever really exist?
I’ve been writing about music for almost ten years, but I have only been presiding the site I currently contribute to most often for the last seven. The site where I got my start, the now long-forgotten High Beam Review, stopped posting new content int the fall of 2008. By the spring of 2009 the site was entirely offline, and with it any proof I had contributed content of any kind to a site other than the one I was writing for at that very moment. Fortunately, that site was one I owned, and though I since sold it to a media group it still exists today. All the content created over the last seven years still exists as well, though given the number of times the site’s design has changed I’m not sure how some of the older content would look when viewed on the current layout. Still, it’s there, and until the site dies it will remain available for everyone to see.
But what happens when the media company that now owns my site decides its a property no longer worth their time or hard drive space? Will I even get a warning? If I do, how long will I have to collect what is essentially the entirety of my professional experience up to this point and preserve it for future generations by other means?
I have no answers to these questions, and even before reading Maness’ piece today such inquiries had crossed my mind several times. The best solution I have developed thus far is to maintain a professional portfolio site, which contains links to all the content I create around the web. Those links are only good for as long as the sites they link to are active, but for now its the only means I’ve found aside from copy/pasting years of work onto a separate site. I’ve also begun keeping all the drafts I create on my own word processing programs, but without the sites the content ran on existing I have to wonder if anyone would believe such ramblings were actually published in the first place.
The future is a scary place, and for writers there are few thoughts more terrifying than having the bulk of your published work wiped from existence, but we cannot allow our fears of a potential future prevent us from taking action now. Create backups of your work, and be sure to maintain a digital portfolio whose URL you control. The only one who is going to look out for the livelihood of your content online, especially the more said content ages, is you. It is your responsibility to preserve your work, and I am urging you to begin doing so as soon as possible. Establish a system of preservation and stick with it. Your career will thank you.
James Shotwell is the editor of the Haulix blog. He is also the founder of Under The Gun Review, co-owner of Antique Records, and host of the Inside Music podcast. When not writing and talking about music, James can usually be found eating pizza or going to the movies. Follow him on Twitter.
Hey there, everyone! Glad to see you found time in your busy schedule to spend a few minutes browsing our blog. The feature you are about to enjoy was written with music bloggers in mind, but its message can be applied to anyone hoping to make a big impact with web traffic around the month’s biggest holiday.
This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
It’s officially the month of February, which means we have less than two weeks until the most despised, commercial, and shallow holiday of all time is upon us. Yes, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and if you’re a blogger worth their weight in digital text then you’ve already begun brainstorming content you can run around the world’s biggest Hallmark holiday. If you haven’t thought to begin planning yet, you might want to, but before you do that you should read the rest of this post.
Having been writing about alternative music for over half a decade at this point, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing a flood of similar content make its way through my feeds every time the second week of February rolls around. Be it lists of the best and/or worst love songs of all time, or a collection of the most romantic moments in certain films, it seems everyone in pop culture writing believes the best way to reach readers is through regurgitated list ideas that offer one or two variations, if that, from every other list found online. I don’t entirely disagree, but I do think we are all doing a disservice to our readers by settling for the first few ideas that come to mind. We all know Whitney Houston sang what is arguably the most romantic love song of all time, and we also know that no one will ever top J. Geils’ anthem for the heartbroken. We also know that Jesse Lacey wrote quite a few songs in the early years of Brand New that may or may not have been his own version of a love song. All of this has been listed, debated, and covered to death. It still gets traffic, but so does sharing the number one clip on YouTube on any given day. If you’re okay with easy traffic, fine, but if you want to create exciting content then you need to think a bit more outside the box.
I’m not putting down listicles, and I sure as hell don’t want to make you believe that discussing the songs that do or do not evoke a sense of romance is stupid. It’s not. These conversations have been had throughout the history of pop culture, and as far as I can tell they will continue for as long as there are multiple artists creating art simultaneously. We all engage with art in our own way, and we all find the songs that mean something special to us for reasons entirely our own. We might relate to the romantic anthems played on the radio, but tracks like “My Heart Will Go On” and “Tiny Dancer” are rarely the songs that hit closest to home. They’re thematic staples, and as such they elicit a similar reaction from almost everyone who hears them. They’re safe, at least to an extent, and in my opinion covering them is rather boring. There is something to be said for giving people what they want, but there is a lot more to be said for someone who tries to give people something they don’t know they need. That’s what great writing does, and as crazy as it sounds Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to forge real connections with your readers through original content.
Why is now such a prime time to connect with your audience? The answer is actually quite simple: Love.
You see, we all have an idea of what love is and we go through lives trying our best to find someone that we believe compliments that idea best, but at the end of the day the numerous way we as a culture define love is almost too varied to measure. Some see it as co-dependency, while other see it as giving all of yourself in the name of another’s happiness. Still others see the whole thing as a marketing scam, built by corporations and engrained into society at large through massive marketing schemes. I’m not here to say whether any of those ideas are right or wrong, but I am here to encourage you to share you idea of love, regardless of what its definition may be. People everywhere wonder through life asking themselves if they truly understand what it means to love or to be loved, and it’s only through sharing our own thoughts and experiences that we as a global community will be able to really grasp its meaning. That’s not to say your content will change the world if you’re simply being yourself, but it might change someone’s perspective on life, and if you can do that there really is no limit to your capabilities as a writer.
Let me give you an example: Last year, my friend Dan Bogosian wrote a wonderful piece for Consequence Of Sound about his relationship with Saves The Day, as well as the person responsible for introducing him to the band’s sound. It’s a great piece filled with emotional ups and downs that I must encourage everyone to read, but if you don’t have time I’ll summarize by saying that Dan’s experience with the music of Saves The Day has taught him not only a greater appreciation for life, but also for his relationships with others. Through reading his words, I too found a new appreciation for the people in my life. I was carried back to the times when friends both close and long since forgotten introduced me to music and films that would go on to change my life. I thought of the people I thanked and the ones I did not, the ways we grew apart, and the impact distance can have on even the closest of friends.
I wasn’t present for Dan’s experiences with his friend or his times seeing Saves The Day live, but reading his words it’s impossible to ignore his love of both. As he struggles to understand why things change over time, he touches on universal concerns we all share about our relationship with those around us, and in doing so he forges a connection with us. We too know those feelings, though not because of the exact same circumstances, and learning how someone else got through those times influences the way he live moving forward.
When you’re planning and hopefully drafting Valentine’s Day content this week, think of the experiences and memories in your life that taught you lessons about love. Find the songs that set the perfect mood for that first kiss you’ll never forget, as well as the album that helped you forget the lover who couldn’t be trusted. Reflect on all of this and choose the stories you’re most comfortable with sharing, then proceed to write until you cannot write any more. Pour yourself into these pieces, letting readers know why you do or do not believe in love and the music that helps cement your belief. If you can do that, people will respond. They might not comment at first, but they will carry your words and thoughts with them. They may spin the same songs, or they may relate to the situation being described and think of songs they know that fit the mood even better. Whatever the case, they will connect with you, and forging that connection is the first step towards creating a lasting and rewarding relationship with your audience.
Hello, everyone! Thank you for finding a little time in your surely busy schedule to spend a few moments browsing our blog. We generally post about site creators who are changing the industry, but today we’re asking aspiring professionals to think twice before creating a site of their own. Why? You’ll have to read on to find out!
This site exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
If you have spent any amount of time browsing this blog over the better part of the last two years then you know we are all about promoting driven young creative minds. That said, we have also become incredibly aware of just how many people with nothing unique or interesting to say believe launching their own music blog will somehow further their presence in an already overcrowded industry. Furthermore, we’ve also seen genuinely great writers fall victim to the foolish belief it’s easy to be both a writer and site manager. It’s as if they feel the best way to get exposure is to take on as much responsibility as possible, regardless of whether or not they’re able to handle all the associated tasks.
I know we spend a lot of time promoting people who run music blogs as the future leaders of the industry, but I beg of you – PLEASE think twice before starting your own music blog. There are literally thousands of sites already in existence, and the areas of entertainment covered across those blogs are just as numerous. There are hip-hop sites, rock sites, pop sites, punk sites, black metal sites, hardcore sites, country sites, and EDM sites, and countless sites that attempt to cover two or more areas of music at once. Some work hard to separate themselves from their competition with insightful original content, while far more seem perfectly fine posting press releases-in full or summarized-and calling it ‘news.’ Still others forget news altogether and solely create editorials, while some just post song streams. The possibilities are essentially endless, and considering the boom in new sites over the last half decade or so it seems safe to say all, if not most of the obvious reasons for starting a new site have already been claimed. There is no area of music lacking a site to promote its artists, except for maybe regional talent from a specific area of the globe. Those sites don’t yet exist in great numbers simply because the target market for such an endeavor is far too small to ever support a writer’s career, but if you poke around several such sites are in existence across the US.
The reason I bring all this up is not to discourage your journalistic aspiration, but rather to challenge you. If you truly believe your calling life is to launch a new music blog, then I must insist you first answer the following question:
What would my site bring to music fans/music blogging that does not currently exist somewhere online?
If your first thought is something related to your interest in promoting new bands, you’re going to need to think just a bit harder before telling me your answer. There are hundreds of sites dedicated to artist discovery, and those sites range from outlets focusing on a specific genre, to publications specializing in naming the next big contenders for top 40 radio play. In fact, I’m willing to wager the market for sites promoting unsigned/under-appreciated talent is just as overcrowded as the markets those unsigned bands you hope to promote exist within. Almost everyone covers small talent, at least on some level, and almost every site owner will tell you those posts rarely bring in a sizable audience. If they do, it’s because the artist being featured has already accrued a decent online following. The number of people who tune in simply because they like to discover new music is low, and they rarely commit to one outlet when seeking out new talent.
Secondly, if you think video or podcasting will set you apart, I must again implore you to dig a little deeper. The importance of multimedia features in entertainment blogging has been building for as long as social media has been a trendy thing to be a part of, so anyone hoping to jump in and change the game now needs to have something really special in mind. A single podcast or video series is not going to cut it, at least enough to justify further crowding the already overstuffed world of music journalism. If you hope to use multimedia to set yourself apart then you’re going to need multiple ideas that can be enacted over a relatively short amount of time. You also need to account for how you’ll find all the time needed to create, cut, and edit together said content. All possibly without generating any substantial amount of income, of course.
I don’t want to be the guy that squashes your dreams of music journalism greatness, but I also want to ensure you’re not taking on too much because you believe it’s the only way to gain the attention of industry professionals. If you want to write about music, or if you want to make multimedia features based on the music you enjoy, there are many great outlets around the world who would absolutely love to feature your content. If you’re as driven and hard working as you would need to be in order to even consider taking on something as time-consuming as running your own site, why not ditch the unnecessary stress associate with managing a contributing team and instead focus on refining your already developing skills as a journalist? A great article, or better yet- a consistent streak of strong, original content covering a wide variety of artists-will go much further when trying to find work in the industry that claiming to be the editor of yet another music blog that only a small group of music connoisseurs even know exist. It’s cool, I guess, but it doesn’t look as great on a resume as you may believe.
Think about it: If you were a major publication seeking a new team member, would you hire a regular contributor to places like Noisey, Pitchfork, and Consequence Of Sound, or would you give the gig to the person who owns the relatively unknown URL ‘muzicnewz.com’?
It’s not impossible to stand out as someone particularly amazing by running your own site, but it is a hell of a lot harder than standing out as a great writer who is connected with the most influential publications currently in existence. That’s not stated to discourage or break your dreams, but rather to offer a better understanding of what the industry considers when seeking new professionals. The DIY route will always have its champions, but for those who want to play in the big leagues are going to need a lot more than the motivation to buy and maintain a domain in order to solidify their necessity in the modern music industry. Before you launch your own site, I urge you consider first trying your hand at contributing to whatever sites currently in existence you follow the most. If those avenues prove fruitless, research and try applying to other sites. Someone will bring you on. That is, unless you have no skills whatsoever and are unable to string together enough words to create a pitch letter. If that should have to be the case, I also suggest not pursuing this career path whatsoever. There are many more, far less frustrating paths to success in music. Only pursue writing if its the truly what you want, and only launch a blog if you wholeheartedly believe you have a unique vision to share that simply would not fit anywhere else online.
If you really want to write and absolutely cannot resist the urge to buy a domain, might I launching a portfolio page. Use it to collect your various articles from around the web and let that side be the web page you work to maintain. No extra staff, no content calendars, and no tasks that carry anywhere near as much stress or frustration that typically follows the launch of a new blog. As people no doubt told you when you were young, “Keep it simple.“ Work hard and keep your connections strong. If you can do that to the best of your abilities, everything else will follow in time.
