Just start: Swoopers vs Bashers
Hey team,
Thanks for subscribing to the newsletter! Unless you’ve been forwarded this, in which case thanks in advance for subscribing to the newsletter! Three things that you may or may not know about me, depending on where you’ve come from:
I have a YouTube channel (where a video of me learning the piano has 2M+ views).
I used to be the editor of Men’s Fitness, where I interviewed dozens (maybe hundreds?) of Olympic athletes, world champs from various sports, extremely smart scientists and very thoughtful performance specialists.
I read an absolute tonne of books.
So this is a place for me to explore some of the ideas that have come about because of all that stuff. Specifically, it’s a place to talk about about starting things, because starting things is one of the hardest parts of doing them. And so to start this thing, I thought I’d talk about Kurt Vonnegut.
You love Kurt Vonnegut, right? Everyone loves Kurt Vonnegut. I love Kurt Vonnegut, but I think he might have hamstrung me as a writer for a few years. Look at this quote:
“Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.”
For a long time, I thought I was a basher: my favourite way of writing is to go for a walk (or a long shower) and think about what I'm going to write, then sit down at a keyboard and just write down all the perfect, pristine, never-to-be-edited words I’ve been thinking about.
But, and it's a big but, I cannot write anything longer than about 2,000 words that way. I recently finished a 30,000 word thing, and I had to get huge chunks of it down, then fix them later. These days, my favourite quote about the creative process comes from William Goldman, who talks about his experience going to see legendary broadway figure George Abbott:
“He was coming from backstage during rehearsals, and as he crossed the stage into the auditorium he noticed a dozen dancers were just standing there. The choreographer sat in the audience alone, his head in his hands.
“What’s going on?” Mr Abbott asked.
The choreographer looked at Mr Abbott, shook his head. “I can’t figure out what they should do next.”
Mr Abbot never stopped moving. He jumped the three feet from the stage into the aisle. “Well, have them do something.” He said. “That way we’ll have something to change.”
That’s how I write, these days: I write something, so that I have something to change.
(I still love Kurt Vonnegut, though).
Have a great weekend!
Joel x
PS If you liked this (or didn’t, but think I might get better next week), please do forward it on to someone else who might be into it. It all helps!
Stuff I like
📖 Book - Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer by Tom Shone
I first read this exploration of the history and cultural impact of the summer mega-hit almost two decades ago, and decided to re-read it because I still reference it constantly. It really is brilliant, giving films like Jaws, Star Wars and Back To The Future the critical appreciation they deserve (BTTF took three years to write), while providing endless fact-nuggets that you can repeat in the pub (did you know that Jaws’ floating-head scene was filled in a swimming pool filled with condensed milk?).
📰 Article - It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive by Freddie Deboer
This piece goes on for far too long and has some wildly specific bits in it, but it also has some pretty smart observations, eg that “Nowadays people have both their own anxious and worried mind and another mind that worries about how they’re anxious and worried and whether they should be.” Also the fact that, because we have access to every bit of music in history these days, we never properly listen to albums any more. Who knows, maybe I’m just old.
📺 TV show - The Piano, Channel 4
I love this show so much that I wrote a whole article for the Guardian about it, but the TL;DR is that it’s a joyous celebration of everything the world’s best instrument can do, from rollicking boogie-woogie to gorgeous classical and everything in between. It’s also motivational gold, with a handful of octogenarian players reminding you that, even if you don’t start until 60, you might have two decades of playing ahead of you.
🎮 Game - Shredder’s Revenge
One reason I’m so into Brazilian jiu-jitsu is that I spent my youth playing fighting games in sketchy arcades. I have completed a dozen side-scrolling fighting games you have never even heard of, and please believe me when I tell you that Shredder’s Revenge pulls all of those games apart for their very best ideas, then glues them back together into one of the best beat-em-ups ever. My five year-old loves it, and so do I.
🎶 Hype Music - Non-Stop (the Hamilton Mixtape)
When I announced I was starting this newsletter, in the same week as I’d written several thousand words of book proposal and a couple of YouTube scripts, one of my friends said “You’re like Hamilton!” and it’s probably one of the best compliments I’ve ever been given. There are a few references to the power of writing in the show — the mournful “I wrote my way out” from Hurricane, for instance — but there’s something about the moment where Burr yells “Hamilton wrote the other 51!” that’s pure air-punch stuff.
🪶 Quote of the week
One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.
From Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
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If you haven’t already, please check out my YouTube channel, where I deep-dive into stuff like productivity, lifelong learning, piano and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.