80 words v. 250 words

also when emotionally unsettled, this affects things like church of me, but when it's paid writing (bang bang ten minutes there you go) i can "switch off" and concentrate.

i have to do 330 words on the throbbing gristle 24-cd live boxset for the next uncut (so far i'm up to cd 14). clearly the c.o.m. equivalent would be about ten times that, but it forces you to sharpen up and perhaps produce better writing.

(though most people who've read my published stuff just think that the reviews look odd, like a condensed precis of a c.o.m. article)

quickly sneak in a quick spam: the new wire's out, in which i have a double think about david thomas and get a bit bitchy over stereolab.

i've been doing the 250 live reviews with my one editor and he was very tough with me, still is, and when i hooked up with another magazine, i told the editor basically, be as fucking tough on me as you can, i can take it, i want to excel at 80 words..

brevity is a task. but making the task seem like an easy entertaining read so the reader can kill a few brain cells before going to work.....wow!

this editor is showing the patience of a saint, i told him, i want to be really fucking ace at 80 word reviews and we are going through it now, he's very tough, which is good, and i've written and rewritten the same review for ages, but hey - it makes me a good writer - a highly strung and neurotic writer but a good writer nonetheless.

and the 80 words is a good discipline.

I'm deadline-surfing two things right now: a 500-word piece on Cat Power and 50-word reviews for five books.

Book reviews for this particular magazine have shrunk but you can't shirk the book-reading no matter what; I'm more comfortable reviewing for 300-500 words because then I get into what I'm writing, less is a chore.

Ahh...but the more difficult it is, the more I want to plunder at it and get it right.

i can toss it off quickly, sure and i've done 80 word pieces for another mag quickly, but i really like this editor and the magazine so i want to be brilliant at it.

i'm going to submit my anorexic story.

it's funny, though it's been published already.

thanks guys!

Although the earnestness probably appeals to your editor *right now* you'll grow out of it.

Was talking to the guy who set up Sleazenation and Xtra on Wednesday (seems like the kind of no-nonsense Northern lad who gets turned on by style mags, was very funny) and he said all these old MM/NME hacks were giving him the horrors because they were going to see him about work on Xtra and saying 'it feels like I can really come home again'. Which gave him the heebies...how'd you like to find one of them camped on *your* sofa?

Cat Power (well Chan herself) was really great, something from Carson McCullers who knows not who Carson McCullers is. Primals were on the hotel muzak-ak-ak so we stood up yelling FAKE SOUTHERNER! Up against the wall with Nick Cave and Polly Harvey!

Nah - I don't know Suzy, I can't play that sort of game because a) england is not my home and b) i'm not a very sceney type person and c) she suggested it too me after i went through my white trash repetoire. i dunno -- but i know what you mean, i've met some hacks who freak me out. do you think i come across like that? honestly....

i'm very ernest but very uncomfortable when talking......so i doubt i could say that.

what i want to do is to get my name out there so i can lay some form of ground work to bring out my book which is in second draft. if this means that i may become the tony parsons that it is o.k. to like, then so be it.

I JUST WANT TO GARNER ENOUGH FREELANCE WORK TO QUIT MY DAYJOB!!!

ARGGGGHGHGHGHGHGHHGG......

i had an offer to write for a magazine and it didnt seem right.....so i let that opportunity go.

nah, i'm too crazy too think like that......I just rant and babble like i do on-line.....you either get it or you don't!

D, YOU DON"T COME OFF LIKE THAT! Calm! Calm! I think they were talking about metaphorical 'home' eg This Reminds Me of the Good Old Days of Shoegazing, When I Had A Profile (erk!). I have a feeling about who the writers he's speaking about might actually be. This was in the middle of a HUGE bitching session about the Enema wanting to be Just Like Heat, and all around the table (two old-skool PRs from reputable places were also talking) we said we wanted BIGGER FEATURES so people had something to read, not just some shoddy piece of branding, trading on a more freewheeling yesterday, which prioritises who's shagging who.

Have now seen UK Vice and unless they pay really well and on time, don't bother unless you're ringing up on April 1st with a White Trash Nightmare fashion shoot for them (a cousin of my annual 'It's So Hard To Find Good Help These Days' April Fool to Evening Standard features ed). Xtra might be better,

I was worried becuase when I was at death disco and just listening to alan play some records (death disco is my only real social outing with friends unless i hook up at ilx functions more - i am billy no-mates) and two of those old school hacks showed up, i won't say who, but they were SO OBNOXIOUS AND REMINDED ME OF THE PASTY-FACED PUDGY JERKS WHO USED TO RUN THE UNIVERSITY NEWSPAPER) and when Alan said 'Oh Doom-e he writes for the MEN - they were very obnoxious and what not and looked at me like I was scum.

I had a brief breakdown in that moment whenI realised that I don't want to be like that!

I suppose i've got this game plan now but it's centred around the novel, more than anything and well, you are right about the smaller reviews, the smaller reviews and the discipline that i am learning at the moment with them, will help paint in the bigger picture.

suzy - i usually send out a photo of my waving tourist style whilst a crazy old man screams at me in the background. or similar white trashness.

I got alan to promise me that when the buzz on the hives calms down i can write a fear and loathing of the american scream book about the hives as the stories are insanity.

they force you either to (a) cut out the autobiog and get to the point of whether the record's any good or not;

This to me totally destroys any fucking POINT of music journalism or writing in the first place. Word counts are the number one reason that Fiona is getting out of music journalism.

Oh, that and someone keeps subbing her up to Strokes fan fiction mailing lists while she's asleep...

disagreed - if it's well written, 80 words is easier to read, respond to and make a decision than, 100000 words.

ps. i sort of like working for a magazine that people get so upset about sometimes. it feels fab. like i am j. lo's p.a.

And really, hacks never wanna hear it, but that's the point of album reviews, really. To get someone to want to buy/not buy the album, not to show off how technically good at writing you are.

(Though my bassist did say something very funny this morning in a rant about some bad university press...

I'm so sick of reading half-literate people's reviews of our album. Fuck, if you can't even string a sentence together how the hell do you get off criticising other people in their chosen field. I wish musicians could write reviews of reviews of them.

"It gets off to a strong start, until in the second half of the first sentence the so-called journalist says that there are 4 members in The Lollies, despite a picture and press release that make it clear that there are 3. And then, early in the second sentence, the hack leaves an e off the end of St. Claire and moves right into a misplaced modifier. By the time the third sentence rolls by me eyes, I can barely look, but there it is, a cliche, followed by a typo, followed by a misused colon. The next sentence is meant to be a question, but suffers from not ending with a question mark. After about 6 sentences, the writing just becomes irritating, though it's nice to see the word "pickle" worked into a music review." )

and kate - that is why i don't have many reviews, i only do bands that i can handle listening to their albums over and over and over again.

i learnt that early on.

it's not quantity - it's quality!

'sides i think it would be cool for a fourteen year old kid to see my name and go - oooo....that guy's into some cool stuff and pick up my recommendations (which is kind of the point, i think).

B-b-but Kate, how is the editor supposed to lay out the page if they don't give you an idea of how much space each thing takes up? Wait until you have to edit stuff and someone's spooled off 5000 words of tangentals instead of 1000 words around the subject originally commissioned! The last shifts I did as a sub were at a magazine where writers were abysmal and always over-wrote. IT WAS HELL. It offended me and I cut it off.

I agree with you on the autobiographical stuff, but in order for others to be as interested in personal bits marbling your writing as you are (and BTW this is the Universal You here) you have to be able to be good enough at soundbite reviews for people to notice that first, then you get to be more 'authorial' in approach as you carry on. That's how all the old, good Enema writers were allowed to become famous; the people sitting around talking on Wednesday thought it would be impossible to come up through the NME like that these days.

Fuck you, editor, that's your job.

I don't like album reviews anyway. It's too much like writing book reports (which I know you hate anyway, so you understand). Having to write 80 words on an album smacks to me too much of being "objective" about music which, as we all know, is nearly totally impossible.

(also of course: any one review is v.short, but the list as a whole is 20 pages long)

Doomie, the founders of Vice are from Montreal (I met one the other day and the people I was with also thought he was cuntlike). It's totally Canuck in there!

Arggh, Cat Power copy to come, stop hassling me other editor...

the girl from vice i met - she was attitude but when i was talking to her she lightened up and we chatted about hamilton and in the end i thought she was cool.

suzy, believe me, i cultivated c*nts on a former egroup - my spidey sense for that is extremely, far, and away too developed now.

I don't want to think about that TOO HARD because I will refute this generalisation using a certain ilxer's 'meeting' with Ms Plaster Caster. He suggested that the result of this meeting (a casting which didn't cast properly) should be exhibited 'The Death Of The Male Rock Idiom'.

Kate, get back here, we're talking about COCKS now.

CTCL and their lack of organisation is ... yeah. I've got in trouble for criticising them online before (criticising the critics, can they dish it out, but they can't take it?). I tried my best to quit. I wrote the most eloquent/incomprehensive rant about why I can't be a music journalist any more. And then three separate editors wrote me to tell me that it had restored their faith in music journalism. Me QUITTING restores your faith? This makes sense, how?

What is worse, the style fascism of the established press, or the rampant nothing-ever-gets-done socialist anarchism of the alternative?

Established press does not have enough style to get fascistic with. Style press does not pay enough to exert aggressive demands on the writers. NME is ignoring/spurning what people liked about it for *wrong* love-to-hate qualities and is then turning into Heat and trying to keep one step ahead of tabloids, and (no offense reviewer guys) I'd rather swallow broken glass than ever write for Ucunt. Fact.

why single out uncut?

just because you've got no future don't fucking put down those of us who do.

why? are you jealous? jealous because someone here decided to get off his arse and try and make another career for himself? yes i am writing. and getting paid for it. and that's what you people can't stand.

so fuck off with your envy. match me or shut up.

The less polite remix: I AM RUBBER, YOU ARE GLUE, WHAT BOUNCES OFF ME STICKS TO YOU. *Sticks out lower lip like pouting four-year-old with plenty future* Derr-brain.

that's why i keep an even temper throughout....and keep the bitch off-side.

ps. i like uncut! *sticks tongue at suzy*

i'm heading to xtra in a couple of months!! beware!!!

no surely not. OK maybe half that at most (I don't want to count, please don't make me hehe).

I don't think anyone truly wants to 'bash' Marcello. At best some wish to actively help him and have, and at the very least they wish that he would seek that help in a way that didn't involve hurting others, and that's all I think Tom was saying.

The living spend more time being killed by death than the people who actually die.

The sooner you stop feeling sorry for yourself and thinking of what's missing as The Gap In Your Life, the sooner you can stand on your own two feet.

No matter who is in your life, unless you feel that you can stand on your own two feet whether they're around or not, your self-esteem will be pretty low.

The sooner you accept that the insensitivity of others doesn't happen because they suck, but because they are not you with your specialised and magnified pain - and they can't read your mind and pussyfoot around every possible neurosis or sad memory you've got - the sooner you will begin to take responsibility for your own feelings and interactions. Other people don't mean to piss you off, they can't help triggering unhappiness, and they certainly bear you no malice. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

I am also wont to believe depression is this decade's trendy head problem, in line with the trend for feelings-as-syndrome generally. Having been depressed - and who isn't at one time or another? - I feel my own former situation would not have been enhanced by treating my feelings of shock, remorse and unfinished business by clinical means, and would have been much harder to shake had I not believed in the folly of a society which posits 'depression' as a terminal condition to be kept at bay with medication, greater isolation or other specious treatments. Wallowing is fine, but eventually you have to get up and wash the muck off.

I hope Marshmallow can get his act together and I do realise how hard it is, but lashing out at people for no good reason, making impersonal situations inappropriately personal, or behaving in counter-productive, attention-seeking ways will only lengthen the amount of time spent alone and lonely. That can't be what he really wants!

and whats up with bad taste everyone?

watch it son

huh?

They seem like a straight line across his face and his eyes are too close together giving the optical illusion of a human equals sign.

= The top bit of the equals sign is that bloke's brows and the bottom bit is his eyes.

He needs plucking FAST!

and gareth is hot, so also do shut up mr. anonymous shmuck.

there is no need to explain me. i was totally fucking irrational cunt at first. then i was not. that is just me. some people get me and some people don't. i suspect that gareth and jess would not like me regardless. i don't click with yer personality types. basically, guys - it's a "meh" option with me.

and gareth i must admit that i was in the wrong when i was deflecting attention from marcello onto myself on that thread where everyone was bashing marcello. that's why i had to quit the ilx for awhile. it was getting silly. i do have a protective urge for marcello because i understand the rage and the shifts in personality and was hoping that he would give himself time off line to get his shit together.

why do i think marcello should have gotten off line? because he's giving strangers opportunities to handle a delicate psyche situation and not everyone on here as been as open handed as suzy.

so in summing up - there is no shift in roles. and i never attempt to curry human kindness - as i accept what the world is - alternatively ugly and beautiful.

meh.

actually, suzy is on the money, ask any of my friends and this was the genesis of all of my friendships.

guys - i'm just white trailer trash with no social skills!

http://www.norfolkwindmills.com/images/me01.jpg

but, you got to admit, the fascist look is rocking (bow-chi -bow-chi...hocus pocus...i think are speakers are blown). Worked at Nag Nag Nag.

yowza!

by the way gareth MS. k nearly is my canadian friend visiting me and she says: too skinny.

she's very picky. *shrugs shoulders*

do you know of someone called Ian Johnson? you remind me of him. didnt get him either

wow. you really do have a nasty impression of me!!!

wow. gareth i'm so so so not like ian johnson. i would be shocked but it's interesting that you've got such a bad idea of what i'm really like!!!!!!

ms k nearly and i are off for fab. times in camden town.

you are very wrong, though! so wrong it's a bit shocking.

anyways maybe seeya in camden, maybe....i'm out of here!!

I think, rather, I know Mark S., Suzy and Kate are all spiff folks and a half and clearly they're willing to stick up for you, which I think is cool. For that reason, there IS something about you which, as you say, can't be sensed on line. But on-line I have yet to get any real sense of you having changed from the 'I'm using you all as grist for my mill ha ha' person of last year. If the whole thing to 'get' is that you're intentionally role playing like, as Jess says, a 'confused and angry ape' now magically reformed, then why are you so surprised at continual annoyance? And if you don't think you've playing that role over time, what IS your role, and why do you think that it's not supposed to grate so badly once it's understood when all the clues seem to hint at somebody who wants to be seen above or beyond everyone else here -- not among them?

I'm not asking for the Magical Answer to Who You Are here; I certainly don't know that answer about myself for a start. Neither am I asking for Mark et al to explain themselves about how they feel about you. Just call me curious on a point which you seem to think is somehow beyond explanation or is self-explanatory, something to 'get' or not, but which I think deserves more than simply that as an answer. If you don't have the inclination to answer that point, as you say, then it seems like you shouldn't be constantly surprised when there's a lingering question about it.

nah, i'm never shocked about how people view me. i was, however, shocked of gareth's comparison to ian johnson as i have personal knowledge of ian johnson. ian johnson is a bully - now since you, jess and gareth don't particularly like me, you will pop up at this point, exclaiming, WHY DOOM-E YER A BULLY AS WELL, IS THAT NOT IRONIC. no..... ian did something that was ceaselessly cruel BECAUSE HE COULD. as much as you may call me things, etc, etc, i'm not a cruel person. i'm alot of things but heartlessly cruel is not one of them.

thus the shock.

and 'sides ned, it's a 'net reality, it's not reality.

meh.

not going to explain myself.

boxcubed - i love yer post. very holden caulfield!!!

and jess, i have a picture of myself in paris, by the huge white monolith in the business section near the dancing fireworks reenacting early man!

kate - you have to listen to the warlocks - early dandy warhols/spiritualised and a singer that is a young bobby gillespie.

I should perhaps add that none of what I am saying about depression is supposed to have anything to do with Marcello - it's about me.

When I said I thought suffering from depression was like a trend, of course I wasn't talking about specific cases or sufferers, but an upswing in diagnosis generally in society and the cunning ways in which the medical industry has responded to this upswing. I have rather more knowledge than I'd like, as an observer and caregiver, of a range of mental illnesses up to and including my gran's treatment for serious bipolarity with 1950's fave 'cure', a lobotomy. Compared to a condition this serious and severe, depression is a walk in the park. But I do agree with your assertion in that I'd rather suffer any other disease or condition than have to suffer from the bout of depression that I experienced.

This is my depression; it may not have been terribly similar to yours, and I am not remotely intending to imply anything about the condition of other people diagnosed as depressed or prescribed anti-depressants. I am not in position to speculate, though I'm inclined to agree that it is one of the current easy-option choices for doctors, and I'm sure this is a factor in its increasing prevalence. I do worry that focussing on that aspect may serve to reinforce the widespread tendency to be dismissive about even its worst manifestations. I do appreciate that this is not at all your intent.

I don't at all belittle the route taken by your depression but in my case, your attempted way out was never an option. Several friends worried that mine might be clinical, and packed me off to talk to relevant people, some of whom offered prescriptions. I think the first step to getting over it lay in rejecting that course of action; I'd been in free-fall and hated myself for it, so it was about time to just deal with myself and be less needy generally. And all respect due to good doctors, but if my mum had believed the first one she went to see with me, I would not be writing this but would instead have died of cancer before my fifth birthday. My mum's constant browbeating of the second is why I'm writing this, plus two other occasions where I nearly died pretty much set me up to prefer life as a challenge and responsibility over all possible alternatives.

Also, "Mentally ill people are all about crossing all the wrong lines without much regard for anyone" is too much of a generalisation. That sounds a workable, if loose, account of psychopathy, say, and maybe some types of schizophrenia, but not depression, and not several other kinds of illness. Speaking only for myself, I have never felt any urge to harm anyone but myself.

Yes, it does sound as if the thing that doctors called depression in you had little in common with what I have suffered. Maybe the distinction is what I describe in my first paragraph?

My feeling remains the same; the best remedies are work and getting out into the world. The former is not a problem but I am very insecure and maybe phobic about the latter. I find I am deliberately putting a distance between myself and people I feel over-intense about. I don't know how to solve the problem of reconnecting with the world. It's all very well to say go to more films, gigs etc., but these are essentially solitary pursuits. I am still planning to start Japanese evening classes in the New Year, so that might be a solution.

And yes, I do degenerate into self-pity, I swim in oceans of the stuff. It would be dishonest of me to deny it. And yes I know it's up to me to get out and do something about it, you don't have to remind me about that. But I don't feel ready for it yet. Do you understand? I am not "mended" yet. But I also know that the longer I stay in this situation, then the less possibility that I ever will be "mended."

I know I deserve to be hated. But please don't hate me. It just feels that everything and everyone is pressing down on me at the moment and crushing me. In reality it's me who's crushing myself.

If I have hurt anybody here I am sorry, I truly am. It was not meant. I don't expect you to believe me. Yes it's more self-pity. I don't deny it. I don't enjoy it either. What can I say? I'm a mess. I wish to God I wasn't.

Look, I'll go off board with this for now. Anyone who wants to talk to me, tell me off, yell at me, whatever, you can email me if you want. I have caused too much unpleasantness on this board as it is.

I'm so sorry.

I'll mail this to you too, in case you aren't around right now.