Every week I send out a little email digest with new art, writing, and interesting links.
It’s the absolute best way to keep up with what I’m doing. Next year I’ll be using it to share book tour news and artwork for sale, too.
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Can’t see the video? Watch it here→
Show Your Work! is a kind of sequel — if the last book was about stealing influence from others, this one is about influencing others by letting them steal from you.
So it made sense for the new book trailer to echo the last one. As I joked then, I sort of hate book trailers, so I decided to make a cute dog video disguised as a book trailer instead.
The thing I hate about most video production is that it just takes too much money and time. I made this trailer in two afternoons, using equipment I already owned, with software that came standard on my iMac — I shot the footage with my Panasonic Lumix, made the animations in Keynote, recorded the music and voiceover in Garageband with my Blue Yeti USB mic, and hacked it together using iMovie. (I do NOT recommend ever using iMovie for anything, but I knew it would work for what I had in mind.)
I thought I might show a little bit of my work, below. (See what I did there? Ha.) It ended up getting a little long, so skip to the end if you just want takeaways.
The holidays are coming up, which means that I’m getting a lot of email from folks who want to buy prints of my work to give as gifts.
Unfortunately, we won’t be selling prints until next year. (My wife Meg is working hard on planning the logistics—we’ll be selling signed, limited-edition screenprints of new and old poems.) Prints available now!
In the meantime, here’s how to get a cheap print:
1. Buy a copy of Newspaper Blackout and a regular ol’ 8×10 frame.
2. Razor out a poem you like.
3. Frame and enjoy!
If you’re desperate for a gift, you can also get a signed copy of Steal Like An Artist from Bookpeople here in Austin, Texas. They ship everywhere. Order one here.
If you’d like to know when prints are available, sign up for my weekly newsletter.
I realized last night as I finished yesterday’s logbook entry just how little time was left in the year. You can see DEC 1 on the calendar, but your brain doesn’t really register it the way the chunk and heft of the pages turned behind you does.
What to do with the rest of the calendar?
It’s tempting to call it a year and spend the rest of December in retrospection. It’s around this time every year that people start posting their “best of the year” reading lists (myself included) — as if anything you read in December doesn’t really count. This is a mistake, because every time I post a best of the reading year list before December 31st, I read a book or two that should’ve made the list, a book that gets lost in the cracks between my official lists. (Last year it was Will Oldham on Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Ian Svenonius’s Supernatural Strategies for Making A Rock and Roll Band. The year before, it was Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad and Howard Gossage’s The Book of Gossage.) None of these books is now on my “best of” site, even though they should be.
What else am I missing by being prematurely retrospective? (I can’t remember which artist said it—maybe Hockney?—but having a “retrospective” makes it sound like you already died.)
There’s a section in Show Your Work! called “Don’t Quit Your Show” where I tell this little anecdote:
One time my coworker John Croslin and I came back from our lunch break and our building’s parking lot was completely full. We circled the sweltering lot with a few other cars for what seemed like ages, and just when we were about to give up, a spot opened and John pulled right in. As he shut off the car he said, “You gotta play till the ninth inning, man.”
Play ’til the ninth inning. That’s exactly what I was looking for. The year is a baseball game with twelve innings and I want to play until the last out.
So this year I’m pledging to not make my year-end list before the year’s end. I’ll be posting mine on January 1st, 2014. I’m also planning not to let up just because it’s December. I’ll still be checking all my boxes: meditating, making a blackout poem, writing, and reading every day. Because we might only have 30 days left, but a lot can happen in 30 days.
What will you do with yours?
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Also: If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, I suggest buying a daily diary (here’s the one I use) and keeping a logbook.
I had a blast today selling books at Bookpeople as part of the nationwide Indies First celebration. (I’ve written before about my indie bookstore awakening.) For the record, I was pushing Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing, Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, and Oliver Burkeman’s The Antidote. I also bought a book myself: that’s Doug Dorst above, signing my copy of the amazing S.
Best of all, I got to sign books for some really cool readers! Thanks y’all for coming out.
Oh, and dig this: Oscar Ocuto showed up to get Newspaper Blackout signed and what was in his book but a bunch of fresh-made blackout poems! Too cool.
If you’re looking for a cheap stocking stuffer this holiday, BookPeople has tons of SIGNED copies of Steal Like An Artist available. They ship everywhere! Get one here.
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