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Sam van Zweden

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Picking The Pockets of a Dying Business

Yesterday I received an email from Borders, finally admitting that they’re closing. Up until now it’s all been very carefully-worded “We’re in administration, which means nothing!” emails. Yesterday’s email said I’d better hurry, because they’re selling everything for 40-50% off RRP. This seems the right point for me to hit the sales – the prices are significantly reduced, but it’s new enough that there’ll probably still be some decent stuff left.

A dying store is a weird place to be. As I wandered through the Carlton Borders, I noticed stickers on everything. It was like being in Ikea, but a really sad, distorted Ikea with a different mood to the frenzy. In Ikea, there’s stickers on everything – “Look at this bathroom sink! You want it? Look up at the thing that’s lighting it – THAT is for sale TOO!” Likewise in Borders today – I was looking through the hundred or so biographies left in the store (displayed cover-forward, making them look even lonelier), and I realised that if I had the inclination and the money, I could buy the shelf. I could also buy the chair next the shelf. I could buy the stand-up racks they fold wrapping paper over, or I could buy a card stand – all I had to do was “Talk to the shop fitting mgr.”

And the frenzy! In Ikea, there’s a frenzy. It’s students hauling around flat-packs and mothers discovering that you can freeze ice in the shape of space invaders. It’s a weird over-consuming hum in Ikea – in Borders today it was that, but melancholy. You could hear the reverberation getting deeper as things flew off the shelves. One poor sales assistant kept getting requests for books that she just couldn’t fill. All that’s left in that store is the obscure, the non-fiction and the pulpable.

The non-fiction thing’s a bit weird – by no means a revelation, but the fact that the average readers doesn’t seem to read non-fiction in anywhere near the quantities of fiction is sad. There’s so much great stuff out there! I do though, and the four books I bought myself from this Borders’ closing-down sale are:

  • The Ticking Is The Bomb, by Nick Flynn
  • Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
  • A Dull Roar, by Henry Rollins
  • From Hipsters to Gonzo: How New Journalism Rewrote the World, by Marc Weingarten


The sadness in Borders today was really weird and empty. People were there to buy up big, to CONSUME! …but only because time was running out. Only because of the death of one of the book stores who really encourage people to read, who otherwise wouldn’t. I’m not particularly sad that Borders is going or gone – I never really shopped there anyway, I’m just glad I got some cheap books out of their demise. I am sad, however, that those people who were in such a panic today to get their books before time ran out, may not bother to track down their local independent book-seller to seek out what was easy to get at Borders. They might just give up.

…But enough of that. As far as I know the sale’s going until they run out of books. So go pick the pockets of this dying business while you can.

6

It’s a Process

The word “process” implies some sort of replicable ritual, something which can be followed to the end to get results. The sad truth, alas, is that usually it doesn’t all go down in the right order, it’s usually heavily punctuated with coffee, washing, or walks to the library, and it often lacks really satisfying results. Creating a ritual around my writing is important, but perhaps the most helpful part of that ritual is when it doesn’t go to plan.

While walking through the cemetery early this week, I discovered the Springthorpe Memorial. It really moved me, but I had no idea how I could use that. I came home and executed some boring pages about nothing much.

Next evening, I was playing with the magnetic poetry-makers on my fridge and came up with the following, which I somehow feel was inspired by the character of Sonmi-451 in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. The poem read:
“How the monkey did wander
science-like
but sad.”

I wrote that down, because it made me sad.

The next morning I started working on a poem about the Springthorpe Memorial, using the idea of sad wandering, and talking about the fierce angels which guard the doctor’s “O Sweetheart Mine”. I’ve been researching all the sculptors who created the many statues around Melbourne, and I have no idea where that’s going to go but it seems useful.

And that’s the trajectory of just one piece. Just one piece which is still unfinished, so the “process” which guides me to the end of it may take a bunch of twists and turns along the way. The point is that I planned time to write about the Springthorpe Memorial, and it was balls. This doesn’t mean that I think getting up and making myself write is balls – far from, I find it very important. But in this case, the unplanned stuff was my way in – it was helpful.

14

Going Down Digital

You know Going Down Swinging, right? It’s a pretty nifty literature journal, jam packed with tasty pretty things. It’s produced on decent quality paper. It comes with a CD of spoken word, which is cool because it recognizes that not all poetry is page-bound…

In this same tradition of not being scared to embrace different forms, Going Down Swinging are moving bravely forward into the digital realm, and it’s quite exciting. Other journals have moved this way already – Sleepers Almanac have an iPhone app. Many journals have an online component which complements the print, such as Meanjin or Kill Your Darlings. But online-only publications? Bravery.

The next issue (#31) of Going Down Swinging will be a digital publication which “mixes video and animation, audio, richly coloured visual art, photography, and interactive text” – so not a boring page-on-a-screen kind of switch. My brain can’t quite picture what this will be like, so I’m excited!

The launch for Going Down Swinging issue #31 will be happening this Friday (17th June) at The Builder’s Arms, 211 Gertrude Street in Fitzroy. It starts at 8pm, and there’s going to be poetry and story-telling a-plenty. There’s also a promise of baked-goods, and that’s a good reason to go anywhere.

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Marketing, Expanding, Not Spamming Friends

I’ve just started a Facebook fan page for this here blog.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how to expand my readership, and whether that’s something that’s important to me (answer: “No, not really, I’d rather have loyal and engaged readers than many, many not-caring ones”). I’ve also been thinking about what kinds of connections I form with people outside my immediate peer group, and how I do that. All these things are connected with my reasons for starting the fan page. It’s also a bit about egoism.

Also, I’m feeling somewhat merciful toward all those friends who don’t read my blog anyway and have been putting up with my “NEW POST!” spam for over a year now. (Sorry guys). And I want to give people a chance to communicate with me outside commenting directly on my blog – which is becoming less common anyway, probably because it’s a bit… tricky. So if people don’t want to comment on my blog, what’s their other option? Twitter? Ok, but not the ideal forum for real discussion. Facebook has “like” functions, which require almost no thought at all other than the “liking” impulse, but they still express what someone thinks with minimal effort. And, as I’ve discovered in talking to other bloggers, some people are certainly more comfortable engaging via Facebook. Unless you’re in my direct friendship circle, you don’t have an opportunity to do that. Up until now. And, as per previous posts, I have noticed I’ve got some readers who aren’t my mum or boyfriend.

So! Go forth and LIKE, yo!

5

The Facelessness of Writing

Writing is a weird business. The main part of what we do is faceless – we spend time alone, curled over keyboards or notebooks, looking inside ourselves and picking things apart. When we do send things out into the world, it rarely involves live-action relationships with editors and the like. Emails, forums, blogs. So much of what we do happens under layer after layer of facelessness.

I don’t know what many of my favourite authors look like, or how they present in person. I was shocked to find John Marsden is such a confronting mixture of crude and intelligent. I’ll admit that Camus’ theories are more palatable than Sartre’s based on their author pics. Last week at the Emerging Writers’ Festival I was surprised by how much Carmel Bird just looked like someone’s mum. I love Alan Bissett’s writing all the more for his outgoing personality, and I’m reading Death of a Ladies’ Man in his very attractive accent. The way authors look and present themselves in person, face-to-face, can be worlds away from how we imagine them through their writing.

This made the Emerging Writers’ Festival an amusing space to meet and greet. The main thing that struck me over and over again during the two weeks was how weird it is that the two sides of our job are such polar opposites. Absolute isolation versus schmooze-fest. I’m not saying that either is preferable – I love both. But when someone talked about me without knowing I was in the room, or when I had the “a-ha!” moment where I connected someone’s writing projects to that person I’d been talking to for the last hour, it really struck me how singularly bizarre writing is.

5

NYWM Day 4

“Essential Reading” is my creative output from today, as suggested by the exercise on the National Young Writers’ Month blog.  “Blackout poetry” involves you, a sharpie, a book or newspaper you don’t want or need, and your “on” brain. For me, this resulted in a piece about what it is to be human in the modern world: something equal parts positive and negative – there’s the drive to connect with others and find pleasure, but there’s also the domineering will-to-power type stuff. I think it worked well. Hit the link above to view the piece (as a pdf). And give it a go yourself – it’s a good brain-starter!

As for National Young Writers’ Month itself and my goals for the month, I’ve started working on a short story I’ve been meaning to write for some time. I’ve also started thinking about possible destinations for things I’ve polished that are ready for submission… It’s all systems go here. While EWF’s wrapping up, NYWM is fulfilling my acronym-desiring project-based needs.

1

A Month of Reading: May

Maybe some context would be nice this month…
This month I got super-excited because Chris Currie (the man behind impressive blogging project, Furious Horses)’s novel came out. I met Linda Jaivin at a writers’ event, and she’s hilarious and wonderful. I finished up the last of my school assessments and discovered a love of Frankl along the way. I went on a family weekend away to Bendigo, which has two rather impressive used book shops. I made a life decision: myself and my photographer-boyfriend are the next Susan Sontag/Annie Leibovitz power couple. Or Patti Smith/Robert Mapplethorpe, perhaps. Depends how waifish I’m feeling on the day.

All these things have inspired…

A MONTH OF READING: May 2011:

Books Bought:
Where I’m Calling From, by Raymond Carver
A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
Film, by Sean Condon
The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster

Books Borrowed/Received:
Library:
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl
Losing The Last 5 Kilos, by Michelle Bridges
Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, by Nick Flynn
Eat Me, by Linda Jaivin
On Photography, by Susan Sontag

Borrowed:
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

Books Read:
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl
Eat Me, by Linda Jaivin
The Ottoman Motel, by Chris Currie

Currently Reading:
Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain de Botton
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, by Nick Flynn
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

–> question: is it interesting to know what’s going OUT from my book shelves too? My bookish “outfloox“, if you will?

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I had blog for breakfast

28th May, 3pm-4pm, Melbourne Town Hall.
“Blogging” panel, “In Conversation” with Jessica Au and Philip Thiel.

Philip Thiel leans back in his chair, sinking his teeth into the pork terrine he made after the i ching told him to “make a pork cake”. He clearly enjoys it – he doesn’t look like a man who over-indulges in a good terrine, and I wonder how big the whole dish was and what percentage of it he ate. Whether the i ching told him that, or if it was just a question of his own will-power.

My own will-power has told me not to indulge in the pork terrine – it’s tied up with what I had for breakfast. I had a $1 coffee from 7Eleven, which I still don’t think tastes as bad as $1 says it should, and I had a muesli bar with lots of nuts in it, and my body should take a long time to burn that off. And even though I’m taking the stairs, I doubt they provide the equivalent to “a workout”. And this is why I say “no thanks” to Philip Thiel’s pork terrine, despite how amazing it looks. Because, you know, that’s a valid thing to blog about.

The panel raises questions about self-censorship, and the encouraging consensus seems to be that while social networking and blogging are mediums rife with over-sharing, this is actually what we enjoy reading. Someone mentions that they read fourfour because they like the guy’s cat. In extremely weird circumstances someone mentions my blog without knowing I’m in the room – I wonder whether there’s some sort of personal thing here, equivalent to fourfour’s cat, which keeps her coming back?

I’ve recently discovered that personal non-fiction is enjoyable. Writing and reading. Pulling what you enjoy out of reading and putting it into your writing isn’t easy – why would anyone want to hear about what I had for breakfast? Sure, we care about fourfour’s cat, but if I had a cat it’d be boring. Right?

Nah. I recently wrote a piece about my brother and how I felt eating food he’d cooked for me. Turns out it’s one of the loveliest pieces I’ve ever written, and that’s because I allowed myself to think that interiority and my personal life is interesting.

Things carry some sort of heft when they’ve got the personal attached to them. And on blogs, this is super-important – it’s the personal stuff which helps make your voice your voice. It’s a medium where people actually come for that kind of content. And it’s incredibly enjoyable to write. It feels less starchy.

And so in writing a “review” or “wrap up” post for my day at the Emerging Writers’ Festival, I decided to blog about the thing I heard that made the deepest impression on me. Plenty of people could write any of the “And then he said…and she said…the next panel…” wrap-up posts I’m capable of writing, but the truth is they’re a bit boring. They’re dry. So here’s a post which includes what I had for breakfast yesterday. This morning, I just had blog for breakfast.

9

An Instant

I don’t reflect enough, really, on these things that I learn, and it’s not until I try to explain them to someone else that they start to make sense. ARTICULATE.

David Foster Wallace is filling me with a deep sense of despair right now,
“we are all trying to see each other through these tiny key holes.” Is that all it is, am I only ever able to get that tiny squeeze of you? I’d ask for more but I can’t fit a question like that through a key hole.

I’ve been reading something, and it’s impulsive and brilliant. It makes me think.

I have meta on the mind, form form form match it all up with the content, I’m struggling with originality.

This is the impulse that I’m trying to explain, a flash, an instant where I decided I’d like to post something to my blog. It happened in the time it took me to blink, probably less, and it’s taken me ten minutes to write down. There’s probably no possibility, really, for communication.

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