Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Rerun: Doing Content for a Brave New World

Despite my cheering of the Internet, I'm basically a traditionalist. I'm old school when it comes to writing.

The reason being I was influenced at an early age by classic articles in Reader's Digest. And I believe that since everything goes in cycles, the style would be fresh again very soon, when the current generation comes into power.

They would never have been exposed - most of them anyway - to the style of yesteryear. And after all that focus on the youth, old school will be cool again. If old people live long enough, they will be cool again.

The old school style I like so much can be explained as a hat-wearing, suit-donning 1950s guy who knows what a shoehorn is.

Fuck, man, I'm very bad at explaining styles. Okay, it's like when that boyband sang Uptown Girl, or when Michael Buble did covers of classics. Josh Groban singing Somewhere over the Rainbows for Oprah's farewell.

See, a style is a mentality, a personality. You embody that personality, or you showcase a side of you - becoming a simplified version of yourself - and you speak as that character.

Yeah, yeah, you can say I'm wanking but it's true, it's true. I've met really raucous and lewd people whose writing style is very dignified. All writers I ever knew, are different from their styles. It's an act, a performance. Writers are actors, telling a story.

Ah, fuck it. Time to shut up and write. Fuck off!