“Everyone takes pause at 40. It’s the age you have to assess everything in your life. It’s the fictitious marker that’s always coming up when you’re young. The world really does look at you to kind of have it together by 40, and be successful by 40. Whatever success means. If you’re still really kind of a mess when you’re 40, then it’s, ‘Woo, boy, that’s a loser. That guy’s a loser.’”
- Writer/director Paul Feig, on turning 40, in a sweet EW piece about growing up
“I think that the number one thing that I didn’t understand when I was younger was that everything would change constantly. I think there was this misconception that the moment is forever and therefore when things weren’t going well, I was just in a state of active despair and I feel like I suffered more than I needed to during years when, in fact, I was unfettered and should have been having the time of my life! What was the big deal? Looking back, I’m just like, “Why didn’t I read 50 more books instead of spinning my wheels the way I did.” Everything will change and I think the other big point is “don’t worry about the industry, just keep getting better.”
- Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan, asked in this excellent interview in Paper Magazine if she had advice for twentysomething writers. BTW, have you read A Visit From The Good Squad? Everyone I know loves that book. Just saying.
I found out this morning that one of the most exemplary writers and journalists of our time has decided to open up his laptop and produce a thoughtful (though infrequently updated) weblog, titled “The Audacity of Despair.” The writer I’m referring to is, of course, David Simon, who is best known as the creator and show-runner of The Wire, a show that has already entered the cultural canon as one of the best American works of fiction (in any medium) of the last 100 years. That’s not hyperbole or opinion. That is fact.
However, there are handful of other things you may not know about David Simon, which, I think, make him a phenomenal role model for us aspiring grown-ups. They are as follows.
In college, J-Zone was one of my favorite hip-hop artists. He made a series of loopy, funny and inventive albums, like Pimps Don’t Pay Taxes, $ick of Bein’ Rich and To Love a Hooker, among others. The beats were weird, the songs hilariously ignorant and the personality was a strict departure from any other notable artists from the height of the backpack rap era. And it didn’t go anywhere.
A few years ago, J-Zone gave music up as his primary career, to pursue other interests, including writing and teaching. He has a new book out, Root for the Villain: Rap, Bullshit and A Celebration of Failure, where he hilariously chronicles his exploits in the world of hip-hop in the early ‘00s, why he got out of the business and his lifelong aversion to bullshit. It’s a great, funny read and can be purchased from his website, http://govillaingo.com.
After nearly a decade in the music industry, you left it behind to make a living in other ways. Did you seek out advice from other former musicians about how to make transition out of music?
I did, but I didn’t get much help [laughs]. Most musicians do this forever. Look at it this way: If 25- year-olds with Master’s degrees and PHDs can’t find 9 to 5 jobs, imagine being in your 30s or 40s with a giant gap in your job resume. Most professional musicians either never had jobs or they did like telemarketing, customer service, bar tending, or retail in short spurts to pay bills while they pursued their dream. We never saw 9 to 5 jobs as careers and places to grow – they were temporary cash. So most musicians I asked thought I was crazy for even trying to get work outside of the music biz. And the ones who made the jump didn’t want to talk about it because there’s a stigma attached to being a professional musician who gets a job. It’s like an indicator of “I wasn’t good enough to make it.” So it becomes a pride issue. I know that reality is reality and it rarely has anything to do with one’s talent or personal worth, but artists have fragile egos. So I’m still trying to find new avenues that are away from the music biz, but not traditional 9 to 5s. I didn’t last very long in the 9 to 5 jobs I took.
Over the weekend, the NY Times reported on an escalating bidding war between the big publishing houses for the rights to publish Amanda Knox’s memoirs. Publishing experts anticipate Ms. Knox, who has yet to share her story with any major news outlets, will receive a seven-figure advance and is likely to sell millions when her memoir comes out.
As we here at yr an adult know that many of our readers are currently working on, planning to work, or pretending to work on your own book, we thought it would be a good idea to extrapolate a few lessons from Ms. Knox’s situation to help you get your book deal:
If you pull all this off, that book deal might be coming your way, too.