- Rage Against the Algorithm
- Posts
- Mistakes as Mentors
Mistakes as Mentors
Books by Leslie Jamison, Sean Enfield, Jonathan Eig, and Chuck Palahniuk.
Brendan O'Meara
March 01, 2024
For a couple weeks, visit combeyond.bu.edu, use the promo code NARRATIVE25 at checkout and get 25% your tuition for the two-day Power of Narrative Conference. And, no, I don’t get any dough.
The Riff
Advice is such a thorny thing.
We seek advice for reassurance (reassurance is futile). We seek advice, often, for shortcuts, or to pave over the dirt roads that are rattling our chassis. We might listen to podcasts for a “hack.”
The algorithm fed me a quote from William Faulkner:
“There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.”
My mistakes are legion. But they are also my best mentors, the best teachers. I wish there was a playbook, a universal truth. Truth is, each generation finds out the hard way that the rules of the past are obsolete, the landscape underfoot erodes into the ocean, and so a new playbook must be drawn up, torn up, rewritten. Each generation must examine the game tape of a new contest. Mix metaphors while you’re at it.
We can agree there are universal skills. In a digital world, the better you can fall in love with microfilm the deeper your well will be. In a digital world, if you can work up the courage to — gasp! — knock on someone’s door and put a face to your out-of-town area code and email address, the more trust you can earn.
Maybe today’s playbook is learning audio and video as funnels to create trust and build an audience that you can leverage into other things.
Seeking advice from a hero might feel like getting the skeleton key to every door but what worked for Michael Lewis and Susan Orlean won’t work for you. It just won’t.
My past self — that sorry sad sack of shit — routinely offers me sage counsel. When I ask twenty-eight-year-old B.O. for advice, I get the heebie-jeebies and that embarrassing shiver down my back. You did what? You thought that would work? That’s how you tried to get on the Rachel Ray Show? (Don’t ask)
I only wish I put my time into making more mistakes rather than seeking the Answers.
As you know, this rager starts here, and goes up to 11!
The Books
One. Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison. One of Jamison’s close friends in this book called her exhausting and this book can, at times, be exhausting. It’s wildly funny in places.
Two. Holy American Burnout! by Sean Enfield. I love a good essay collection. This is a good essay collection.
Three. King: A Life by Jonathan Eig. Starting this soon. I wanted to read it earlier, but given I was/am in the throes of writing a biography, I didn’t want to read it and be like … Ooooohhhhhh, that’s how you do it? Shyiiiiit.
Four. Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk.
The Other Stuff
Six. Love reading about the nuts and bolts of things. Here comedian Taylor Tomlinson breaks down the evolution of her closing number for her new Netflix special. It’s like testing recipes, or different sentences, and it’s about word play and syllable play. Really cool. (Oh, by the way, we rage so HARD against the algorithm, that we have been without Netflix for about a year. And it’s OK. Like, it’s fine. We miss some things. It gives us more time to rage.)
Seven. I love hearing chefs talk about the work. Many parallels to writing.
Nine. Louisa Thomas is a boss. She wrote a profile on the reclusive/elusive/not-effusive Nikola Jokic.
Ten. Hua Hsu on zine culture. I love zines. I made a new one, too. It’s a paper podcast!
The Return of a Once-Great Institution!
40-minute CNFin’ Happy Hour Returns Thursday, March 14, 5 p.m. PST
We will hang. We will toast. We will hold forth.
Meeting ID : 856 8680 8933
Passcode: 3hMSzT
Thanks for reading this rage against the algorithm.
See you on April Fool’s Day, friend.
b.o.