Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

The purpose of this site is not to provide an outlet for my television disappointments, but I cannot resist.

Last night’s Top Chef finale broke my heart.

It was fan (and personal) favorite Carla’s to lose. Not only did she lose it, but she lost it for the worst possible reason. To come so far on the merits of your own work, your own passion and your own voice and then to go down because you listened to someone else is unconscionable.

Season Three Loser Helper was there to be your dog, Carla, not your co-captain. You said you’ll never make this mistake again. I hope you get the chance.

1. Thanks to a new reader for alerting me to a flaw in DCWYTBMA’s comments section (too many requirements?). I have made some adjustments and it should be easier to post.

2. I am working on revamping my categories so it’s easier to find posts that are related to each other.

You might not realize it from stopping by now and again, but there is a whole greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts thing happening here. (I just don’t have the site designed in a way that allows you to make the most of the awesome.)

3. I am about to finish Junot Diaz’s THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. It offers, in my opinion, a master class on awesomeness.

Which got me wondering if y’all would be up for a DCWYTBMA book club. We would all read the same book and then I would lead an online discussion that focuses on how said work can teach us to be better writers/creators/thinkers/etc.

I don’t know if we quite have the critical mass needed to pull this off. Maybe we could do a trial run using a movie in order to keep the time commitment down.

4. I thought this piece in the Telegraph (U.K.) on the changing relationship between writer and reader was worth linking to. So I linked to it!

I found this symbol spray-painted on the wall in my basement.

What does it all mean?

A reader writes:

Do ghostwriting credits carry any extra weight with agents? Does this help you with an industry “in” as well as the learning curve of book writing?

When I worked for a literary agency, we often got query letters from aspiring writers who had what you might call “related experience.” In other words, they had written copy or marketing materials or press releases. In some cases, they had ghostwritten speeches or articles for the opinion page or even books.

At first, I paid extra attention to people with related experience. I believed (and still do) that all writing counts. Even if you spend your entire day naming subdivisions, it all contributes (if obliquely) to your art’s grand design.

The problem is that people (related experience or not) invariably query too soon. The typical agent probably gets more query letters from people who want to be published than they do from people who are ready to be published. As a result, all kinds of things that should count toward credibility end up in the category of “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

For example, let’s say you get a query letter about a murder mystery set in Antarctica, and it’s written by someone who lived in Antarctica for five seasons. Great, right? It’s set in a very specific place and the guy has lived in the very specific place.

But then the partial comes and you immediately see that the writer has no ability to evoke Antarctica. He’s thinks he can, but he can’t. Five years from now he’ll have that skill. Ten years from now he’ll not only be able to evoke Antarctica, but he’ll have the savvy to use that experience metaphorically in a book about a community of germaphobes who live an extremely isolated existence in the middle of Manhattan.

All that said, you will want to mention your ghostwriting credentials if said project

a. was published by a major house

b. was published by a smaller house but sold well

c. involved a high-profile collaborator

d. is supremely kick-ass.

Just know that anything and everything you put in front of an agent is going to be met with a certain amount of self-protecting skepticism. You never want your query to hinge on one thing. Spread the awesome around and you’ll do fine.

Dana Stevens of Slate nicely sums up what Joaquin Phoenix’s “public decompensation” (decomposition?) is all about:

There are multiple theories as to what Phoenix’s public decompensation is all about. (He announced in October that he was giving up acting for good to pursue a career as a musician and has since had one disastrous live show in which he rapped inaudibly and fell off the stage.) He could be spiraling down into alcohol or drug addiction—the actor has done a stint in rehab in the past. He could be mentally ill. Or the whole thing could be an elaborate hoax, staged with the help of his friend and brother-in-law Casey Affleck, who’s planning to direct a documentary that’s ostensibly about Phoenix’s transition from acting to rapping but will (according to theory No. 3) turn out to be the chronicle of an Andy Kaufman-style piece of performance art.

I hope it’s theory No. 3 because I do love me a good art project. There is something about that level of commitment to an idea. (This is also the theme of one of my favorite movies in recent years The Prestige.)

I also love the uneasiness that it creates in the audience. If he’s joking, then why am I not really laughing? If he’s not joking, then why do I find this all so funny?

Two years ago, I envisioned this website an art project. I decided against it because my mandate is to help people. (If I’m the fake headmaster of some kind of real/not-real Institute for Awesome Studies, then it’s about me not you.) Still, even thinking about DCWYTMBA in that way expanded my horizons.

Here is an exercise for you:

Ask yourself what your current project would look like if you erased the boundaries between art and artist and audience and turned it all into one crazy, big-ass THING. How might you go about the work differently? What kind of character or personae might you develop? How would that personae free you up? How would that personae limit you?

And then the most important question of all:

How far would you have to take your idea in order to transcend the ordinary?

Let’s me get this right out of the way right up front: I have no beef with this kind of movie or the much-maligned “chick lit” genre from which it came.

I bear no malice to either version of Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic. In fact, I’m a huge fan of light, frivolous entertainment. (I’m not even going to qualifying that statement with a face-saving “if done well.”)

No, the reason I cringed all the way through this preview had nothing to do with the movie and everything to do with the economy.

• Because it’s weird to see a department store so full.
• Because it’s weirder still to see women fighting over shoes they don’t need that they’ll then pay for with money they don’t have.
• Because when she’s desperately chopping her credit card out a block of ice, instead of laughing knowingly (I can’t control my spending either!!!) I’m rooting for her to put the whole mess back in the freezer before she ends up on the street.
• Because when she says, “You speak Prada?” I expect the camera to cut to a homeless guy who says, “No, but I used to . . . I used to.”

I realize that Confessions of a Shopaholic is a comedy, and that it’s making fun of conspicuous consumption. But the context is all wrong. Funny how you can make a solid piece of entertainment, and then the world around you suddenly makes you seem completely slightly tone deaf.

So what does this mean for you?

If you’re reading this, then I’m guessing you’re not part of the old zeitgeist. Which means you have an opportunity to be part of the next one. Confessions of a Shopaholic will probably do just fine, but two years from now we won’t be telling stories like this. We’ll be telling stories like this _________. (Where the blank goes is where you go.)

At the beginning of the year, I set the ambitious goal of helping 100 new people through this blog. Unfortunately, according to my site stats, my contact page has been languishing. (Bio and About do great, but Contact . . . not so much.)

And so, with the sound of Robin Hoodian trumpets, I present the text of the newly christened I Help U! tab:

I started this blog to help people. It’s that simple. I, Dennis Cass, want to help U, dear Reader, become a better writer, artist, rodeo clown, whatever.

Said help takes many forms. The most common is the reader question. Drop me an e-mail at dennis<dot>cass<at>gmail<dot>com and I will answer your question with an eye toward increased awesomeness.

In some cases, I get more involved.

We might talk through an idea you’re struggling with, or I might give you feedback on a proposal you’re writing.

I might offer some insight into how to decide between agents, or deliver a rousing pep talk on the benefits of a healthy diet and daily exercise.

There are no rules for this project other than the ones we invent as we go along, but it lives and dies with you.

Please take that first step. I joke around a lot, but in this case I’m not kidding.

Better?

Rad science screencast Grand Unified Weekly has been put on hiatus.

Not that I hold the fate of the universe in my hands, but this makes me wish I would’ve loved up the show more thoroughly in my previous post.

But all is not lost. Good work (and the good people who make it) have a way of resurfacing.

Best of all, you’re going to help make that happen. Because you care about awesomeness, I’m humbly asking you to head over to GUW and give them some comments love.

Post as a quick, anonymous “come back soon” or a lengthy love letter that has your avatar next to it. (You know, the one with Trinity from The Matrix.)

Click here, here or here to arrive at the relevant post. I won’t forget it. Neither will the universe.

As I mentioned back in December, I’m teaching creative nonfiction at Carleton College this winter. (The course description is in this post.) Recently we were talking about how to attribute quotes and I said:

“In ten years, all this talk of ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ will be gone. People will spend so much time online—and computing will be so ubiquitous—that people won’t bother making the distinction between a Facebook friend and a ‘real’ friend. It’ll all just merge together . . . but for now you’ll want to call out that difference.”

Most of the students laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laughter. A couple of them looked horrified, as if they didn’t want me even joking about it.

I was probably 25% kidding and 75% serious, but after the brief discussion we had I may have to revise those numbers. Conventional wisdom says that young people and technology go together like peas and carrots. But it’s not that simple.

If you really start talking to young people about computers, the Internet, etc. you’ll find it can be just as complicated for them as it is for us.

Score one for the humans.

I’m generally not one for sudden outbursts of digital enthusiasm, but I’ll say this:

Hooray for Tina Brown!

With newspapers cutting back, she is cutting up? with Book Beast, the new Daily Beast book site. If you haven’t checked it out, I encourage you to give it a look.

Here’s what I took away:

“Long tail” mentality

The “Rediscovery” tag says it all. Thanks to the persistence of the web, there is hope even for obscure, dead Norwegian novelists. That thing you wrote only dies the day you give up on it.

Video saved the literary star

The conventional wisdom says that books and TV are an awkward match. But books and Web video work surprisingly well. Maybe it’s the size of the image. Maybe it’s the fact that you can showcase Chuck Klosterman, John Grisham, David Denby and James Baldwin all in one clickable party strip. Either way, if you’re an author you need to get on board.

Art + Commerce + Whatever = fine by most

There is no reason why serious criticism, service-oriented reviews, profiles, features, gossip, scandal and publishing news all can’t inhabit the same page. While you always want to stay focused, you’re also freer than you ever have been. So go mix that sh*t up, yeah?