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What made Ernest Hemingway one of the most celebrated writers in history? His use of language was clear, concise, and yet profoundly evocative. Much of that ability stems from a technique known as the 'iceberg theory’ of writing...

I break it down as simply and quickly as possible at the following link:

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Love this list. Here’s that Michael K. Williams interview, by the way.

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Maybe you shouldn’t feel totally proud of yourself. Maybe the part of you that feels like a piece of shit motivates you to keep going. Maybe when great filmmakers do mediocre work in their later years, when they start doing the same things over and over again, I wonder if it’s because they’ve just become too pleased with themselves and they don’t have this crippling need to prove it anymore. I have such a need to prove myself.

An intimate interview with Desiree Akhavan, film's most exciting outsider

It's hard to get someone to talk about deep stuff in a half-hour interview slot... but she went there. This turned out to be a special one. If you're interested in how success and anxiety are tied up together, how our insecurities drive us, then this may be worth your time...

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How Beach House evolved into their best and boldest selves

“The current climate is so inspiring in terms of energy being vomited up, like a purging. It’s unbelievable how long you can go in a numb state… then you see something like women finally being able to tell people what actually happened and it snaps you awake.“

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When success finally comes, it’s never what you think. Never. All the bullshit that go with it takes a bit of getting used to: the reactions, the hostility. By the time that settled down, I realised my career was nose-diving quite badly. Ten years go by and it looks like it’s all over. Gone. You can’t even give records away. No one’s interested. You lost your record deal. No one wants to sign you. You realise that your songwriting has actually got a bit shit. [laughs] You’ve been corrupted by this desire to get the success back. You sell your soul a little bit.

How Gary Numan lost, then saved, an extraordinary career

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Who’s the main character in the life of an atheist? God. Who’s the main character in the life of a Christian? Sin. Who’s the main character in the life of a feminist? The patriarchy.

It’s like the harder you try to pull away, the bigger hold it has over you. In order to escape that fate of being consumed by my hatred or my sense of betrayal, I’ve really had to start incorporating these values I was raised with in ways that I can live with.

A ridiculously philosophical chat with Father John Misty

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You think, 'This is going to be a blockbuster' and you put tons of work into it, tons of money into it, but your open at the box office is zilch. You just never know what’s going to happen. But if you believe in your work and do the best you can do, that’s a real success. Doesn’t matter what the world thinks. I mean, it matters... you hope they love your film. But if they don’t, it’s not going to kill you. If you sell out and make something just to make money and it goes bust, then you’re going to die because you didn’t make any money and you didn’t do what you believe in.

David Lynch

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It requires courage to fail and even more courage to know that you're going to fail.

Colum McCann, Letters to a Young Writer

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Have you ever considered writing a book? Me too. I’ve been trying for years. Sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees. But you know what? I decided to lay it all out there and ask for some help from a master, someone who specialises in helping writers adrift in their own creativity. Here’s what happened...

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“I called up one of my business partners and said, ‘You know what? I’m done.’ We shut Empire down within a week. Doors closed, defaulted on all our business loans, our lease on the building – everything. The next day I had a full-blown panic attack. I thought, ‘My daughter is going to be born in February. It’s 31 October. I’ve got to figure this out.’”

The skater who became a shaman.

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Sir Was - ‘In the Midst’

“For years, I never finished anything. That was a good way around it. ‘Yeah, I just have to do a couple more things.’ But eventually I was like, ‘Fuck it! It’s too frustrating to keep this to myself. I’m going to stop making my own music and just play with others instead. That’ll be my thing: a sideman. It’s a pretty good life.’

“I’m not sure if that lasted a couple of days or weeks but I quickly realised, ‘I don’t have time for this anymore. I’m over 30. I need to fuckin’ put something out at least, even if it’s just for myself. The only failure here is not giving it a shot.’”

This long-awaited debut album is already one of the year′s best

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“This is a moment in history where you have to ask yourself whether whatever you’re working on is just sustaining a two-dimensional narrative. It may be based in fact but isn’t finding a way to cross these boundaries to the way other people think. I don’t really know how to cross that line and this is what scares me. 

It feels like people have solidified their ideologies and they’re only looking to perpetuate them through the way they seek information. Ever since the election, I’ve started consuming a lot more conservative news and I’m struck by how different their daily narrative is from, say, the New York Times.

That grey area between the two that allows for sober and thoughtful work to have influence… I don’t know where that place is. I haven’t found it yet.”

A photographer returns from war to make sense of home

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Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood jammin’ in a garden in Los Angeles as director Paul Thomas Anderson captures it on video. I think I played this about 1,003 times last week.

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Moondog: The vagabond who became a countercultural icon

NYC's most distinct underground figure is the stuff of urban legend: a blind homeless composer, dressed as a viking, who influenced a wave of seminal artists. Now a film is finally bringing his story to light.

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When you’re at a wedding, usually people are completely done with their decisions and the event just becomes this little ceremony to get on with things. But there’s been a few occasions where reality has dawned upon one of the people getting married, who’s now thinking of how their life might change. The doors behind them are closing and this is a serious thing. ‘What the hell am I doing?’ In this case, it was just someone having one of those existential freak-outs where you see yourself from above or that feeling that comes when you’re standing on the edge of a cliff and you know you can just take a step and plunge into the abyss.

Jens Lekman’s guide to rebooting yourself creatively

Jens Lekman is one of my favourite people to interview. So honest, insightful and funny. We had a chat about conquering self-doubt, battling hopelessness in a dark political climate and his secret career as a wedding singer.

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A photographer’s ode to Baltimore’s beautiful street scenes

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I think the democratisation of the arts has fucked it up for everybody. In some ways there should be gatekeepers and there aren’t anymore, so there is just so much available to us and so much of it is bad!

A blunt conversation about life online with Bret Easton Ellis