John August

John

Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur

First Person, Rant, So-Called Experts

Last night, I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture at Trinity University in San Antonio. While I speak at various screenwriter-oriented functions fairly often, this was unusual in that the event was university-wide, and the focus wasn’t specifically on film.

Part of the deal was that I had to announce the title of my speech months in advance. I picked, “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur,” figuring that in the intervening months I would think of inspiring examples of how the World of Tomorrow was going to be a wonderland of possibility for the undergraduates in the audience.

But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to talk about the future. Instead, I wanted to focus on one of the biggest challenges of today: in our celebration of the amateur, we kind of forget what it means to be professional.

As I spoke with various classes before the big presentation, I promised I’d post the whole speech on the site for those students who had night classes. And, of course, for anyone else who might be interested.

Let me warn you: this is __long__. My speech lasted 45 minutes, and that was without a lot of riffing. So if you’d rather read the whole thing as a .pdf, you can find it [here](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/professional.pdf).

. . .

It’s a pleasure to be here talking with you tonight. Over the last two days, I’ve been visiting a lot of classes, talking about screenwriting and movies, and well, basically talking about myself. Which I’m really good at. But when I agreed to give a formal public lecture, one of the requirements was that the presentation actually have a title. By which I mean a topic, a thesis. A point.

It all feels very academic, and I love that. I miss that. None of you will believe me now, but some day you’ll look back on your college careers and be wistful. Nostalgic. Because there’s something comforting about having to write a fifteen page paper on the use of floral imagery in “Pride and Prejudice.”

I think what it is, is that even if you’re completely wrong, it just doesn’t matter that much. For the rest of your life, you’re going to get called on bullshitting. In college, you’re graded on it.

Anyway.

I decided I wanted my lecture tonight to be not strictly about screenwriting, but about writing in general. Because everyone in this room is a writer. You might write screenplays; you might write research papers. You definitely write emails. Every one of you is, and will be, a professional writer in some field.

So I wanted to talk about what that means.

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If a trade paper has a blog, is it still a trade?

Rant

Question: Would The Hollywood Reporter sneak into Sony Pictures late at night, grab the director’s rough cut of a new movie, then publish a review of it the next morning?

No. They’d lose all credibility and respect of the filmmakers and studio folks who constitute their readership. There would be outrage.

Instead, The Hollywood Reporter (like its fellow “trade” newspaper, Variety) waits to review movies in their finished form — or at least, in a public screening, such as a film festival. The reviews aren’t always positive, but the circumstances surrounding the review are fair.

Would The Hollywood Reporter run a review of a script in production?

Highly doubtful. To my knowledge, they’ve never done so. Likely, that’s because they recognize what a disservice that is to the filmmakers. Movies change significantly over the course of production. Reviewing the screenplay while the movie’s in production would be (in my opinion) worse than reviewing a rough cut, because it’s not acknowledging the role the director, actors and other departments play.

So I was concerned to see this entry in the Hollywood Reporter’s blog:

Thanks to Stax, IGN FilmForce’s resident Bond maven, for this link to a description of the new James Bond script. If you don’t want to read the spoilers, don’t go there!

If you followed the link to IGN, you’d see it’s actually another link to Latino Review, which has the actual article. To be clear: The Hollywood Reporter blog didn’t publish a review of the script. They published a link, which in turn led to another link.

Still, this seemed pretty unusual for The Hollywood Reporter. So I called Anne Thompson, the deputy editor whose picture runs alongside the text on the blog. We had a good conversation about her decision to include the piece, and the challenging distinction between capital-J journalism and what happens on the internet. She was thoughtful and forthright, and ultimately revised the piece to remove the link — one of the real benefits of the digital age.

I consider that specific issue resolved, and thank Anne for attending to it so quickly.

Part of the reason the issue resonated for me is that I’m in the middle (okay, beginning) of writing a public lecture that I’m giving in a few weeks as Trinity University. I had to announce my lecture title months ago, so I picked: “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur.” And this is certainly a good example.

It is easy to empathize with the frustrations of a professional journalist who gets “scooped” by film geeks still in high school. Writing under a pseudonym at Ain’t It Cool News, YoMamasBeeeotch can spill all the dirt on an upcoming James Cameron project, without the burdens of truth, accuracy or grammar. When criticized, these writers generally fall back on the defense of, “I’m not a professional journalist! I’m just a fan who wants great movies!”

The central question of my lecture — for which I don’t currently have a meaningful answer — is what does it mean to be a professional writer? It can’t just be getting paid, because in the age of AdSense, the blogger can out-earn the reporter. It’s not the size of the readership, because many blogs attract more eyeballs than traditional papers do.

My hunch is that the distinction between professional and amateur lies in the implied contract between writer and reader. The professional writer is promising a certain level of accuracy, consistency and forthrightness.

That’s why I chafed at seeing that link in The Hollywood Reporter, when I wouldn’t have blinked an eye if it were in CHUD. But these are murky times.

In which I attend the Grammy Awards

First Person, Los Angeles

As I might have [mentioned](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/dude-i-got-a-grammy-nomination), I got nominated for a Grammy Award (along with Danny Elfman) in the Best Song TV/Movie/Visual Media category for “Wonka’s Welcome Song” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The nomination came as a surprise, in that (a) I didn’t realize the Grammys were coming up, (b) I didn’t know the song was eligible, and (c) it’s an absurd choice for Best Song. It’s a fun ditty, sure, kind of a riff on “It’s a Small World” from the eponymous Disney theme park ride. But there it was, on the list.

I promptly called Danny Elfman. After making plans for a play-date for our respective offspring, I asked if he planned on attending the awards. He was horrified at the prospect, which I guess makes sense for a professional musician with a shelf full of awards.

But me, hell. When am I going to get nominated for a Grammy again?

So I went.

Here’s my first-hand account.

To begin with, “Music’s Biggest Night” is actually “music’s longest afternoon.” They give out awards in 108 categories. Of those, only 11 are televised. The other 97 are passed out during the pre-telecast ceremony, which begins at 1:30 p.m. We left the house at noon to get there in time.

The pre-telecast was held in the West Hall of the convention center, next door to Staples Center, where the main awards would be held. It was friendly and low-key. Anoushka Shankar and Michael Bublé performed (separately), and most award-recipients were quick to get on and off stage.

My category was #31 on the list. The whole time, I was thinking about what I would say in the (admittedly unlikely) event that my name was in the envelope. I settled on:

Hi, wow. [Stare at trophy in disbelief] I’d like to thank the Grammy academy. Of course, Danny Elfman, for writing really catchy music. And especially Tim Burton for saying, “Sure, yeah, melting puppets. Singing. Great!” Anyway, this means a lot. Thanks. [Hold up trophy]

And then I’d start to go off stage in the wrong direction, only to be corrected by a pretty young woman who would take my elbow and lead me the right way.

As it turned out, it ended up being a lot simpler. I clapped politely while Glen Ballard accepted the award for the song he wrote for The Polar Express. He was gracious, so I certainly can’t begrudge him. And I’m happy I lost to someone who at least showed up.

We ducked out of the pre-telecast awards during the gospel section (sorry, Jesus), in the hopes of getting properly liquored before the grown-up Grammys, which started at 5 p.m. The instructions on the so-you’ve-been-nominated-for-a-Grammy sheet noted that alcohol would be not be served after 4:30 p.m. While this was technically true, the more accurate description of the situation could be found on signs at all of the food stations:

SORRY, NO ALCOHOL AT THIS EVENT.

No, really. There was a kind of sad, strange comedy in eavesdropping:

  • GUY IN SUIT
  • Could I get a vodka tonic?
  • SERVER
  • Sorry, there’s no alcohol.
  • GUY IN SUIT
  • How about wine?
  • SERVER
  • No, there’s no alcohol.
  • GUY IN SUIT
  • Just beer, then.
  • SERVER
  • There’s no alcohol at all.
  • GUY IN SUIT
  • Anywhere?
  • SERVER
  • No, sir.

Now, in reality, if Kanye West had wanted a mojito, someone, somewhere would have found some mint leaves to muddle. But for the hoi polloi, the event was drier than a Kansas wedding. I was left with Diet Pepsi and rage to wash down my nachos.

Fortunately, the Grammys themselves were fun.

Having been to quite a few premieres and fancy shindigs, I can say that the Grammys were the most consistently entertaining. The musical performances were good, the groan factor was low, and every celebrity had to walk by my seat at least once.

Our seats were on the floor, next to the aisle. Whenever a performer and/or presenter needed to go from their seat to backstage, they were walked by us. Even better, running across the aisle next to our seats were thick cables covered with a floor mat. Although marked with white tape, this hazzard was very easy to trip over. Many celebrities did.

Celebrities who tripped and/or wobbled included:

* Sting
* Sir Paul McCartney
* Teri Hatcher (meta-alert!)
* Jennifer Love Hewitt
* The woman in Destiny’s Child who is not Beyonce or Kelly

In general, I’m not star-struck. But the combination of mild danger and celebrity almost made up for the lack of alcohol. The guy sitting next to me won a Grammy for mixing the Green Day album. So that’s cool.

The official after party was back at the West Hall. Everyone knows that the official party sucks and that all the cool people go to their own secret after parties. However, we were not invited to any of the secret after parties. So we went to the normal one.

It took forever to get in, but the food was fairly tasty. And the drinks? Free-flowing. On the whole, it felt like a big Hollywood premiere party, with good production design and some questionable entertainment choices. (Interpretative dancers, for a start.)

We were home by midnight. There’s no Grammy to set on the mantelpiece, but on the whole, it was a fun 12 hours. I haven’t watched the show on the TiVo yet, but I doubt I’ll see myself. The closest call probably came when Chris Martin of Coldplay galloped down the aisle.

God, I wish he’d tripped.

Footnotes on the footer

Meta

In my [previous post](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/redesign-part-one) about the redesign, I glossed over what was actually was a fair amount of thought and logic behind what I did (and re-did). Based on the comments, some of that thinking might not be clear.

Why not just stick them on their own page? If you want archives, click on archives, and go to the archives. Seems unnecessary to hang them on the bottom of every page whether they’re wanted or needed for that visit, or no.

All that stuff at the bottom of the page seems overkill and excessive server to client material.

So here’s my rationale. (Beware, this is all very information-design-y, and may make your eyes glaze over. Caveat lector.)

__If you read the site frequently, you’ll never see the footer anyway.__
Since I only post every two or three days, only the top article will be new to most readers. You’d stop scrolling once you hit an article you’d already read.

So the footer isn’t overkill if you never see it.

__Many of my visitors come via search engines.__
Looking through the logs, it’s clear that a significant percentage of traffic on the site ends up here because of a screenwriting-related search. If a visitor lands on an article about [what I/E means](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/what-does-ie-mean), he’d likely have no sense of what else was available on the site. To reverse a metaphor, he’d only see the tree, not the forest.

Yes he _could_ click on a link for an Archives page, but I wouldn’t. By sticking the footer on every page of the site, I can help anyone landing on any page get a sense of how much is available.

__It increases the stickiness.__
“Stickiness” is an awkward term to describe how much time a person spends at a given website, which helps determine ad rates. This site doesn’t have any ads, but it does have a lot of information I’d like people to have. So, unlike my house, I’m happy to have people hang around for a while.

__An Archives page means another layer of clicking.__
Let’s say you want to find an entry about Big Fish. With the fat footer, you click on “Big Fish,” and you get a list of all the articles in that category. Pick your article and read it.

With an Archives page, you’d first get a list of categories, then a new page with the entries. That’s not complicated, but it’s an extra step, and an extra kind of page to keep straight. (That is, a main Archives page, and a Category page.)

For the same reason, I’ve chosen to have the Archives page list all the articles in a chosen category, rather than breaking it down into chunks of 10 or 20 articles. The smaller chunks look nicer, but are ultimately harder to mentally process. (_Was that other article I was interested in on page 2 or 3 of the results?_)

Yes, there are slick AJAX-y ways of doing all the category stuff on a single page. However, a lot of these solutions reset every time you come back to the page, which makes churning through a bunch of articles frustrating.

__It’s not that much more work for the server.__
The server is off-site, so I can’t give any quantitative figure. But in testing, I haven’t seen any difference in page-loading times with or without the fat footer. Generating the archive list for the footer is exactly one line of php:

If generating the footer were slowing things down, it would be (almost) trivial to cache it. But I don’t see that being a factor.

Still, the footer means extra information to deliver to the client. That’s one reason I’ve dropped the default number of articles per page, and why I’m pretty conscientious about keeping images reasonably-sized.

Does the site sometimes load slowly? Yes. And too often, it goes down altogether. It’s a hosting situation that I hope to have resolved in the near future.

__The archives listing helps search engines index the site.__
This is debatable, honestly. True, it puts every article in the site just two links away, making it easier to spider through the site. In the old days of search engine optimization, this was a major goal. Now it’s probably much less important, because there are now many different ways for the Googles of the world to find, process and deliver the information on the site.

I mentioned before that this is part one of the redesign. The second phase will occur this week, and will make it more clear why I changed some of the things I did.