Gene Weingarten on quitting pre-med and deadlines

  • Mother Jones: According to—uh—Wikipedia, you majored in psychology, but spent most of your time at the school paper. What were you writing then, and at what point did you know you wanted to do this for a living?
  • Gene Weingarten: I entered NYU intent on being a doctor, a career choice that got derailed for reasons pragmatic, emotional, and philosophical. Pragmatic: I flunked chemistry, probably the easiest course in the pre-med syllabus. Emotional: I walked into the college newspaper and discovered the elation delivered by a byline. Philosophical: I understood that with the combination of a doctor's license and my attraction to opiates, I'd likely be dead at 30. I wound up quitting college with three credits to go, to hook up with a teenage Puerto Rican street gang. It led to this [http://nymag.com/news/features/crime/48271/]. I never went back to college.
  • MJ: To parrot the predictable-journalist question you asked Garry Trudeau: Where do you come up with your ideas? Do you have a process?
  • GW: Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse, is a deadline.
gene weingarten   writing   mother jones   don't let schooling interfere with education   creative limits   fertile failure   journalism  

You may recall Gene Weingarten as the author of “Fatal Distraction,” an agonizing account of parents who lost their babies after accidentally leaving them locked in their hot cars—a story that won him a second Pulitzer Prize.

You may recall Gene Weingarten as the author of “Fatal Distraction,” an agonizing account of parents who lost their babies after accidentally leaving them locked in their hot cars—a story that won him a second Pulitzer Prize.

tweets   creative limits   intellectual clot-busters   gene weingarten  

I recognize that there are certain types of games for which the photorealistic graphics are suited,” he said. “But what I don’t like is that any and all games are supposed to be photorealistic.” He prefers to direct his team’s efforts and resources toward the quality of the gameplay—the choices and challenges inherent in the game, also known as the game mechanics. Mario, his most famous creation, owes his appearance to the technological limitations of the first Donkey Kong game. The primitive graphics—there were hardly enough pixels to approximate a human form—compelled Miyamoto to give Mario white gloves and red overalls (so that you could see his arms swing), a big bushy mustache and a red hat (to hide the fact that the engineers couldn’t yet do mouths or hair that moved), and a big head (to exaggerate his collisions). Form has always followed functionality. The problem now, if you want to call it one, is the degree of functionality.
Shigeru Miyamoto, quoted in The New Yorker.
shigeru miyamoto   creative limits   video games  

First, I tried holding my cell phone camera, but that didn’t work and left me with just one hand to gesture and stuff, so I thought that I could maybe use photobooth on my Mac. I knew it would look like I’d used photobooth, so I thought it would be fun to take advantage of that and embrace its limitations.

Wil Wheaton, on the assembly of this meta-prank.

Limits can liberate.

wil wheaton   geek culture   creative limits  

2009 First Class Love Stamp by Jeanne Greco, © 2009 United States Postal Service. I’m not usually a fan of “love” stamps—give me a Universal Monsters or Elvis stamp any day—but when I finally ran out of my leftover Christmas stamps and spotted this clever design at the Post Office, this poker junkie knew he’d found his next go-to stamp. I also appreciated the following from Greco’s press release: In recent years, Jeanne has enjoyed more intimacy in her work—she has found her designs shrinking in size: “I like to work within the borders of a limited space. I am drawn to the details of a letterform and enjoy the challenge of a logo project. I am inspired by small, beautiful objects. No wonder it led me to a postage stamp.” I’ve long felt that self-imposed limits on creativity (though not on expression)—a word count, the blank frames of a cartoon, a theme, use of certain language, restrictions on adjectives or adverbs—can rev up the mind in ways that boundless space and shifting formats can’t. Blank pages can be daunting, but making a deal with yourself to write for 15 minutes, or fill two facing pages of a Moleskine with whatever words or art comes to mind, can ease the pressure and keep your hand moving. Someone once told Gary Larson that his choice of format—a single rectangle of fixed size—unconsciously led him to develop a unique style and script those “plots” that would work within it. Though incredibly diverse in sum, the “plots” of his weekday works all had to meet that physical stricture. And the 100 Words writing site—where users meet daily devotions of that many words in 1-month chunks—paradoxically seems to engender creation by only setting one boundary and leaving the rest to the writer. But back to these delightful stamps. The linked nature of the design also appeals to me. I’m sure the USPS wouldn’t mind folks not wanting to part the couple by sending them together. And it wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone all in on K♥Q♥. Plus it’s nice to see the Suicide King treating himself a little better.

2009 First Class Love Stamp by Jeanne Greco, © 2009 United States Postal Service.

I’m not usually a fan of “love” stamps—give me a Universal Monsters or Elvis stamp any day—but when I finally ran out of my leftover Christmas stamps and spotted this clever design at the Post Office, this poker junkie knew he’d found his next go-to stamp.

I also appreciated the following from Greco’s press release:

In recent years, Jeanne has enjoyed more intimacy in her work—she has found her designs shrinking in size: “I like to work within the borders of a limited space. I am drawn to the details of a letterform and enjoy the challenge of a logo project. I am inspired by small, beautiful objects. No wonder it led me to a postage stamp.”

I’ve long felt that self-imposed limits on creativity (though not on expression)—a word count, the blank frames of a cartoon, a theme, use of certain language, restrictions on adjectives or adverbs—can rev up the mind in ways that boundless space and shifting formats can’t. Blank pages can be daunting, but making a deal with yourself to write for 15 minutes, or fill two facing pages of a Moleskine with whatever words or art comes to mind, can ease the pressure and keep your hand moving.

Someone once told Gary Larson that his choice of format—a single rectangle of fixed size—unconsciously led him to develop a unique style and script those “plots” that would work within it. Though incredibly diverse in sum, the “plots” of his weekday works all had to meet that physical stricture. And the 100 Words writing site—where users meet daily devotions of that many words in 1-month chunks—paradoxically seems to engender creation by only setting one boundary and leaving the rest to the writer.

But back to these delightful stamps. The linked nature of the design also appeals to me. I’m sure the USPS wouldn’t mind folks not wanting to part the couple by sending them together. And it wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone all in on K♥Q♥. Plus it’s nice to see the Suicide King treating himself a little better.

jeanne greco   postage stamp art   playing cards   love stamps   graphic design   product design   creative limits   intellectual clot-busters   100 words   keep your hand moving