The Blog of Lou Lesko

May 14

Five Signs That it’s Time to Venture Away from the Home Office

You start talking to your roasting chicken as if it’s a pet while you season the fowl for its trip into the oven.
You finish an entire chapter of a novel while you sit on the toilette because there is no one else around to need the bathroom.
A weeks worth of groceries hardly lasts a day because of repeated trips to the fridge.
You willingly call your parents.
You justify watching three hours of reality TV on Hulu as research for “that” project you’ve meaning to pursue.

May 10

A Girl from France on the Hunt for the Meaning of Hipster

Lorena Galliot and Julie Percha do a brilliant job searching for hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

May 9

Why Take a Tourist Photo, Take a Movie Scene

I love stuff like this. Film enthusiast Allen Fuqua is documenting his travels by recreating scenes from movies. His site, Movie Mimic is a lot of fun.

This gives me an idea about doing a scene from Caligula in Greece.

Fast Time at Ridgemont High

Midnight in Paris

May 9

Nisus Writer Mention – This Doesn’t Happen Every Day

The fine people at Nisus software have observed that my bikini wearing technique for brainstorming is the one, true way to enlightened writing. So they’ve included me in their newsletter this week. I am thrilled for the honor.

If you’re silly enough to be a writer I highly recommend that you use Nisus Writer Pro. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words in the product, including my latest book, and it’s awesome. Nisus Writer Pro is incredibly adaptable and extensible. Also, there is a tight community of experts in the forums that nice and very helpful.

Many thanks to Nisus for thinking that I’m worth mentioning. I wonder if they know that I’m writing this from prison.

May 7

Avengers

There are a group of us men who band together to go see movies that the wives and daughters have no desire seeing. Last night was saw the Avengers.

The post movie cocktail banter was unanimous. The Avengers is bonafide awesome. We got into discussions about director Josh Whedon’s excellent execution of belly laughing humor and marvelous story pacing. Then we blathered on about super hero origins and which super hero was our favorite.

We also had some affable disagreements about the best part of the movie. Some thought the Hulk’s handling of a god was pretty awesome others thought Iron man’s quips we’re cool. And then someone said what we all readily agreed upon, Scarlett Johansson 20 feet tall in 3D.

May 3

Booze for Inspiration

Last night was a bald faced attempt to be a bit more like my hero Earnest Hemingway by acting like James Bond. With a writing assignment looming on the near horizon, and inspiration scanty I went to a bar and ordered a Vesper. A Vesper is the following: 3 oz. of Gin, 1 oz. of Vodka and 1/2 ounce of Lillet Blanc shaken until ice cold and garnished with a twist. It is the extraordinarily delicious beverage that was ordered by James Bond in Casino Royale.

Writing is not what followed the consumption of that cocktail. Rather, I pursued an overly confident conversation about nothing consequential right before I passed out. I did, however, dream of some very clever story ideas in my sleep. Unfortunately they evaporated from my short term memory as soon as I opened my eyes this morning.

A special shout out to Jay Thrash for his fabulous Bond Mixology iPhone app. Every drink from every James Bond movie ever.

May 1

1 Comment

Wearing a Bikini Helps Me Think

Nary a day goes by that I don’t stop and take a minute to lounge around in a bikini to help me think about what to write next. My friends find this a bit eccentric, but they’re willing to accept it as long as I keep my chest hair neatly trimmed.

Imagine my thrill when I opened Python Bytes on my iPhone to find that I wasn’t the only writer who preferred a pink over blue for the summer months.

Apr 28

It took me second to say, but a decade to learn.

A few days ago I was honored to be on Anderson Smiths radio show and podcast One Hour Photo. I joined two amazing, smart folks from the industry, Art Buyer Andrea Flaherty, and commercial photographer Jonathan Orozco and we bandied about opinions about the current climate of pricing and bidding photography jobs.

At one point I said that every year you’re in business your value goes up. The quote has received a lot of attention on the internet and I’ve received a few emails thanking me for proffering the concept. To be honest, even though the concept is simple, it took me over a decade to learn.

Experience breeds confidence and creativity which in turn feeds your confidence and creativity. So whatever it is you do, do a lot of it, in as many different locations around the world that you can.

JonathanOrozco

Jonathan Orozco on the air in Atlanta.

Apr 25

If You Like Volleyball as Much as Me

I played a lot of doubles volleyball in my teens, twenties and thirties. When you have two teams just about equal in strength and skill rallies like this are won on pure stamina. I got exhausted sitting in my chair watching this thing.

Apr 24

We’re Done Tweaking This Thang

If you’ve been reading this blog the last two weeks, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been tweaking the look and the layout while it’s been live. Well today we got this thing right where we want it.

This blog owes a beer to the fine folks at the The Theme Foundry who created the marvelous theme that I’m using. And also to the amazing folks at Brave New Code who make the plugin that allows this site to be read easily on iPhones.

One of the things that I found interesting when we were playing with the layout is that when we dispensed with the sidebar, the text was hard to read. Some research revealed that 50 to 75 characters is an ideal text length and that going too wide leaves readers, including me, a little lost. Huh.