JAMES ROYCE
WRITERABOUT:
I reckon this is a self-assessment so really want to avoid those mind-numbingly deeply embarrassing things everyone does here where they’re, like, I’m, “Equal parts brilliant and frustrating.” Like, sure, I love getting edits but also don’t like when people are abrasive toward me because handling criticism can be dicey, to say the least. To make up for that I overthink everything and try to submit the absolute best thing I possibly can at all times, always, so I can go to bed comfortable with the thought that I may never have to look at it again, maybe. And it’s not like I’m speaking from experience, but if I were I wouldn’t recommend this tactic, because it works just often enough to get too comfortable. It leads to missing the occasional deadline. It also leads to crossing paths with editors, digital marketing managers, and professionally-adjacent others who have all the air of wanting to strangle or kiss you, I reckon.
Then again, though, if everyone you come across in your life isn’t radiating that same energy then what’s the purpose of all this, anyway? If I could slip everyone a piece of paper with ten facts that would either disarm them, I would. I would need the proper resources and foresight for all that, however, which I don’t. If I did, though, it would say something like:
My grandma dated Michael Collins, who was the third member of the Apollo 11 mission alongside Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. His job was to fly the Columbia command module around the moon while Neil and Buzz pranced around. Contemporary biographies say he wrote that, “not since Adam has any human known such solitude,” when he was circling around out there in the great beyond. My grandma left him soon after, and there’s surely a metaphor there.
Grandma left him following emotional and literal decompression to date Adam West, the original Batman.
That same grandma never married, so I never met either of them. I also never knew my actual grandpa. In the end, it just seems like a lot of hoops to jump through for the same prize most people are handed these days. That, or she was just another lifelong Los Angeles native and that’s sort of what happened in those particular situations.
Was once called into a perfect Trestles set by Mick Fanning. I fell on the takeoff.
Going back to Los Angeles natives, I am a sixth-generation, pre-America-California Californian. This sounds quite cool if you’re not from California but is actually quite sinister if you know California history. Now, the area of California was never organized as a territory but was administered from 1848 to statehood by a federal military authority. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, making the official transformation from being another, just, Blood Meridian state to the 31st state then. And, so, we got our context so we’re pointing back to the whiteboard now, its landmass is around just 423 square kilometres, which is almost twenty-five per cent smaller than France. California’s GDP is 3.89 trillion American dollars, however, which is just below the entirety of Germany and above all of France. Our chief exports are computer and product manufacturing, suspect scientific ethics, and people who like hearing themselves talk.
And here’s another fun fact: if you’re an eighth-generation Californian, or later, you’re legally required to believe Joan Didion is the coolest person ever (not really, but she is) and you also are apparently not entirely legally entitled to special admission benefits at all Californian universities. As in, you get in everywhere (Berkeley, Stanford, etc.) tuition-free. It didn’t apply to me, however, because I was just not too close enough to the mark obviously and that blow still quite stings.
Going back to France, I actually moved there after university to surf and write. As a Californian, my standard measure of the value added and created through the production of goods and services (GDP) came out to the equivalent of just below the country’s living standards. And those were the happiest days of my life.
My full name is James McIntosh Royce and my most-listened to band is The Velvet Underground and my most-read books are a toss-up between John Steinbeck’s A Russian Journal or Bill Buford’s Heat. My favourite movies are Dr. Strangelove (1964), Sexy Beast (2000), Where Eagles Dare (1968), and The Bruce Movie (2006).
I grew up surfing and skating but was way more into skating until I took a bad fall in middle school and decided to just fully pivot to surfing. I did grow up surfing a spot with a dirt parking lot, however, which in California is, like, plus ten credibility points.
I did contests growing up but realised when I was quite young that I really couldn’t hit airs as consistently as everyone else but still wanted to stick around surfing. So, I decided to pursue with every ounce of my energy, willpower, and sanity the one thing only that’s less lucrative, stable, and cool as being a professional surfer: being a semi-professional writer.
Was once asked where I saw myself in ten years during a job interview and I said, “Living on a small farm in France, writing cookbooks, surfing, and not talking to anyone else, really." I was always told it’s good to be honest about those things. I received a no-reply HR-generated email before I even made it back to my car stating that, while my resume and experience were certainly impressive, it was just not the best fit for the role.
