Aug
18th
2014
Today's Advice to Writers · 1:12pm Aug 18th, 2014
If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.
-RICHARD RHODES
Something I strongly believe in.
Also, if you're not following this site, you really should be. Pav Fiera introduced it to me a couple years ago, and it's been nothing but helpful since. Well, sometimes the writers they quote are a smidge pretentious, but overall, the advice is more constructive than not.
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PresentPerfect · 261 views
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So very true...
~Skeeter The Lurker
Yeah, I agree with this. I mean I've been known to be an arse to people that exude the wrong amount of appropriation, obliviousness or poe-trollism (usually I regret it when I discover that the self-important little cretin is just suffering from too much youth and should therefore be excused their horrific attitude and/or crimes against literature) but despite terrible beginnings, everyone who wants to write should write... knowledge of how terrible you were will follow sooner or later... and hopefully that means you got better.
tl;dr version: don't let arses like me stop you from writing, just get some perspective: you will never write the next lord of the rings without a lot of work.
I might try to take those words to heart, though I'll probably do a poor job of it.
The link is broken for me, I think. Still fantastic advice, and a great quote. On of the maxims I hold true to myself is that you have to let yourself be terrible, and by extension you have to allow others to be terrible as well. It's the first step towards being kinda good at something, after all.
My problem is one part fear and one part laziness.
2380056
I dunno, it's workin' for me. :B
Wow. Thanks for the link, PP! This site seems quite useful, and perhaps even a bit inspirational. Maybe it's the kick I need for my lazy ass.
Eh. Sort of.
Most people, in fact, suck at producing fiction. But most people who suck at it can still present a great story if they make the effort and seek/accept the help they probably need.
Writing is easy.
Telling a story is easy.
Telling a story well takes passion.
Creating a story takes courage.
Writing a story you create takes devotion.
Making your story a good read takes a combination of talent, skill, endless tedium, and often help from others but above all, hard work.
2381499
"Art is work" is something else I believe strongly in, because Harlan Ellison. :B
2381521
I disagree.
Art is merely what we label the novelties which affect us, resonate with us, and that we find "important" in some way. Some novelties take much work, some take little, but the level of effort does not reliably match the reception by any means.
The novel novelties known as novels take quite a lot, not just to create but to be presentable. This is because they use the communication tool known as language to express things. Language is very difficult to compose. Oversimplify and you lose regard. Overcomplicate and you lose impact. Written language loses all context that vocal and physical communication adds.
Even then, there is massive bias determining how a novel is recieved, because the things the language within expresses are stories. And stories matter to people greatly.
We often prefer stories to life because life is a story. It is a story we start in the middle and never reach the end of, where little is explained and characters are hard to understand and even harder to relate to. A plot that has no purpose and events that lead nowhere.
Life is a rather badly written novel. But life is art above all else. Life is the harderst work of all because all work is part of life. Life is rather novel when you think about it.
2381898
I have no idea what you're arguing, because everything you said agrees with what I said. c.c
2382592
Oh. "Art is work." It's an idiotic statement. Art is rarely work and art is in fact indefinable. I think fewer writers would be as bad if they stopped considering themselves artists. If you want to be an artist so bad, go work at Subway. Be a sandwich artist. Is that work? Yes. Is is hard? No. Is it art? Maybe. The term "art" is almost meaningless today and any general statement about it is pretty much pure preference, not observable truth.
Very true and very inspirational, especially to those of us who second guess ourselves when writing. Stumbled upon this posting right when I was starting to do so.
So thanks
2388498
This is why I keep an eye out for stuff like this. :D Take a look at that site, it'll help!
2389241 I'll have to, thanks. It helped remind me that this is all in the name of doing something fun and improving.