Writing tip for the day!
Don’t read anything by authors/ writers complaining about their job or saying that they sit in front of their computers feeling like failures. Leave that to them! Losers and idiots each and every one of them. They’ve stolen so much of my time with that crap!
It’s just one of those self-fulfilling prophecy sort of things. It’s only true if you believe it. If a writer sees fit to moan about their job like that, they’re probably not that good at it. So when you hear them prattling on like that and you actually listen to it, it’s like getting stuck at a party with the most depressing person there and they suck all the party out of you.
DISREGARD.
POWER THROUGH.
From Kerouac: “YOU’RE A GENIUS ALL THE TIME.”
TUCK IN AND ENJOY!! :D
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message 1:
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Rebecca
(new)
Jul 14, 2014 05:15AM
You Ok, man? I think sometimes the writers disease is to think that they are constantly missing out. Life is life, whether it's spent in a single room watching dust dance through sunbeams or chasing after one pure sensation after another.
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Someone said "Time wasted is never wasted time"- if they didn't, then I did :) I'm tip-top, thanks- and yes I totally agree with your philosophy!
You just sounded so exasperated!I was thinking about works that deal with the lucid passing of time. Paul Auster springs to mind with his The New York Trilogy (I know it divides completely but I keep going back to it), and to a lesser extent Travels in the Scriptorium. Got any?
The lucid passing of time... not that I can think of? But I will get back to you :)I am a bit exasperated because I've heard it so much: the more successful and the longer and harder they've worked for success, the more they complain about it it seems.
Espesh Philip Roth jeezo- and William Goldman saying he didn't like his own writing- I think Vollmann, Gass as well. And Will Self because I really like his stuff. And Salman Rushdie as well I think? And many more I'm sure...
I side with Harlan Ellison though, don't know if you've seen the documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth (super entertaining watch) he says being a writer is the same as being a plumber or an electrician :-)
The Book of Dave: A Revelation of the Recent Past and the Distant Future has been sitting on my bookshelf for a good few years; they are going to have to prop my corpse up so I can read all I mean to. Back to point, it is a bit eye-rolling; but my gut reaction is, well, Will Self would say that, wouldn't he? From a audience point of view it's supposed to be that a writer is hewn from a certain type (mercurial, contrary, self-regarding blah bloody blah): this is all bull, of course. These are all guys who are or have been well aware of the dance they play with the world outside their writing process - the audience, the media etc. There is the general theme running through all this that any kind of work ethic which fails to be driven by the obsessional or the profound is somehow the province of the hack. But I see what you mean, it is really unattractive to begrudge your talent or what it's brought to you. I keep hearing my departed mum's words: 'let them get on with it!'I'll try to tuck the docs title away in the memory banks and hunt it out. One that stuck in my mind from a couple of years back was DBC Pierre and his fixation with South America. If I'm remembering it right he advocated just to keep interested and remember what you love.
Good advice! I can strongly recommend Book of Dave, one of my favourites- starts off as if incredibly cutting satire but incredibly empathetic and knowledgeable about cabbies. Sounds like strong advice from DBC- and I see your point about Will, he's always been a performer as well as writer.And yeah you've got the exact point I think, that writers are all supposed to be the same type of person, and they all give such contradictory advice- when I started I was like "Oh no I didn't write today" then "Oh I wrote 3k words today should I have done that or was that too quick" then you watch a lot of interviews and you start to take on all their whingy traits, and I've wasted a lot of my time thinking and doing that.
I dunno! Trying to save someone else the fuss I guess- there's a good chance they're smarter than me and worked it out, but just in case :)
