Walk into my dad's office

ah a fellow hacker I see

It's funny because I know someone who did this. Meanwhile I followed Dad's advice, studied engineering, and already got a great career lined up.
Writing is like music. Great hobby, horrible profession.

unironically this

wow sweet bro make the machines kill the planet hahaha nice based technofascism

i'm a writer and i make more money than my dad ever did

T S Eliot worked at Lloyd’s bank while writing, Larkin was a librarian, why don’t you do something similar.

Doing nothing is not inspiring.

Yes, but you are in all likelihood a mediocre writer and probably always will be. You don't value writing and art, value love material comfort and financial security

It's still irrelevant.
"Veeky Forums.org/lit/"
gets you there, you learn this the first year of internet use http and www. are completely pointless

HA

Dumbass, no one ever wrote anything of merit because they wanted to write, they wrote because they had something they wanted to write. Dostoevsky didn't want to be an author, he wanted to write the story of Raskolnikov. Milton didn't write because he wanted to write, he wrote because he wanted to write Paradise Lost. Dickens wrote because he wanted to write and he only ever made middlebrow, and he was one in a million. You're not one in a million and you'll never be middlebrow, not unless you actually have a thing you desire to put in writing before you have the desire to put things in writing. You're no David Foster Wallace, you're John Green, except John Green is more talented than you because he can take his dead-end, masturbatory ambition and actually make a living off of it while all you can do is tell yourself that at least you're better than John Green. Go get a real fucking job you fucking hippie shitstain, and don't come back until you have a work of Art ready to be put into writing.

Realistically, working full-time in a job that does not involve developing your literary talents (e.g. teaching, editing, translating) will kill your drive and leave you miserable and exhausted.

There's a reason people quit their jobs to write or to attend MFA courses. There's a reason Van Gogh is as popular as he is, and part of it has to do with the fact that he took poverty, obscurity and Outsiderdom on the chin and focused almost all his energy on painting and self-exploration.

Sure, it's nice to have a reliable income. It's nice to be able to talk to some chick and tell her you're a mature, career-orientated man who can afford to pump her full of kids. It's nice to be able to afford holidays, gadgets, even a home!

But again, ALMOST EVERY great writer wrote his or her major work(s) while not being tied down by full-time job. McCarthy, Harper Lee, Tolstoy, Dusty, Rowling...I mean the list truly does go on. And this is across literature, painting, music, anything really.

The reason: there must be a profound negative in your life to balance out the profound positive of a great piece of art. Being a contented little office drone normie may give you material to write, but it won't give you the time, energy, focus or the depressive, lonely, terrifying hole from which you will struggle with all your mental energy to escape by producing something of value.

Look at Nietzsche, who is adored here in part for his "man up brah" philosophy. He was physically weak, despised socializing for the most part, extremely nervous and sensitive and absolutely LOATHED full-time work and even those who sacrificed their freedom for it rather than pursuing whatever ambition they had.

>why don't you do something similar, like attend the oldest and most exclusive and prestigious university on the planet and then become a well-connected socialite/academic/man of letters who stumbles into comfortable and well-compensating vocational positions wherein you can easily ignore your duties and work on your genius poems and essays if you so choose

>All these dadposters
Go make another thread about what books to buy your kids you overgrown illiterate faggots
I believe in you, OP

Both stupid examples, and I've studied both of their lives in detail. Eliot had contacts within the publishing industry, and wrote poetry (although Wasteland's great). He worked at Lloyd's for around 7 years, publishing very little.

Larkin, again a poet, published only three books of poetry while employed, about a decade apart, and had published three books within the space of two years while unemployed (Jill, A Girl..., North Ship). He understood perfectly well that his work only allowed him to write slowly, as is evident in Toads etc, and his letters. He could not have written a novel under those circumstances, as he made clear to Kingsley Amis in their correspondence (Kingsley himself bouncing from fellowship to fellowship while lecturing part-time occasionally). He was in fact hoping to be a novelist until the age of 30, but gave up when he realized that his growing responsibilities meant that he could never focus on something for a prolonged period of time.

"Doing nothing..." is such a stupid way of describing an avoidance of employment. Pessoa worked part-time for his entire life, Pamuk spent his 20s in his mother's spare room writing, McCarthy preferred to live in a shack rather than work, and Carver NEETed for a long time too. Hesse lived with his brother rent-free for years, Suskin's 20s were funded by his parents, Knausgaard spent his 20s in and out of state-funded university and his late 20s in cabins and apartments writing his prize-winning debut novel. JD Salinger would live in the country homes of acquaintances while finishing Catcher. Steinbeck's father let his son live rent-free in his summer home for years while writing Cup of Gold. Kafka hated his job to the point of despair even though he only worked part-time hours for the most part. Houellebecq was a NEET from 21 to 27. Bukowski only started writing longer fiction when he was rescued from wageslavery at 48 / 49. I mean, these are just authors that come to mind.

It was hardly "nothing" they were doing in their time outside of the office, and the fact you describe it as such forces me to *unsheathes katana* *slices your head off!?!?* ....show you the error of your ways.

Honestly though, you're a piece of shit for shaming genuinely ambitious people. You're part of the reason this world's in the shitter.

Dickens wrote "middlebrow" stories that more complex than Dostoevsky's at literally every level--psychological, narrative, emotional, social, aesthetic, even religious. If you knew anything about Dostoevsky and weren't a soulless bugman drone trying to justify he mediocre life choices, you would know that Dickens was not only one of the his most major and obvious influences, but he was also an influence that Dostoevsky was very proud to admit to, as he repeatedly did on multiple occasions both in print and in conversation.

To be fair, in Larkin's case (and I think even Elliot's) he attended a state grammar school, got into Oxford on a scholarship and felt he would have earned a 2:2 if it wasn't wartime with so little relative focus on academics. He then worked his way up from some obscure local library to the University of Hull, which is by no means a haven for the well-to-do.

Kierke-chan looks down on the wagecuck.

I am glad someone has finally said it. Dickens use of language is sublime; reading D. in translation in stead of Dickens is a waste of time.

To be honest you deserved that slap. Writing is more of a side thing, Kafka worked in an office while writing his stories and novels. You need to find a job you enjoy while also keep writing your stuff.
Try being a journalists if you want to hone your craft on the job

>You're part of the reason this world's in the shitter.
No, you are. You need to leech other people's productivity in order to chase a ridiculously remote ambition. Nobody is your slave, cunt, and it speaks volumes that you want them to just be okay with it if you happen to want them to be in servitude to you.

Why not just use chrome and type Veeky Forums lit and then click on first result?

lmao cuck

>tfw 22 and published wit a dank national award
>i broke my dad's jaw with a soup can ages ago
>haven't seen that motherfucker in about 6 years
>i have the aura and glare of a psycho killer school shooter so no one questions me

just suck a cock to survive. or get some credit card deetz from russian onion sites.

Wow aren't you a cool guy?

Why not make a bookmark? Hello?
Also you have to get a job other than writing to support yourself. Very rarely do writers live solely off their writing. Get a job you hippie.

STOP FUCKING MENTIONING KAFKA TO PROP UP YOUR BULLSHIT MACHO IDEOLOGY

He fucking worked for 4-5 hours a day, was always 15-30 minutes late (his co-workers claimed) and usually left early despite taking a long lunch. Even then we find in his diary (desu) that he was often embarrassed by the fact he left resignation letters on his boss's desk then came to work the next morning apologising and asking to withdraw his resignation.

I'm not the OP, normalfag. And your image of a world in which the only leeches or society-wreckers are the genuinely ambitious NEETs taking time off to write while living with their families is cute, but stupid.

it's because you're fucking mediocre at both, Jon.
You're a little rat-faced dweeb who only does as he's told, but'll take any moment to flaunt what you've earned, however tepid and ordinary. All style, no substance. A machine.

You sicken me.

Well it doesn't matter, you need to work to put food on the table. At least you're parents are letting you stay at home for so long. I'm 18 and once I finish college my ass is out of the house. I want to be a NEET writer too but life doesn't work that way

It follows from the very recent convention of the literary types coming from the bourgeois (read families who make 800k+/year actual not american middle)class. The values of fiction are bourgeois values. The tastemakers know nothing of toil. To pretend you are above your station by malingering does not make you a bourgeois, it makes you a loser. Like others have said, if you are not well to do, be satisfied with less, get on with a career and by the time you don't have to work as hard (40-50 y.o.) you just might have lived enough to have something decent to write about--NOONE is interested in your sycophantic rehashing of a 19th century novel.

>800k+/year
>bourgeois
This isn't 1864
bourgeois = majority of the working class

Is this a parody of the dumb, normie, jock mindset?

Embarrassing, truly.

Again, I'm not the OP. And life does indeed work out that way, for certain writers, at certain times. Lovecraft was a dependent NEET, for example. And you're 18, I'm sorry but you don't know shit and your faddish ideologies aren't worth much.

>Dostoevsky didn't want to be an author, he wanted to write the story of Raskolnikov.

but that's literally untrue

This. He could have found other ways to make money (as an engineer etc) and pay his later debts, but writing was his passion. Look at his joy after Poor Folk was published to see how much he wanted it.

Are you a NEET not OP?
You don't have to be career less to write, but the op should count his blessings, he'll just hearing that his dad has an office in his house tell us that op is in a very well off family. They probably go to Disneyland ever summer

>walk into my mom's office
>stand at full height and speak at a confident but assertive volume
>"mom, I've decided on my career path"
>"well it's about time, son. You know I, as a single mother all alone, was getting very worried about your future; at 23 you're far too old to be living as a virgin anymore. What did you choose? Medicine? Law? Engineering? Maybe something which women will find attractive?"
>look her dead in the eye
>"I want to be a writer"
>total silence
>her eyes glaze over for a moment and she stares out the window
>after about a minute she gets up from her office chair, the cushion still holding the imprint of her supple ass which my eyes cannot help but seize upon
>I stand about five inches taller than her but when she approaches me I feel like a little boy again
>mom: "so how are you going to get laid?"
>"w-well at this point i-i'm JUST working on becoming competent at my c-craft, not so much sexual success. I-I'll probably publish stories in small press magazines until I'm good enough to write a novel, but it'll be years, maybe decades, before I'll get that far, and even then sexual success is far from assured--"
>she undoes my belt and slips a hand down my pants
>I try try speak but she grips my penis tighter
>she hasn't held my penis since I was a teenager
>mom: "let me know when you decide on not being a virgin. You're running out of time."
>I run out of her office and down to my basement room, cock erect, tears streaming down my face
>fire up the laptop and open Firefox
>into the URL bar I begin to type: "boards.Veeky Forums.org/biz/..."

holy shit, incel fucking COPE activated!!!!

I'm a wagecuck, actually. And OP is obviously a normie LARPing to make the big boy wagearners feel proud of their lack of investment in writing great fiction.

>tfw datacuck
>tfw living in bumfuck nowhere Ohio
>tfw not gonna make it

...

I love it

cooler than u

>t. mommy's little cuck

Creative ability basically ends at 25. If you aren't a relative success in your early 20s (not necessarily a titanic figure in industry but you need some level of success) it's time to give up.

>being poor

feel sorry for you wagies tbqh

by your definition, anybody in a profession other than strict manual labor would be leeching off of others productivity. where did you glean "slave" or the idea that the person you responded to wants someone to be in servitude to them?

oh there's the worst post of the day
there it is

enjoy the unfulfilling life in a city only growing in population with a third world workforce that's becoming more and more educated online, that'll work for pennies and will live together in cramped apartments with other panjeets who'll put together your factory crap.

who knows? maybe you'll find a boring girl friend who you'll pose with on "hikes" for likes on instram--the only sorry excuse for excitement...

This isn't true of course (I suspect you're spam-chan). But I think there is something true about the idea that your worldview and "style" at 25 can't really be significantly altered. Even reading Bukowski's stuff at 24 is like reading his stuff at 54 even though he didn't write for a decade or so. Many such cases. I'm actually worried by the idea that each person has an "essence" they can't do much about, and that a minority of people's essence is simply so distinct and interesting as to be fated for genius. If true I'm fucked because my essence is fucked.

>He fucking worked for 4-5 hours a day, was always 15-30 minutes late (his co-workers claimed) and usually left early despite taking a long lunch. Even then we find in his diary (desu) that he was often embarrassed by the fact he left resignation letters on his boss's desk then came to work the next morning apologising and asking to withdraw his resignation.

He worked 6 hours, from 8 to 2. He also studied law and later got his doctorate in it when he already worked for Assicurazioni Generali, plus he helped run his father's asbestos factor. He was a busy man

...

No that simply is not true.

We're all in this together desu, the engineers and the NEETs.

Rowling started Harry Potter at 24. Mozart wrote his first song at 5.

Our economy is changing, as our population grows creative fields are more and more dominated by a smaller and smaller proportion of the population who themselves become richer and richer and more influential and more influential.

If you haven't done anything of note by 25 or started anything great give up. You're not gonna make it. Get a normie job.

>All these cucks going on about "muh living" "muh retirement" " "muh career"
>just bitter resentment over failure and lack of opportunity all over the place
>Hurrr everyone has to be like me
>everyone has to fall in line

Jesus Christ... you people are actually infected with down syndrome.
Most, if not all, great writers wrote during extended periods of being away from work or school. No one has the time to pursue a writing passion and work at the same time. Work and creativity are not conducive with each other. Kafka slagged off at his clerk job so much. He'd come in late, he'd leave early. He mostly hated going.
Joyce couch surfed, lived in poverty most of his life.
Tolstoy was a NEET.
Pynchon had very little money while he was writing V and GR, constantly going back and forth between Mexico and California.
DFW lived in a halfway house.

Think real hard as to why Artist Grants and patronage are a thing, you idiots.

He was still often late, and usually left early. True he did have to work later some days to meet clients, and he also gave talks at the Yiddish centre etc. But the asbestos thing lasted less than a year and it was in part an attempt to get rich quick so he could NEET with the money he hoped the factor would make him and his brother-in-law. He only started writing The Castle and finishing off his other longer works when he was allowed to be a TUBERCULAR NEET by his employer. This is one of the reasons that I have long advocated for the reintroduction of Tuberculosis into Western society as a means of allowing frail, sensitive, workshy aspiring writers to sign something of a devil's bargain by consciously infecting themselves with the disease in return for being allowed not to work.

>joyce
>kafka
>pynchon
>dfw

Do you fucks seriously only read ~10 writers? I get nauseous just hearing their names bandied like so much pocket change. None of them were "great".

EPIC bait

Not really. The engineers will always have the smug awareness of their own socially-validated (tm) superiority to fall back on, while the NEET struggles in isolation to create his masterpiece.

WRONG. Rowling started Harry Potter at 25 and had three chapters ready and a lot of notes written at 27 / 28 after two years of VERY part-time work in Portugal (the summers offered little teaching work). She was then a NEET for a year while writing Harry Potter One in a frenzied state before her career as a full-time wagecuck began.

I have literally dreamed of this before

>kafka and joyce weren't great
bugs, easy on the contrarianism

will you stop using NEET in contexts outside of the 21st century ok thanks

>names only two “savants”
>looking to HP as a symbol of literary success
What about you, what’s your masterpiece? Or did you just pussy out.

Even in the 1990s the Slacker lifestyle was acceptable for most artists. Today I can't help but get the impression that anybody who isn't working 48 hours a week is treated like a huge piece of shit manchild. And I say that as a depressed wagecuck who wants MORE FUCKING FREE TIME.

I honestly think we on Veeky Forums should bring the Pro-Tuberculosis movement into the mainstream. There are plenty of examples of writers with TB quitting their shitty jobs and writing great works of fiction. It's very easy to become infected, and death is usually slow in coming. It really is the ideal literary disease. I've tried catching it several times myself but only managed to catch HIV so far. Such is life I suppose.

>Shakespeare: theater producer/owner etc.
>Blake: Printmaker
>Milton: Civil Servant
>Cervantes: Soldier
And so on. All of the great ones were ambitious in their carreers, their lives, everything. Only memecore soyboys authors of the last century and a half have been slugs. And you wonder why literature is being taken over by women.

Oh look now the little idiot is tackling literal geniuses to make himself feel better.
Why is everyone on this board the exact same?

Jesus Christ, have some charm... meet a girl who will cover your costs while you write, meet people, couch surf, use your fucking brain. Break the scary law. Goddamn.
How do you any of you expect anyone to want to read anything you write, when you're all such monstrous pussies?

people treat me with respect. I'm also a huge asshole who will debase you casually. I mostly read, write, jerk it, and meme.

be quiet, shitstain.

You forgot Sasha Grey: Pornstar

Not true you dumb faggot. Also Blake barely worked. It was far easier in those days to work freelance hours and do fuck all the rest of the time if you could read and write. You think Shakespeaer worked from 8:30 to 6 like the average modern man?

The value of low skilled labour has gone down massively in just the last 20 years because of mass immigration and globalization. That's why wages of stagnated while costs of living go up. If you want more free time then use that big brain of yours to create value and wealth without having to work as much. Yes it's difficult and will take spouts of buckling down and pulling yourself up but it's worth it.

You don't get to just live an easy life goofing off , and not giving a fuck while working a modest job like the boomers did. That's not the world we live in.

Work hard or live the pleb life. Your choice.

>falling for the career meme

Hope none of you actually do this

Off the top of my head, Balzac didn't want to follow his dad into law which caused huge dispute. He became a writer at 20.

It was actually possible in the 90s though. People don't understand that the 90s economy was like another world, it couldn't happen today. 90s Austin was like postwar Paris

>implying Shakespeare even existed and wasn't a Rosicrucian council of writers whose aim was to influence all of English literature by unleashing a divine, constructed Genius

how can one be this pleb?

If you had ever worked in theater you would know Shakepeare probably worked far more than 8 hours a day in season on top of writing fucking masterpieces.
Seriously who wants to hear what a fucking overeducated suburbanite slacker has to say for the 1000th time. Your insistence on lifestylism is what is killing literature. You are basically aspiring to be Lena Dunham.

I agree, and believe me I despise niggers, muslims and those who let them flood into crowded, civilized countries.

As for my brain, I am a wagecuck and use enough of my brain to secure an independent lifestyle (a miserable one, however), but if I used any more of it to make more money I would lost the little focus and energy I have left over after a day of being overwhelmed by normalfaggotry.

Your options are dumb. You're dumb.

>Work hard or live the pleb life. Your choice.

Well yeah... that's if you have low-tier skills.

t. published writer, no college, used my writing skills and lied about coding knowledge to land a cushy Passport office job in Leafland (psst, Affirmative Action hire!)

Wow you lied and got a push up from AA and got a decent job. Great. That totally applies to young white men with dignity who are struggling to make it in a cruel and hostile world.

PS: fuck you

>into the URL bar I begin to type: "boards.Veeky Forums.org/biz/..."

> overeducated suburbanite slacker

I come from poverty. Stop projecting your sheltered life, asshole.
Nothing is "killing" literature other than pure capital.
Oh look, user can pick low-hanging fruit and use that as a flag for his intellectually lazy opinion!!

You're just jealous because I have more passion than you. I'll do what needs to be done to get what I want out.

>t. dumb mutt who never found out everyone else lies on their resume

It must be real nice to be dumb. Must make the world seem less scary, crafting some strange dichotomy fueled by Veeky Forums to blame your lackluster talents on.

A real success-driven attitude!

>all this fucking ANGER over the fact that someone has a career AND writes
do you people ever look in the mirror and say "i am the problem" because you should. i'm not even the "engineer" you guys are replying to, lol

Probably because he gave him the name Balzac I mean, hellloooo? The kid probably got bullied every day. What was his surname, Pubeface? What kind of father names his kid Balzac? (I'm acting retarded for your amusement)

I agree, though it wasn't easy everywhere. And yes Austin is what I was referring to in part. Richard Linklater paid next to no rent for a huge traditional home throughout his twenties while goofing around and making his early movies. Bill Hicks lived comfortably as a bum with no money in Houston. It is probably still possible today in certain places, but I don't know man it's like the internet works as a panopticon of sorts whereby people self-impose a more superficially successful lifestyle on themselves (handsome rich creative with his Life In Order) not to slide into the obscurity suffered by those without an e-persona. Maybe that's a bit too extreme but I really am growing more doubtful of the ultimate influence of the internet on culture, art etc in general. Maybe it's because I'm a dumbass who doesn't profit from using the internet besides talking to cutie-pies like yourself (Don't deny it. Go look in the mirror and tell yourself you're ugly. Can't do it right? Well, there you go)

You are absolutely beyond redemption if you think Shakespeare WORKED in a selfless, routine, consistent manner for more than eight hours AND ALSO managed to produce great works of art. Maybe he did work that hard in short bursts, but I guarantee (not to mention hope there's another user lurking who has read the relevant biog) that he in fact did not. In fact, here, I'll bet five bucks *roots around in pocket* *pulls out a condom on accident and slams it on the table* w-woops, I mean, well *bats eyelashes* *blushes* I mean, we could- y-you know?

>implying higher art doesn’t come from the bourgeois
step up bucko

>because I am shameless and hateful mystery meat who is comfortable committing evil, so is everybody else

>i come from poverty
user do you realize that 80% of the worlds population lives on less than $10 dollars a day? Rethink your privilege. Anyway I grew up first world poor too i know what shame it brings and what grandiose designs to exact revenge; you say i am dispassionate but i have probably ruined myself for passion more than most people; the reason i pointed out those men was to illustrate that great thought is not in itself a vocation, THAT is a product of "capital" and the division of labor; nothing is stopping you from living your life to the fullest but you would sell out the god within you for 30 pieces of silver. This board is a fine waste of time, it beats going to the movies, it beats reading most of what is considered great anymore--but don't imagine that being the next New Yorker darling will bring you the consolation you burn for.

...

I'd respect him if he wasn't such a spineless cunt who bowed to his dad.
Engineering is the default option for lamerods who want "Security," plus the added cushion of being an "Engineer." Whoa vectors wow crazy!

All the hard work engineers do nowadays comes down to knowing how to use software. Buncha glorified lab technicians.

...

>Rethink your privilege.

You have no passion. You're just a dolt who wants glory. Your post reads like ironic garbage, you fucking charlatan.

Imagine having one brief life to live and choosing (actually making the decision) to become a fucking engineer. When people ask you what your career is you have to actually spit out the word ‘engineer’ and have them nod in a really mindless way because there isn’t a single person on the planet that cares about engineering. You might even have to say some wacky garbage like “I know how bridges work!!” to maintain their swiftly dwindling interest, when you’d probably be doing them a bigger favour by just tattooing “WANKER” onto your ever-oily forehead.