Are any of you actually any good at writing?

Are any of you actually any good at writing?

is anyone on Veeky Forums good at designed and manufacturing cars?

Define "good" and "writing".

No, but it doesn't take an engineer to appreciate a well designed machine.

Hope he didn't hurt your feelings
People have been doing it for years
Don't project. But you are right.
You don't know if you are good at writing until someone reads it. You might be insecure, or overly confident. But what really tells you is what the book does. You can measure it by criteria, mainly other works considered good, and you can measure it by its popularity and enjoyability.

Despite what the elitists say, all the different genres and types of writing have thier own criteria, and any type book can be a great book in its intended place, be it genre fiction, fiction, non fiction, or even a manual on basic auto maitence.

I'm a fan of genre fiction and fiction. I hope that I am talented, I've been practicing every day.

I am

I am not but I do not pretend to be.

My poetry is getting better. I can write in meter and it make sense now.

Dunno, but I know I'm getting better.

no, I don't think so

My high school Finnish teacher said/wrote two times that I'm an exceptional writer, so I guess I am. If only I had more motivation to write and finish what I've already started.

you guys must be 100-120 iq turboplebs

>t. 121 IQ pleb

I try my hand at poetry.

>tfw when meter finally kind of sort of clicks

boo.

>tfw all papers i have to do are fine
>try to write creatively
>just fuck my shit up

good writing can only be achieved through a cathartic experience.

so, if you want to be a good writer you first need to get a load of life shit repressed, repress any possible release for it in other channels, and wait until suicide is the only option. only then will your writing be good, it will come out by itself.

I know that feeling.
Analytical writing just flows for me. It's not great without some editing, but I can pump that shit out the way James Patterson writes airport fiction, but the moment I have to do creative fiction my productivity just plummets in the face of all the possible things I could be writing. I can barely write anything without imposed limitations to anchor me to some semblance of a story, and even then I'm always second guessing myself about how I should be constructing everything.

that must be how dr suess did it

Depends on my state of mind, really. I'd like to think that, at my best, I'm decent, but, considering my tastes and artistic sensibilities, I'm sure few people would enjoy it.

>mfw i'm the other way around

I write academic publications for a living, and have been told that I'm good at what I do. I've also won scholarships because of my essays, and have (ghost)written a couple political speeches for election campaigns before.

Haven't tried my hand at fiction or poetry yet, hope to get good at that soon.

The better question is if writing is good at me.

Do you even attempt to develop your story and characters and build some sort of plan or do you just sit in front of a blank page like some retard and feel stupid?

>"Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up."

kek

>muh romanticized depression

Well, I am a professional writer and I keep getting rebooked, so I am doing something right.

yeah

it's amazing

There are certain things that I sincerely feel I will never be able to share with anyone
even on my deathbed. Secrets that I will truly take to my grave. No amount of trust or love or
confidence will ever open my heart and soul enough to share these sordid things. Yet I feel that
inexplicable human need to share myself with someone, anyone, one way or another. Thus I
begin this diary, which I will guard with my life, behind many inches of impenetrable steel, to be
accessed only a century after my death. No one who has known me in life shall ever read these
words. Yet I will find comfort in the fact that someday, long after I and everyone I have ever
known has passed from this earth, my secrets will be bared for all to see.
Since I am writing this diary under the assumption that you, the reader, are a complete
stranger to me (God help me if that is not the case), I will provide as much background as
possible. My name is Henry Davinaugh, and all my life I have been at war with myself. I was
born with these cruel, inhuman urges that it has always been my burden to suppress. I retain a
memory from when I was very young, perhaps 3 or 4: somehow I had managed to restrain one
of the many stray cats that resided in our neighborhood and was in the process of smashing its
head in with a brick. Being young as I was I was not yet possessed of the strength necessary to
put the creature to a mercifully quick end, thus the creature’s bawling could be heard throughout
the neighborhood. My mother, startled by the noise, ran out of the house to make sure I was
alright. As she approached she looked down at the bloody mess I had created. Never in my life
before or since have I ever seen a look that could so adequately be described as pure,
unadulterated horror.
From that point on I understood that there were certain parts of myself I would have to
take great pains to hide from those around me; I never wanted to see that look on my poor
mother’s face ever again. And for most of my young life I was able to do just that quite adroitly
I might add. For whatever reason it brought me immeasurable joy to make other living things
suffer. I indulged in this wretched pleasure throughout my teenage years, although I took careful
precautions to do so very privately, making use of abandoned buildings or stretches of
woodland well away from judgemental ears. Something about toying with the innards of these
nasty little creatures brought me a great deal of joy. Part of that joy stemmed from a raw
fascination with the machinations of the body. Veins where blood flowed, the beating heart that
pumped it, lungs inflating and deflating rapidly as the animal gasped for breath.

Yet I cannot pretend that my interest in these amateur dissections was purely out of
scientific concern. There was still that little defect in my brain. The defect that caused my mother
to look upon me with such horror all those years ago. The defect that caused me to revel in the
pain of living things. Yes, watching the living animal’s heart beating was intriguing, but beyond
that was the exhilarating knowledge that it was the pain, suffering, and fear I was causing the
animal that caused it’s heart to beat so desperately. I enjoyed having the power to end the lives
of the cats, dogs, and whatever little rodents I could capture throughout my neighborhood.
Seeing the creatures struggles would cause my own heart to race and my breath to come
quickly. After cleaning up I would come home in a euphoric, subdued state, like a man who has
been declared victorious after an exhausting and destructive battle.
Still, aside from my violent forays into the woods I was otherwise able to suppress the
more brutal part of my nature. Although I had few friends growing up the community as a whole
still seemed to accept me. And although I was a turbulent and often combative child I never again caused my mother to look at me with that look of abject horror she gave me in my early childhood

I apologize for the formatting.

>the shittiness of my life is actually a good thing

I'm awful, but I'm trying.

Gave up 3 sentences in. You're not special.

What was it like the first year or two when writing took over as your main source of income?

Until I get myself to work independently on projects that I can sell, I'll be stuck working for someone else and I don't want that.

here

>I'll be stuck working for someone else and I don't want that.

Well, too bad, because that's almost certainly what it's going to be like. I'm a freelancer now, but I started out as a full time employee and my job shifted and changed until writing became my main work. For various reasons I left and started out on my own, but for some time I relied on contacts from my previous jobs. Now I get work from various sources and I can pick and choose what I do.

>What was it like the first year or two when writing took over as your main source of income?

Peaks and troughs. Sometimes I had more work than I could deal with and sometimes I went for weeks with no paid work whatsoever. Fortunately, thanks to some reasonable financial sensibility, I've ended up at least as well off as I would have been if I had stayed in my full time job. And, it turns out that working for yourself doing something that you like doing and being good enough at it to make a living is a pretty awesome feeling.

The first six sentences were enjoyable.
Lost interest when the secret turned out to (seem like) run of the mill psychopathy. Reading further, it seemed that is not the case because he feels shame at his mother's expression- still, the premise is an old one.

cliches: the post.

It is shamefully cliche. Whenever I try to write prose it always turns into some psychopath killing someone. I do better with poetry

I don't see a reason to hope that you're talented. When I write, I write what I want to read. I also read what I want to read. Then I compare the two, what I'm writing and what I'm reading, and if my writing doesn't measure up to the works I love, I ask myself why, and then I go and improve it.

Measuring your work in general with other works that are good and popular seem flawed, because it assumes that your interest as a writer is to create something popular, that popularity equates to quality.

I hope that what I write is good, because I want to write more of it, and in order to write more I need to support myself. I currently work a job and a part time job for money, and id like to one day write something worthwhile, so that people enjoy it and give me money so that I can continue to do it.

I don't want it to be popular. If I can make a standard living off writing that's fine. Im not dreaming of being the next Stephen King. I want to be a good writer.

i was highly regarded in my classes, but i got hate for being lazy and always half assing everything. the classmates hated me because i didnt want to give critiques (mainly because it would have just been all negative and then i would have seemed pretentious)

i now drink a ton and work in a lab, doing serious work and not selfishly writing about my opinions.

>so that people enjoy it and give me money so that I can continue to do it.
unless you're writing a bestseller, writing fiction will not be the most stable source of income.

Then post that next time

There are good and bad bestsellers.

It's not important that I make millions of dollars or become famous.

It's more that I want to write and not feel guilty if i should start to believe that I'm peddling dogshit to someone.

Writing for money isn't bad in itself. But money seems to be your primary motivation. And that's bad. Quit now before your disappointment approaches biblical levels.

Looks like literature wasn't your mojo

I think you misunderstand.

My motivation is to write. I can't do it when I'm at work all day, I can shitpost here, because it's easily detachable from real life. Writing isnt.

I want the modest life of a writer.

”I’ve known several guys in my life who wanted to become artists, and were supported by their parents; not one of them managed to break through. It’s curious, you might think that the need to express yourself, to leave a trace in the world, is a powerful force, yet in general that’s not enough. What works best, what pushes people most violently to surpass themselves, is still the pure and simple need for money.”

from la carte et et le territoire

fuck houellebecq

this is a tricky thread to answer since all replies are in writing, it'll be hard for folks not to get overly analytical about what they say.
i'm an excellent writer tho

Yeah, but when it comes time to write I'm paralyzed by the notion that what I'm writing isn't the best possible form of what I want to express, and end up either going back and revising my plan unnecessarily, or grinding through 100 words an hour and hating myself.

Probably but I can't tame my writing styles enough to be critically acceptable. I like shorts about seemingly unimportant things being vastly important yet with no emphasis that they're important.

I know that I'm good but my discipline is garbage. Honestly I should get off Veeky Forums and go write right now.

Me.
Don't have to prove it to you. :)

I've yet to find a comparable sample of writing someone on Veeky Forums would consider "good", so I have no idea.

protip: teachers tell that to anyone who isn't a complete fuckup. It's called trying to motivate someone. In your case, it seems to have failed in its purpose.

Part of getting better is having the confidence to stick with most of your outline. It helps if you start with a vague one and build it up as you go.

I know the teacher in question better than I any teacher I've ever had, and we've interacted outside of school too; she doesn't give unmerited credit. I did finish one novella that was about 90 pages long, and that's already more lengthy than any work nearly all people write in their lives. I know that objectively speaking my prose is better than what most people can produce.

This is largely why I switched to writing short stories.

Thus your post is as useless as they come.

That's the point.
Punchlines are better left unexplained. ;)

this can work, but I'm thinking of great examples like Cortazar. got any samples?

being in the top 1% doesn't mean anything. that means you're in the top 70 million writers. you really have to be top .001% to be something special

I'm pretty great but people just aren't ready

I must be ok at least. I've published in some prestigious literary magazines in my language area and won a few awards with short stories and poetry,

Never before have I been drawn
To magnificence of such degree
Something a painter would have drawn
If that painter knew what I see
Every night in my dreams
The blackest bits of all my soul
Mixed up in garbage bags and thrown
Out to the streets hidden from lights
Some angels must close by have been
Who molded them to something spry
And had them twisted totally
Tweaked tumbled transmogrified
And had them laid above your eyes
I saw them once am hypnotized
I hope I get a chance to swim
And good in that fur paradise
Like Beowulf, Byron and my name
Writ in the same breath when I say
I will and do for I've known now
The magic of perfect eyebrows

Am I good, satisfactory, decent, excellent, amazing, astonishing, amazing, great, good, well, or otherwise well at writing, my dear good great sir or madam or whatever you may happen to call yourself, sir?

Allow me to answer with an anecdote, sir: one time, in the 3rd grade, I happened to have what is called a "crush" on a member of the female species and therefore decided to proffer to her a letter of my own writing in which I extolled above all the beauties of nature the beauties of her own face hair body &c., whereupon she burst into tears, saying, "How come HE'S the only one who likes me?"

That is how good of a writer I am, sir or madam. That is.

And I'll have you know my mom thinks I'm a good writer, too.

I used to be pretty good but now I have to focus on how I structure sentences otherwise they become nonsensical.

Kind of. I write short stories and get rejected pretty frequently, which I guess is par for the course in this business. I recently had my first paid publication, which is exciting.

So, possibly I'm improving.

I don't know but I work hard and it pays off

no such thing as "good" writing.

all there is is self promotion, and I fucking suck at it.

So all writing is equally good or bad in your mind? That can't be true. Or do you really think that the quality of the prose or poetry you could create when you were 10 is as good as it is now? Of course not, because some texts are better than others, and some people are better writers than others.

I'm a fan of genre fiction and fiction. I hope that I am talented, I've been practicing every day.

Post your creative writing.

>I do better with poetry
Prove it.

>Genre Fiction
>requiring or allowing any form of talent
Oh boy, have I got some news for you

Well, I guess I can handle Veeky Forums shitting on me.

My Secret Box

Daddy's got a writing machine
he always fills the room with
all that fucker does is type
and fill his gullet with cheap white
wine
while I stare at dirty plates and filth and sadness
cigarette ashes
praying I don't become my old man

Mommy's not an angel either
maid comes twice a week
so at least the house is nice and neat
while she rides the pool guy
and step dad feels me up
saying I'm so sweet
the worst part is I kind of like it
when he touches me like that
He's stupid, he's fat
and I'm on my knees
But there's not a damn thing he wouldn't do
if I pouted and said pretty please

At least I have my secret box
and you have yours
At least we have a quiet spot
to lick our wounds and pick our sores
Yes, our hearts are bound with chains and locks
but we have a private place
our secret box

You're shit.

what the fuck on any level dude

genre fiction definitely requires talent. appealing to the lowest common denominator is not a natural talent for most people

I actually liked your poem. The last paragraph/verse? (not that into poetry to be honest) was really good.

Kek

I have received some good opinions here on Veeky Forums, a thing that I actually value a lot and am proud of, since you guys are really severe and demanding in your criticism. Also, since people here are all anonymous, is normal for eventual readers to express their legitimate opinion without any concern for your feelings or for politeness, and that is a very valuable thing (although sometimes you end up being torn to pieces).

Even so, I think that I have permission to say that I have some talent (or at least willpower); however, I am not a good writer yet. There is also the fact that I started writing when I was 14-15 and am 29 now, so I have been working on it for quite a long time: maybe my “talent” is just the result of several years of effort.

The reason I say that I am not a good writer yet is because I have not produced a single organic-whole of a work that has yet been satisfactory and complete in itself. I write plays, and have already published one of them, but the work is so big, so confuse, so out of fashion that I believe that it hasn’t sold more than 30 copies in almost two years, and (and that’s the worst part) it is unplayable, even though it is a play (a comedy). I am now almost finishing my second play (a tragedy), and this work is going to be much more organized, balanced, playable and lively than my first effort (which took me 5 years to complete).

So, even knowing that I have some accomplishments (managed to publish a work, have gathered some good opinions here on Veeky Forums on the last years), I still cannot say I am a good writer. There is also the fact that I needed to learn so many things for my playwriting career (versification and metric structure, metaphor and simile construction, dialogue, figures of speech, control of sound techniques like alliteration and assonance, etc.) that only know I am starting to become a good manager of all my accumulate knowledge and training hours.

If I needed to point my best characteristic, I would say facility with metaphoric invention. My worst characteristic is lack of self-control and great inability to be concise.

What kind of thing do you want?

Post the best thing you've written.

I am, but I'm not a great creative writer. life is suffering.

I think I'm pretty good on a sentence-by-sentence level. But I don't know how to write a good plot, how to make convincing characters, and how to imbue my work with the layers of meaning that make actual brilliant writers brilliant.

Life is suffering.

are you me?

I don't know about best, but this one is probably the one that brought me the most fun per word. Here's a semi-hasty tl from Spanish:

"Samurai Chatter"
Waves clash with pine, snow and stone, and their echo enters the darkness, through the moonlight; we’d hear them as growls, snares and shouts, as the call of a creature, almost violent, travelling, like their utterers, miles upon miles with ease. Yet what we won’t understand is what they carry.

On this winter night krgggaUt tells of the time she met men: they had their firesticks and went too close to one another, looking for God knows what prey. krgggaUt was out looking for berry and roots, and had to leave behind what she’d been gathering the whole night in order to escape. The demons found her nest and tore it apart.

tktkN sings of hhnAg’s fur on spring morning, of its autumn colors, of the first time he smelled her, of seeing her drinking in a clearing, of how sweet her voice is, of how he’d like to spend all seasons with her, step together in all forests. His singing ends when she answers.

Despite the rain, shBaan and uduRh dispute, joined by thunder. It’s been many solstices that these two have been fighting, wanting to know who is truth. In the end shBaan wins by shouting more and louder, how it’s proper in a debate. With no option but to leave words, uduRh throws a branch many kilometers away, towards the enemy head.

Old, moonfurred kokgoU tssLad, retells, when the sky is only stars, the tales of the forebears: heroic prmU, who was raised among men, and who brought nests to his race; the exodus through the White land-without-land, now ended by the sun; the promise made to the moon, that had to be following if the young were to grow and the old were to rest.

Xaxk tells his well-liked anecdotes, that make the Little ones cry as much as the grown up laugh, and under the sharp crescent the latter putt he former at ease, saying those kinds of things don’t relly happen, and men might wear the animals’ fur or the trees’ leaves, but would never possess bodies like theirs—they had their cannibalistic tradition so that it wouldn’t happen.

Under the red eclipse the holidays are held, and the year ends. Everyone is there and food is shared, bodies play with one another and shouts aren’t needed.

Oh, ı forgot ı even had this thing, but it was pretty fun to write too, even though ı lost steam towards the end (written originally in English):

"Gravure"
Little by little, I’ve built a world for us two. I’ve collected not only time, but also space for us to live together, to fuse physically and chemically in a myriad situations and sceneries.

One day, on a city street, we would be walking hand-on-hand, through a night intruded by neon, with some pedestrians here and there, and then the drizzle would come, and we would either run or I would have an umbrella prepared. The pavement would become lustrous and we might get wet and at home we would get undressed and warm.

Some time in a pool we would see each other without gravity, in a different world. We would move and touch, chase with all our bodies, leaving behind only the motion of the water. Then we would dry with softness or light, sitting at the edge.

Other times, on the beach, the salty waves would be cold and the sand would be pastel. We would play and run and fall, drink something cool, look at the sun set. Come night and under torches we would have dinner and look at the starry sky, listen to the circulating sea, walk slowly, hugging against the wind.

When surrounded by green we would catch each other naked, branches cracking under our soles, in a safe mockery of wilderness. Then there in that aloneness with sun beams slipping through leaves and birds in the distance, we would surrender to something more old, but not less human, than we had known.

But coming back to concrete boxes, in our apartment, there would still be comfort in the morning, warm breakfast accompanying a view of a city where the clarity of the new day was joined by the enlarged shadows of buildings, occasional reflections of crystal, and we would be at the small table for just us two, and maybe later the kitchen. Oh, how I’ve thought of the kitchen.

These, and many others, I make grow from all the pictures, all the small dots joining together in meaning and pleasure, a great simulacrum. Don’t be mistaken, this is not escapism. It’s simply Love.