Cities

New York is too expensive. Detroit is too depressing. Anchorage is in the middle of fucking nowhere.

It's 2016: where's the best place in the world to be a writer?

Simple houses in rural places. I dunno it's what I prefer. Doesn't have to be much as long as a lot of land's at your backdoor and you can go out there and see whatever needs to be seen and you need to see.
Quality in life isn't all area, it's your insides too. How you feel about a place and how it think it connects to your creativity can drive or crash your writing. Everything about how your work is personally driven, I'd imagine the perfect place for one person has to do with what their projects are and the tenacity with which they write.

somewhere in Latin America probably
danger makes it more literary

>Anchorage is in the middle of fucking nowhere.

why is this bad?

Berlin

Singapore

the front range mountains of colorado.

Your grandparents' cottage in Haugesund, Norway.

Chicago. It's like New York but with half the cost of living and more segregation so you have to deal with fewer black people.

london, manchester, dublin, florence, hamburg, milan, frankfurt, oxford, any of the swiss cities, most of the russian cities,

not: american cities (the most literary places in america are small towns), french cities (see prior parentheses, caveat: there are very nice coastal cities), berlin, munich, barcelona

a big clue is it needs both a rich old-money class, an underbelly of poor "creative types" (being fashionable does not make one creative), and a long history. tourists are fine as long as the city does not change its essence to accommodate them (see venice, new york, paris etc)

note: all this is anecdotal, try to find a city that matches the scene/genre/style you are interested in. also i do not know enough about latin america, africa or asia to judge (though shanghai >>> beijing).
i dont know anything about australia but i reckon thats the optimal.

also if i missed a city then thats because a) im forgetful, b) ive never been there

north carolina is booming, do chapel hill

cheap living and surrounded by all sorts of people. close to a lot of events

Damascus will the be most Veeky Forums city for the next decade or so.

Swiss cuckoo clock rule applies.

Liverpool

V I E N N A
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A

If Assad wins the war or there is a peace deal on terms that are favorable to him and then Chinese and UN aid money starts flowing in then it has the potential to be pretty Veeky Forums. If there is successful regime change it will be shit though

>being poor

lmao @ u

you LITERALLY cannot be Veeky Forums if you're poor

arkangelsk

>Detroit is too depressing.
????????
Detroit is full of potential. Everywhere you look is resurgence. Nothing depressing about it.

I've said it in other threads before, St. Petersburg (Russia of course) is pretty damn Veeky Forums. I don't regret moving here.

Dallas

Diaspora or not, we're due for some masterpieces from secular Syrians soon.

ny being expensive is the point you dingus

OK, Lowry.

don't worry about, you have already guaranteed that you will never write anything of worth by posting on Veeky Forums

Fag

>More segregation
Sounds good
t. Baltimore

I want to go to there so so badly.

not toronto. too damn expensive.

Is anything less interesting than the bourgeois

it depends on your prospective. if you have no ideas and no inspirations I suggest kobane, rojava

yes, poor people

detroit

I dunno...I would still love to live in NYC. I could deal with roommates and like $600-$850 rent if I just lived there. Other places just aren't the same, don't have the same energy And I've been to Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Philly, Boston, San Francisco...Baltimore...

Maybe I'm biased because I live a ~40 minute train ride from the place and go often...I would consider living in Montreal, though. I hear it's a relatively cheap place to live. Even just visiting in general I spent less money than I thought I would.

>$600-$850 rent

lol

if you live in manhattan anywhere south of ~130th street it's 1k minimum with a roommate. for "good" areas it's closer to 1500, can easily go up to 2k.

Victorville California. It will give you insight into the depths of humanity you never thought were possible.

This user speaks truth. Live in Brooklyn or queens or the Bronx but Manhattan proper... don't do it man. Pic related is in the far Rockaways, in one of the good spots

Well yeah, I know Manhattan is that expensive. But areas like Bushwick and Ridgewood, and sometimes even Williamsburg, are definitely within my stated price range. I've looked on craigslist and ads on facebook, but usually there is more than one roommate in the equation.

williamsburg is manhattan-lite, one of the most egregious cases of gentrification. mostly 20 - 30 yos with very wealthy parents living in overpriced 2k+ studios.

bushwick is williamsburg to a lesser extent.

idk much about ridgewood. brooklyn is a meme.

Charleston is fantastically comfy and cheap. My favorite city. Beautiful old buildings, tons of history, plus plenty of night life as its a college town. I plan on moving there after school.

Ridgewood is nice, big polish diaspora around that area. Know a couple immigrant families that were able to buy their own townhouses with backyard and the works. Access to the L and M train. Good neighborhood.

I've been to all of these places...And you're telling me what I already know.

What I'm talking about is just based on my own viewing of listings in the outer boroughs. Most are $1k+, yes, and with roommates, but there definitely are some that are less, and in these areas. You just have to look. A lot...

Yeah, Brooklyn is a meme. Queens is probably more viable.

you're gonna show up in nyc and end up living in a closet

you have very unrealistic expectations

nyc is not a good city for poor people

are you serious, you can get a studio in williamsburg for 2k? I mean I don't want to live there, it seems pretty lame, but that is pretty cheap compared to many cities

you can get a 2k studio at an older building/not super central area in wlliamsburg. for modern buildings its more like 2.5k-3k

idk how you think that's cheap. its more expensive than everywhere except central san francisco, certain parts of london, hong kong, etc. nyc (manhattan/gentrified brooklyn) is one of the most expensive cities to live, rent-wise, in the world.

>Detroit is too depressing. Anchorage is in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Wouldn't both of those things help you write?

I mean, I wouldn't move there if I had no decent job lined up...I'm not talking about just packing my things and going there. But if I had a full-time writing-related job, I'm sure could totally find a decent place to live in New York. I think anyone could, really. Don't be stupid with your money, as hard as that might be...

you have no idea what a "full-time writing-related job" is, how hard they are to find, or how well they pay, do you?

Of course I do. that's why my whole post hinges on the word "if."

It's only hard if you suck. True story

Milwaukee

lol

how much is rent? can I fish there? is there a library? a powerlifting gym? qts? how's the food? how are the people?

Any beach town.

Cincinnati. It's the Florence of America

Please don't encourage others to move here. We're full.

new orleans is not a bad call. maybe some place like Portland maine

Savannah GA

Thoreau would like some words with you...

This is prophetic, as long as Assad wins.
If not I don't expect much for a while.
But it will come eventually.

What the fuck world do you live in that 2k for a studio is fucking cheap?

Nords are fags with big foreheads

Fuck you

Emerging cities are the place to be. Mexico, Lagos, Manilla, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Singapore, Kinshasa, Bangalore, Nanjing. It has to have over 5,000,000 inhabitants and a yearly growth of 3,00%.

Lol, from detroit

>falling for the city meme

The most literary place you can live is in a rural area, near the wilderness or ocean, like Vermont or some coastal town in New England. If it isn't comfy, then it isn't Veeky Forums, faggot.

Or this:

Omsk

Probably Montevideo.

really?

Is Copenhagen a decent place? I had been thinking of spending winter there to write a novel.

Doesn't matter, if you need external influences to write something halfway decent then you need more practice. True writing come from within, senpai.

Amsterdam

lol?

I'm saying you are a pretentious shitter, senpai.

language is an external influence

>true writing doesn't even need words

Now you are finally understanding.

What do you like so much about St. Petersburg? (Besides it being cheap and historic?)

The future of art is ONLINE.

The future of literature is POST-GEOGRAPHICAL.

If you are going OUTSIDE, you are doing it WRONG.

The best place in the world to be a WRITER is in a dwelling with an INTERNET CONNECTION.

kill yourself and take your shitty cartoons with you

t. fountain penned faggot larping rimbaud centuries too late

>Chapel hill
>cheap

Kek

Boulder

Camden, New Jersey

>The best place in the world to be a WRITER is in a dwelling withOUT an INTERNET CONNECTION.

Ftfy

Duluth, Minnesota

dont you look up words/locations as you write sometimes?

Tl;dr: the best place to be a writer is anywhere

1) sufficiently stimulating
2) fucking cheap

Hemingway made Paris work because in the 20s, Paris was fucking cheap. Patti Smith made NYC work because in the 70s, NYC was fucking cheap. Heather O'Neill made Montreal work because in the 00s, Montreal was fucking cheap.

YOU WILL NOT BE A GREAT ARTIST IF YOU START OUT IN AN EXPENSIVE CITY.

You will have to work too hard, too long, and all your energy will be spent collecting wages to pay rent instead of working on your art.

With that said, you shouldn't move to a total backwater, either. Even "reclusive" artists aren't really that reclusive. McCarthy spent time at an art colony in Ibiza and now hangs out at a science institute in Santa Fe. Even oddballs like Kafka and Melville created their best works when surrounded by other artists.

I'd say Prague, Ljubljana, somewhere in Belgium that is not Brussels (or maybe Brussels if you live in a shitty neighbourhood).

Oh. I assumed you wanted to write something worth reading. My bad. Never mind.

lol...anything between nyc and sf is forgettable.

try prospect heights/crown heights area neighborhoods. Some of the housing stock around there can be very nice, super close to prospect park, and much more affordable than williamsburg

slovenia is great...good nightlife in ljubliana also.

How?

>It's 2016: where's the best place in the world to be a writer?
>A noisy city

What? You would be surrounded by endless construction, motor vehicles and other distractions. Ever heard the phrase, "The city that never sleeps"? That can generally be applied to any large city.

Move to the middle of nowhere in some rural shithole. Just don't allow yourself to have any neighbors. That can probably be solved by buying several acres of woodland and placing your hobbit house in the very center. It'll be a long trip back to civilization for when you need groceries or other amenities, but at least you'll have some peace and quiet.

The rural South can be just as shitty as more urban areas, however. You definitely don't want any neighbors. They'll keep you up all night shooting off firearms or having drug parties. There usually aren't any noise ordinances in these places, so the police won't care if Joe Blow Meth Head's tweakfest next door is keeping you up on a work night.

Thats gorgeous

Phuket, Thailand

People who lack the simple discipline not to shitpost during writing ours will never write anything worth reading anyway.

Memphis desu; cost of living is dirt cheap, riverside's inspiring (if you can avoid the rampant homelessness), food and beer are fantastic, and if you land an apartment on the bank (max rent less than 1k/month), it's just isolated enough for morning quiet and a walk from Beale.

Lived there for a few years, migrating between Nashville and Chattanooga. Close enough to the rural south to know where not to go, and where's tolerable.

Pittsburgh