Daily reminder that the vast majority of writers lead lonely and boring lives and that you will not be experiencing a...

Daily reminder that the vast majority of writers lead lonely and boring lives and that you will not be experiencing a full life if you devote yourself to this craft. You will be spending your time reading and writing instead of trying to experience the world, to meet people and bond or conflict with them, to learn as much as you can about the real inner workings of the world. Sure, you will experience the world, but you will be constantly retreating from it. And even when you are experiencing the world, you will be often analyzing it for writing material, from the point of view of a writer, and so you will always be detached from it. If you have never felt the detachment of a writer, then you are not a true writer.

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarate, the performing arts entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning it into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat...”
- Pessoa

>inb4 mentioning an author with massive balls who lived an exciting life
These people are the exceptions, obviously, and have more balls than you ever will, so stop trying to make excuses. You will not be the next Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson. Who both, incidentally, killed themselves.

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”
- Hemingway

>inb4 writing only takes up a certain portion of your day, so you have so much other time to do whatever you want
If you do not devote yourself to your craft they way the best writers do, then you will be writing trash and are not fit to call yourself a writer. Don't act like you don't have to work ridiculously hard to create a great work of art. The best writers, like Joyce, are the ones that devote themselves to writing the most.

“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one...Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written.”
- Faulkner

Art is beautiful and important, the but the life of the writer is not a beautiful or important one aside from the art he creates. To want to be a writer, to live the life of a writer, you must be a sort of masochist, or must be so consumed by your passion as to see no other possible route for yourself. The life of a true writer is not a good one, and may not even be so romantically and aesthetically terrible as to make up for its horridness.

“What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology?”
- William Gaddis

>t. teenage girl

you're correct but i suck at everything else and am too absent minded to function in the so called real world so I will have to be a wrtier. wish me luck bois.

>writing for any other reason than to write
if you're trying to deter people from writing because of the downsides there might be involved, any successes you make will be against those who are simply not writers to begin with. most will figure this out on their own, and some will even avoid your narrow vision of writing in spite of you, becoming great commercial successes, or immortal authors even within their lifetimes. why even make this post? sounds more like you're trying to talk yourself out of writing.

My life is going to be boring and lonely either way

>Wanting to be like past writers

Not OP but I don't think he was trying to deter people from writing per say, (he did say that art is important) but just trying to show how the life of a writer kinda sucks, which I think is more or less true.

>sounds more like you're trying to talk yourself out of writing
I agree with this

I think you missed the point completely. If you are willing to be a truly great writer, then I commend you, but this is separate from their lifestyle. Some of the greatest people in history had terrible lives.

>some will even avoid your narrow vision of writing in spite of you, becoming great commercial successes, or immortal authors even within their lifetimes.
Good for them, then. That doesn't take away from my points whatsoever.

>>writing for any other reason than to write
I literally said that to be a great writer, you must devote yourself completely to your craft. Of course a writer must ideally want to write rather than be a writer. I was addressing the lifestyle that comes from this choice to write instead of live.

Do you even disagree with what I said, or are did you just take a skim and then try to project as much shit as you could onto me? You have pretty poor reading comprehension for someone who seems to want to be a writer.

no, you just wrote trash with no reason behind it, other than to project on others what writing is, you used the idea of loneliness to deter people from writing, insinuating that one of the purposes of writing to some people's minds is to make friends or to grow in popularity in general.

yes, i disagree with you intensely. writers write however the fuck they wish to, and they don't need people like yourself to try to pigeonhole their passions into a single post on Veeky Forums with a picture of fucking gaddis stamped on it.

>you used the idea of loneliness to deter people from writing, insinuating that one of the purposes of writing to some people's minds is to make friends or to grow in popularity in general.

Wrong. I said nothing about the purpose of writing, and certaintly not that it was about "making friends or growing in popularity." That was the exact opposite of what I said, in fact. If that is your goal, then you can go ahead and write all the trash you want, instead of spending your time actually writing. But for the great writers who devote themselves to their craft, they must write. and write. And what I said was not anything to do with the purpose of art, but the lifestyle of the human who creates it. I don't know what the purpose of art is, but I do know the real life consequences of devoting oneself entirely to it. Not that this isn't a noble thing to do, not that it isn't an incredible human being who can do such a thing. You seem like an overly sensitive idiot who has trouble comprehending the very basic shit that I said. I suggest graduating middle school before trying to be a writer.

you're not saying anything useful in your post then.

>hur dur you should devote yourself to writing before i consider you to be a TRUE writer
as if anyone gives a fuck about your opinion on what constitutes a writer or writing itself. go project your insecurities about your own shit lit elsewhere.

>you're not saying anything useful in your post then.
I'm not even going to respond to this idiotic statement. I'm not here to be useful for you, idiot.

>as if anyone gives a fuck about your opinion on what constitutes a writer or writing itself
So you don't think that to be a great writer you have to devote yourself to writing? Stop using the word "project" whenever your emotions get triggered and actually try understanding what you read next time.

Why such a thread, though? Just a spark of generosity?

you're projecting by stating what a "true writer" is you mongoloid. you even offered the moronic tautology "If you have never felt the detachment of a writer then you are not a true writer".

i'm telling you that your opinion of what a true writer is, how they live their lives, and what constitutes a writer is worthless, and only shows what a pinhole you look at literature you look through.

and no, you don't have to fucking devote yourself to writing to be a great writer. it goes back to my point that your opinion on what constitutes a "great writer" is irrelevant, since it's irrelevant, a writer can have any number of qualities and commitments, and still be "great". no matter how many images of gaddis you post.

>you don't have to fucking devote yourself to writing to be a great writer
prove it

>you're projecting by stating what a "true writer" is you mongoloid. you even offered the moronic tautology "If you have never felt the detachment of a writer then you are not a true writer".
This.

Also the rest of the post is correct.

It's just another way of experiencing life, as valid as any other. Let's be honest, reading and writing are infinitely interesting. I love this shit.

Are you OP?

you are pretty dumb. OP is not referring to "anyone who writes" when he says "great writer." obviously "everyone who writes" is too great a population to create generalizations about, but "people who devote themselves to writing" is not, and they do have some commonalities in the way they live their lives. to act as if there are no commonalities among groups of people and they way they live is stupid.

>you don't have to fucking devote yourself to writing to be a great writer
Yikes, just yikes. Every great writer ever would like to have a word with you.

god damn you're a moron. your opinion on what a great writer even is would make it impossible to "prove" it to you, since you have already given the quality of devotion to your concept of a great writer. this is why what you say is worthless, what constitutes a great writer is a subjective observation made typically by the reader of the works. you making a thread like this only shows your hubris, shows that you believe you have the objective guidelines of what makes a great writer, which makes this thread no better than the age old
>i like x, so it's the best, and anyone who disagrees is wrong
threads

no
see above

That's not me, retard.
>your opinion on what a great writer even is would make it impossible to "prove" it to you, since you have already given the quality of devotion to your concept of a great writer.
I would give the quality of devotion to anyone who is great at their craft, and you should to. I'm surprised that you are so arrogant as to believe that someone can be truly great at something without putting in a lot of effort. This is empirically false.

>what constitutes a great writer is a subjective observation made typically by the reader of the works.
I said nothing about the artistic quality of a great artist, just that they must devote themselves to their craft. Again, a misreading of what I said.

>you believe you have the objective guidelines of what makes a great writer
Nope, not artistically speaking, not at all. And I never said so. Stop embarassing yourself, please.

That seems like a terrible cliché to be earnest familia

you're full of shit, calling me arrogant when you tell people whether or not they're writers (see: the bullshit tautology you offered at the end of your first paragrap) anyone with eyes can see what your post is trying to say, you're not fooling anyone. i'm done arguing with you.

To achieve or create anything in life you have to sacrifice, what makes you think this only goes for writers? And what makes you think a "full life" is readily available anywhere else?

>you tell people whether or not they're writers (see: the bullshit tautology you offered at the end of your first paragrap)
I agree

>To achieve or create anything in life you have to sacrifice, what makes you think this only goes for writers? And what makes you think a "full life" is readily available anywhere else?
Also completely true

>anyone with eyes can see what your post is trying to say
Except you, apparently.
>i'm done arguing with you.
As am I. It's difficult to argue with someone who doesn't even understand what I'm saying. Good luck with your life as a mediocre writer.

Peter Pan syndrome: The Post

>Daily reminder that the vast majority of writers
Stopped reading there.

Fuck what the vast majority of writers were like. Fuck trying to find the right mindset, lifestyle or routine in other writers. They are different people (and mostly from different times, different places). Don't be like them, be a new writer.

>someone who doesn't even understand what I'm saying
Nobody understood what you're saying because you're saying nothing.

That's sound advice. Thank you.

ITT: Nuh-uh! Yuh-huh! Nuh-uh! Yuh-huh! Nuh-uh!

This is why the humanities never go anywhere. You guys think only in generalities based on your subjective experience and refuse to see other people's. This thread is literally "thinking with muh feelings": the thread

What?

>mediocre writer
and your arrogance reveals itself.

ITT: Nuh-uh! Yuh-huh! Nuh-uh! Yuh-huh! Nuh-uh!

This is why the humanities never go anywhere. You guys think only in generalities based on your subjective experience and refuse to see other people's. This thread is literally "thinking with muh feelings": the thread

Can you even read or are you completely retarded?

M E T A
e
t
a

But you're doing exactly that instead of offering a supposedly superior experience on the subject at hand, you're thinking with your feelings bro

Can you even read or are you completely retarded?

I can read and as far as I can tell I'm not retarded

That's why if you want to write you have to learn to drink.

Good shitpost though, inventive.

Gaddis was pretty handsome desu

Not handsome enough to save the thread.

"Yet we must not forget one important attribute of the genius: an infinite capacity for taking pains in the field where his interest lies."
Lajos Egri; On Genius

Making a living at writing has one wonderful advantage:you can do it anywhere. Visit exotic lands,knock out a few thousand words and spend the rest of the day living that adventure you write about.

Why such a post, though? Just a spark of generosity?

joyce was arrogant, do you hate him?

this thread wasnt a complete waste

Good luck friendo.

> Some of the greatest people in history had terrible lives.

Doesn't the greatness kinda make up for this though?

Like, is having a vibrant social life really better than writing a beautiful novel? No one said there aren't downsides, but it's as if you don't see any value in the literature itself, as though writers don't actually enjoy writing.

Go back to your boring balanced normie life. If that's what you prefer, then fine, but don't attack people who are willing to make sacrifices to be great.

bump.

bumperino