So what's preventing you from making and finishing masterpieces similar to ulysses, gravity's rainbow and infinite jest?

i'm not mentally ill

Haven't read enough books to write a dense, well structured and literary masterpiece. Also tfw too intelligent to write books.

tfw to intelligent to write books*

No shit yoda

so why bother replying, dumbass? think about it and maybe you'll understand. it's not a tough concept.

My craft is not on point, and so is my erudition, which means that I cannot really assess the value of my works without some intense, formal, guided studying.
So far every teacher and professor ai've met old me that I've got talent and insights, but this is nothing when you're trying to compete with Joyce and Dante. My impression is that talent is that last 1% needed to produce a masterpiece, the remaining 99% is craft, erudition and free time.

Since I know how much work is required to get a virtuoso in this craft, and since I completely lack discipline, it's fair to assume I'll never become the greatest Italian writer of the XXI century.

tfw too intelligent to be smart

>you're trying to compete with Joyce and Dante
what makes you think literature is a competition, user?

all these
joyce didn't bother considering his talent or lack of because he knew he was a genius
>do or don't
what is the pseudry

>implying joyce made a masterpiece and didn't just write dumb shit to look smart

It is one.

i am currently working on gravity's jest

I have nothing to say, my life has been uninteresting. That's why I read.

I don't want to

lel

My work in progress is Ulysses II: Infinite Rainbow

Talent and drive. I like reading and would like to write some nice essays about some of my favorite writers, but actually being a writer doesn't interest me.

I'm too afraid to publish my opus while Harold Bloom is still alive because he might read it and recognize that I have no discernible talent.

kek'd

instead of trying to write the smartest book ever im going to try and write the stupidest book ever

>Lack of diversity credentials.
/pol/cuck detected!

It's violence.

Only one enemy remained, two if I counted myself

Good plan! I think it will be postmodernism by default.

I just like reading. My bookshelf is full of classics, modern classics, poetry, philosophy, history, mythology, anthropology, religious texts, and all that other Veeky Forums type stuff, but the extent of my writing is yuri fanfiction posted under a username vastly different from the ones I use for social media and other websites. It's not for anyone to see except the morons that lurk fanfictionDOTnet. I know that my writing skills are better than the average there and the alter-ego I cultivate there is somewhat well known in the community.

I am thoroughly convinced that Pynchon writes with this mindset and then laughs his ass off when he gets critical acclaim.
Vineland is still one of my favorite books

>"To be understood is to prostitute oneself"
I won't squander my brilliance on the masses, who wouldn't appreciate it anyway.

I don't want an editor to change what I write. I once published a short story in an anthology. What I wrote was an exploration of the possibilities of a future in which AI had developed exponentially as per Moore's Law. It was set in a fascist nation, except run by a superintelligent AI that actually had the best interests of the people in mind and was not susceptible to the corruptions of human desire that make a benevolent human dictator an impossibility. This AI was intelligent enough to be able to predict the best way to maximize the utility and happiness of each and every individual. Some individuals would protest at first when forced to do new things, but would then realize that the AI had actually guided them into a situation where they were significantly more happy and contributed more to the well-being of the state. The protagonists of my story were a group of ideologically-motivated libertarian individuals rebelling against the regime, but they were not the heroes. They were the main focus of the story, but it was very clear that the actions they took against the state were not just and were harming the population of the state in which they lived. They were the protagonists, but they were actually the villians, because when they finally got their way, everybody was much worse off than they had been lived under the watchful eye of the AI. The editor cut large portions of the story out and twisted it into a story about brave liberty-lovers fighting an evil totalitarian regime, which was not what the story was about. I'm never publishing anything again. Publishers are vultures who will twist your words into something that suits their ideological narrative.

The aesthetic and the agonistic are one.

instead of trying to write the smartest book ever im going to try and write the stupidest book ever

Well, if you're as dumb as this post implies you'll have no trouble writing that "stupidest novel of all time".

LOL nice quote mate :^)

Yikes.

can you tell me what anthology you published it in?
also in general i´d be interested in reading that short story from what you wrote it sounds quite interesting

>comparing trash like gravity's rainbow and infinite jest to the master prose work that is Ulysses

plebs

>muh ulysses
pleb

Not reading them and avoiding anyone that talks about them mostly

no reason to

"I think everyone that wants to write a great novel ought to give it a shot" -Thomas Pynchon

WELL, Veeky Forums? Pinecone has your back

alright. fine.

I've started my surrealist novel about a man and his imaginary yeti friend Heinz but man it's hard to be productive when you only really feel any sort of motivation like a day every week and crippling teenage existential dread and angst twenty foh seven the other six days even though im now 22

if that's the sort of attitude you have it's no wonder you'd never write anything worth reading

I intend to write a long, dense series of stories that will waver between novels, collections of short stories, poetry (epic poetry, ideally) and theater, all of which tells a story set in what might be the future and which involves every character questing after union with God in one way or another. It will be me attempting to equal Dante.

Right now I'm writing short stories and novels instead.

I have absolutely no interesting ideas and even if I did I wouldn't have the skill to express them

I lack the discipline, I can't even last for longer than 2 days without fapping

Insecurity
Perfectionism
Fear of failure
Anxiousness
Lack of time

Maybe the publisher thought you're writing the book for kids and they're not gonna market and sell something childish

I haven't read enough quality literature yet
I write really slow
I don't fully trust my proofreader/editor

I don't know. But it's not anything to do with ability. You need ability for sure and you need luck but, if you or I actually tried, really tried in a manner of "throw enough shite at the wall and some of it will stick" we'd make at least something worth reading.

The main thing is work ethic. A better question is why are some people able to get complete garbage published year on year and others who may be technically better writers and have better and deeper ideas, can't finish a manuscript?

So do the bathrooms in places that do this stink like shit? It seems pretty unhygienic to have shit smeared paper just kept in a little bin rather than being flushed away.

those aren't the kinds of books i want to write.

The lack of competition in art is a contemporary tendency: most of the authors of our tradition, across all the arts, never denied this aspect of their craft.
You're basically shitting on Hesiod, Petrarch, Shakespeare and Goethe only because this attitude does not fit your current beliefs.

In my head I'm a literary genius but if I write a book I will be faced with the cold hard fact that I'm actually shit.

Living the dream in ignorance right now my dude.

Way to make shit up buddy

Lack of talent, lack of work ethic and experience like everyone else already said.
Also my low attention span, the combined ADHD and autism that are the results of my over-exposure to digital media and probably porn. My childish habit to never do anything fully, to it's end or greatest extent so that I can save face/my delusions.

It has to do with toilet paper clogging up the sewage.

Is this your refutation?

There's nothing to refute. You said some things that aren't true.

Here's my refutation:
It isn't, and they didn't.

Let's take Hesiod: are you really syaing that the Athenian artistic scene was not agonistic in nature? Because this is a controversial statment that goes against radically about the academic consensus on the matter.

Whatever, you're probably in denial: you've adopted a certain set of morals, for which an arist in order to be good has to be X (where X is what you believe in), knowing that most artists in history had a different conception of their figure must be too much for you to handle it.

And another post full of nothing with some armchair psychology to top it off.

Let the colons rest before they try to run from your farm, user. They can't take much more abuse.

Gotcha, you've got nothing to say.
Keep believing that "true artists" have to comform to your puritan standards, and keep deliberately ignoring the history and beliefs of said true artists.

Who are you talking to? Definitely not the person you're replying to, based on the things you're typing. Are you lost?

I'm an autodidact and I'm currently writing my first novel. Here's some tips you didn't ask for:

1) Take up running to off-set the apathy which comes from spending too much time indoors. It's not about fitness but removing complacency on a daily basis. A good book to read on a writer/author is "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running".

>Say what you write out-loud as you go or before you write words onto the page. This removes a good deal of writer's block as it is easier to transcribe your own spoken words and ideas than it is to come up with what is written at the very instant you're writing / rambling on the page.

3) On top of running whenever the apathy creeps in as it interfere with your concentration; to get back to a good standard of daily writing output -- write first thing after waking. Write about anything as long as the writing isn't nonsense. After doing this every morning you'll be in the habit of writing more.

I guess you're too daft to understand your own prejudices.

Read some Sartre you delusional fuck

have you tried getting published when youre a borderline hermit who doesnt like criticism?

geniuses write physics books
pseuds write canon and bestsellers

suck your own dick, faggot

The fact that you dumb faggots won't shut up about the books.

Gavel