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Invisible Man wrote:

Iommic Pope wrote:Also, everyone that I talk to about writing leads a way more interesting life than I do, and is usually about 1000x as smart as I am.

Demonstrably untrue. Don't mistake an active interior life for an exciting exterior one. You only need the first one.

I can't argue about intelligence with you. I am 1000x smarter than you. Sorry.

But writers don't even have to be smart, so that's no excuse.

Basically, I'm just trying to provoke you. What little credit I can take for meager success, I attribute to rage and spite.

You be surprised at how motivated I can become by spite and rage.
But you get hugs.
On the intelligence thing: I take it as a compliment that most of my friends are VERY smart people and chose to keep me around, so I have the grace not to make it a dick measuring contest and accept that there are smarter people than I. It is a pleasure to know them.
In this instance, on ILF, it's a pleasure to interact with you guys in some sense or another.

In response to things both you and DoS have said, I suppose maybe I am overthinking it. Probably due to not engaging with and honing my skills in the area as much as I'd like to day to day.
Basically, 99% of things I've written over the past few years have been for work or academic purposes, so I feel boring.
It's been ages since I've written a song or lyrics, or done anything really creative.
I guess my vents are just clogged up and ready to blow.

Cue chank....

My favorite part in Inglorious Basterds was when the "Jew Hunter" shouts out, "I love rumors!"

If you enjoy writing, then just start out writing for you. Summer is hella slow around my office, so I use my down time to write (and also watch movies). Helps to pass the time and it feels good to create. Can't say that I'm terribly good at it, but I enjoy it, so that's why I continue to do it. I also had a blog that was fun for awhile.

Go for it - worst case scenario, no one gives a shit, but you still got something from the act of writing

jwar wrote:What kind of books? I wrote extremely graphic horror. LOL

"Return of the flesh eating boner"

Surrealist sci-fi, I guess. Mixing in some cut-up techniques and shit - absurd humour meets hard sci-fi?

Iommic Pope wrote:In response to things both you and DoS have said, I suppose maybe I am overthinking it. Probably due to not engaging with and honing my skills in the area as much as I'd like to day to day.
Basically, 99% of things I've written over the past few years have been for work or academic purposes, so I feel boring.
It's been ages since I've written a song or lyrics, or done anything really creative.
I guess my vents are just clogged up and ready to blow.

No, I get what you mean. Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. But that's one of the risks of being 'of a writerly persuasion,' if such a thing exists. I'm not even convinced that 'overthinking' is a real thing. Paralysis by analysis, sure, but being too thoughtful is not a problem that I have ever encountered in another human being. But, to continue to argue with myself, my line of work means that I don't have to justify my decisions or process to anyone with a pecuniary interest in them, so I'm free to waffle all I'd like. If you have a talent for it, you could become a professional waffler.

What was I saying? Oh, just do it. One of the advantages is that you can focus on process, not result--if you're anxious about this stuff, you can document that anxiety, and it can be useful. Writing isn't like other things (i.e., recording music), as you can sit down and do it anywhere. I'd love to record drums for three hours a day, but it just isn't happening between work, babies, and general sleeplessness. But I work out thought processes literally all day long by writing. There's no reason not to. Even if you try to publicize/publish and it sucks, very few people will ever see you fall down.

One thing that was a bit of a breakthrough for me and the anxiety that attends to producing things happened when I became obsessed with Vonnegut about ten years ago. He said something like "if you want to write something really good, just figure out who your audience is. Just one person. Write for just that one person, and try to make them laugh/cry/scared, whatever." I've done that ever since, and, though the audience changes with every new thing, it seems to work pretty well, and to focus your project.

Oh, how I love to waffle.

I also like what you said there about not having to justify your decisions. I guess I kind of get my validation for my work by subjecting it to the scrutiny of others (as is the case with all work related and undergraduate writing), so I kind of crave that gold sticker. Even if there isn't one to get I think I still hold myself up to ridiculous standards. Then that snowballs into, "write better than Hesse or fucking kill yourself!"

Vonnegut rules. That's all fantastic advice, man. Thank you.
That has genuinely inspired me.

Also, Chucky, I've read your reviews and they were great. You definitely need to keep writing in some capacity.
Sorry dude, I turned your thread into some kind of lame dick, safe space confessional.
What a cunt I am.

Found it. From Slapstick (not his most potent stuff, but still):

"For my own part, though: It would have been catastrophe if I had forgotten my sister at once. I had never told her so, but she was the person I had always written for. She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved. She was the secret of my technique. Any creation which has any wholeness and harmoniousness, I suspect, was made by an artist or inventor with an audience of one in mind.
Yes, and she was nice enough, or Nature was nice enough, to allow me to feel her presence for a number of years after she died—to let me go on writing for her. But then she began to fade away, perhaps because she had more important business elsewhere.”

And elsewhere:

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”



Haven't read him in years, but man...I miss him. Got a lot of people (myself included) through some really dark shit.

Last one.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3605/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-kurt-vonnegut

If that doesn't make you laugh and/or cry, I submit that you are not human. Or maybe I'm just really, really tired today.

OK, really the last one. A teaser from the interview above:

INTERVIEWER

Will you ever write another short story?

VONNEGUT

Maybe. I wrote what I thought would be my last one about eight years ago. Harlan Ellison asked me to contribute to a collection he was making. The story’s called “The Big Space Fuck.” I think I am the first writer to use “fuck” in a title. It was about firing a spaceship with a warhead full of jizzum at Andromeda. Which reminds me of my good Indianapolis friend, about the only Indianapolis friend I’ve got left—William Failey. When we got into the Second World War, and everybody was supposed to give blood, he wondered if he couldn’t give a pint of jizzum instead.

Invisible Man wrote:haven't read him in years, but man...I miss him. Got a lot of people (myself included) through some really dark shit.

I'm fairly convinced that no one has been more impactful on me than Vonnegut. He is a delicious quote machine.

Now a days I've been reading a lot of Jonathan Lethem for a similar vibe. I wish I could make more time for reading like this daily, it's pretty much just when I fly nowadays.

PeteeBee wrote:I'm fairly convinced that no one has been more impactful on me than Vonnegut.

Realizing more and more that this is true for me, too, in ways that I don't really get yet. Maybe if I read him again I'll figure some stuff out.

To the bookshelf!

Slapstick! is his best book tbqh.

D.o.S. wrote:Slapstick! is his best book tbqh.

Slapstick is great. God Bless You, Mr Rosewater is another favorite of mine. I don't know why but I really like Galapagos. It almost has the feel of like a Clancy novel in that you can tell that it is one of many, slightly formulaic, and quite simple, but there is something about it that I really like.

Invisible Man wrote:Last one.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3605/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-kurt-vonnegut

If that doesn't make you laugh and/or cry, I submit that you are not human. Or maybe I'm just really, really tired today.

Fuck.

INTERVIEWER

The Franklin Library is bringing out a deluxe edition of Slaughterhouse Five, I believe.

VONNEGUT

Yes. I was required to write a new introduction for it.

INTERVIEWER

Did you have any new thoughts?

VONNEGUT

I said that only one person on the entire planet benefited from the raid, which must have cost tens of millions of dollars. The raid didn’t shorten the war by half a second, didn’t weaken a German defense or attack anywhere, didn’t free a single person from a death camp. Only one person benefited—not two or five or ten. Just one.

INTERVIEWER

And who was that?

VONNEGUT

Me. I got three dollars for each person killed. Imagine that.