How much of being a good writer is just pic. Did Nabakov write a lot of crap before he got good?
Na. Nabby was pretty much GOAT from when he was young.
Keep trying tho, senpai. Or dont.
>>7713162
a lot. seriously. practice every day, i cant stress that enough.
Reading a ton of books definitely helps. then knowing what is good writing and what isn't just comes naturally
Yeah I have read quite a lot but my early writing was still much poorer than my current, wondering at what point one reaches one's potential.
a commonly touted truism is that the mastery of most things, music etc, is reached after 10,000 hours of practice, how true is this of writing? Stephen King is still pretty gay.
Depends on the amount. If you wrote 10h every day for 50 years, there is a good chance that you wrote something passable.
Life experience is another huge part, so just hiding in your room and writing isn't the best course of action.
Reading is important too but also massively overstated. If you read 100-200 decent books in your life, you should be fine.
>>7713502
> Stephen King is still pretty gay.
By which measure? Millions of people enjoy reading his shit, he does something very right.
>>7713519
Money is pretty irrelevant in the first world, anon. The only reason for a writer to have a job, ANY job is experience.
>>7713520
don't make me trot out the Macdonald's argument / since when has the critical opinion of the majority ben the most highly regarded.
>>7713533
Same goes for McDonalds, given how millions of people enjoy their shitty food, they do something right. It doesn't mean their food or Kings writing is fantastic, just that it has a massive appeal and this qualifies as good. Good because it's fast, tasty, cheap or whatever reason people enjoy this crap.
Will King be remembered in a century? Barely. Does it matter for the millions who had a great time while reading his books? Not a bit.
>>7713529
In what way? Are you seriously going to tell me you'd be able to write in any sort of sane or coherent way if your NEET status eventually led to homelessness?
The Savage Detectives is the best manual for how to be a good writer.
Be young.
Make an arbitrary movement with likeminded writers.
Write as much as you can every week, I'd say at least a page a day should do it.
Read 5+ books a week (this does include history and theory, it IS helpful) and very little if any genre, just pioneering genre books (Tolkien and such, unless you're going for genre fiction).
Travel in a reasonable way, hostels, people's couches, a car to camp in. And go all over the place. I'll be in India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, New Zealand and Berlin for free over the course of the next 2 years.
Really just writing and having criticism beyond your network of friends (editors, professors and mentors are the best here), traveling whenever you can (if you're young put your money into travel, there's no sense in saving it when your younger than 25), and reading from the Greeks up until now. Even if some people on here do have honest natural talents, it takes so much more diligence beyond that to be good enough.
OR there's an easy route.
Go to grad school (publish dissertation and other things in journals), get a visiting professor gig for a few years around a few schools, get published in more journals maybe even an editing spot, get tenured somewhere after visiting for a few years.
>>7713529
what life experiences do you think are important?
>>7713597
>homelessness
Is only possible if you actively try. Again, we talk about the first world here. If you play along with the system a tiny bit, you'll be fine.
>>7713613
All of them. It's up to your creativity to make the best out of that granny who complained about her windows 10 install or about that time when you had to fire a father of two children because he can't come on time.
Obviously more monotonous jobs like achieve aren't as nice if they lack human interaction but you might pick some interesting detail at it too, or at least see/hear somebody interesting on your way there.
>>7713602
>for free
how?
>>7713654
I got a full scholarship to a good school, so the school is paying for me to live in Chennai for a semester and study there, then for 4 months I'll use the money left over from that trip to work on farms/air BNB throughout south asia over to Wellington, NZ where I'll study in the spring. Then the next fall I think I'll be in Berlin.
Even if you don't get a scholarship for school itself, if traveling abroad is what you want then seek out professors/advisors who will help find grant money, there's so much out there. You could get money to do anything if you right a good enough proposal.
>>7713502
sup Malcolm Gladwell
