As an aspiring author, how do I deal with having nothing to say?
Write about having nothing to say
You put the cart before the horse.
First, you have something to say. Then, you write/be an author. Until you're in the right order, you'll always be a joke calling himself an "aspiring author".
Be reassured that some of the very best had nothing to say.
>>7441239
This.
Defy your limits. Charge blindly into nothing. Fuck the fear turkey.
>>7441234
You do have something to say.
The problem is, you don't think what you have to say is interesting, so you censor yourself. You try to come up with ideas that sound like the ideas that get praised or that you think others will find interesting.
The problem is, since these ideas are not your own, you have nothing to say about them.
Stop worrying about saying something interesting, entertaining, or deep. Stop letting your ego shut ideas down.
Just write.
Go to South America and get fucked up on ayahuasca. Work a season or two as a cook in Antarctica. Find a cave in your favorite mountain range and live in it for a couple months. Go to a slum in India and kill a man in a dark alleyway. Get a cat.
You'll find something to say if you finish that list.
The people telling you to write anyway are privileged white kids who've shuffled from one institution to another for the past 24 years, like DFW. Believe it or not, you all write alike and none of it is interesting.
>>7441269
This is ok advice. Get kidnapped. Have something interesting happen to you other than "ugh, I don't know if I should study abroad in London or Paris. They're both like must-dos, such a horrible dilemma."
>>7441266
No, I seriously have nothing to say that hasn't already been said far better by someone else. I am a boring person who lives a boring life, and trying to 'just write' anyways will come off as shallow and disingenuous.
>>7441269
Right, because living in a shitty cave will suddenly turn me into Proust.
>>7441288
>I am a boring person who lives a boring life
>Right, because living in a shitty cave will suddenly turn me into Proust
It might not make you Proust, but you'll never have anything to say about the world if you don't go experience it. Seek the harshest and strangest conditions, witness the worst and best this world has to offer, and participate in both.
>>7441318
>Just LIVE bro!!! What do you mean you have to work? Just DO IT!! xDD
>>7441324
You have to decide what's more important to you between living a financially stable and sustainable life or having the life experience necessary to make meaningful observations in your writing.
You likely have a lot of time left before you die. Liquidating your assets and experiencing the world for a year or three won't actually set you back too far in the long run, and may work out to your benefit.
>>7441352
>get shanked by a nigger or bombed by a muslim
>dat's life bro :)
>>7441357
Again, that's the choice. Do you want to have a stable social and financial life or do you want to have something to say?
>>7441357
Well it is. And if you lived, I'm sure you would have something to say about it.
>>7441288
>Right, because living in a shitty cave will suddenly turn me into Proust.
No it won't. Experiences are nothing but something we live through our senses. You are an artist because you see the real deferently. That cave could be a place full of insects. The first night they will crawl on you. Then you'll realize it is your destiny to be there. To be part of the bugworld. So you'll let them crawl in your hair, down your ears. You'll feel part of something like you never experienced before. As the nights pass the tingling of the insects will be noise no more, but voices.
Shit man. I don't know. Being an artist is seriously, just having some special glasses wich make you contemplate your reality with magic.
For example I was looking for a place to write the final assault in a tale about a supernatural Holmes. So one day I was sitting in a bench and in front of me there was alittle garden. It has trees that have thick roots over ground in a peculiar square form. That was made in my tale an old garden whose stones fell long ago, and every root is lije the leg of a red spider full of herbs that resemble spiky hair.
>>7441247
nabokov in his 'nothing to say' had actually a lot to say in the way plebs approach narratives.
>>7441364
what you lack in comprehensibility you more than make up for in a weird and interesting perspective. any recommendations on finding experiences for a nearly-out-of-college white boy other than 'le backpack through yourope'?
>>7441382
Elaborate for me.
>>7441269
Just fuck off back to plebbook with this shit
>>7441385
English is not my main.
https://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerception.pdf
>>7441269
>>7441277
>>7441318
fuck off you platitudinal, self-help robots. i have lived in three continents and yes, been kidnapped, but if you had nothing to say before you started getting some random slices of experience it will not give you material to write unless all your interested in is a travelogue. at worst you'll end up with your own personal Eat, Pray, Love bullshit.
tourism, no matter how 'out of the way' you go about doing it doesn't enrich your writing by itself. having tinges of authenticity inform your writing betters it but doesn't make up much of what matters. you won't fucking 'find yourself' in the third world.
you soulless fucks.
>>7441394
You don't seem learned nor worldly. Do you think maybe that was wasted experience, for you?
Have a gimmick with the form.
>>7441403
>You don't seem learned nor worldly.
wordly is a meaningless word white troglodytes use to pat themselves on the back for coming from walking around thailand.
learned? not compared to the casually omniscient professors i work under, it seems ridiculous to compare oneself to that, but i'm well educated. sorry that i'm not dripping condescension at the moment, which is what you recognize as 'learned', but i can't write academically and vitriolically at the same time, it ruins the message.
>>7441387
usually he's just insulting a certain type of people. in lolita it was the mass readership that interacted with literature through characters rather than through the prose, which annoyed him, so he wrote a book where a reader could easily fall prey to his narrator's sophistry to make them look like idiots. the luzhin defense was a long rant about how terrible upper-class people were at nurturing their families and how their burgeois interests often make any worthwhile relationships erode over time, until your children resent you and you die unloved. etc.
>>7441444
rekt
>>7441444
>sorry that i'm not dripping condescension at the moment
I'd guess that when anon says you don't seem learned, anon means that you're making a shit-ton of assumptions based on your own experience without apparently being able to consider that people are not all you.
>>7441394
Details on kidnapping, stat
>>7441234
become an aspiring programmer
>>7441234
Why are you an aspiring author if you have nothing to write about?
Read philosophy of course.
Best kickstarter for literary fantasies. The only problem is when you become so enamoured with it that you become like Borges, who couldn't write long prose because he loved slinging together ideas.
(For that matter, also read Borges)
As an aspiring author, where can I post my work online to receive constructive criticism before self-publishing my lesbian erotica on Amazon?
As a perspiring author, would a bandana help?
As an aspirator-less asthmatic, how do I deal with not being able to breath?
>>7441514
>The only problem is when you become so enamoured with it that you become like Borges, who couldn't write long prose because he loved slinging together ideas
true desu, but honestly if I became like Borges It would be more than I ever wished for.
>>7441607
Go underwater; force yourself to breath in the most harsh and watery conditions; defy the human physiology, be the evolution of our species; become the frog, green man of the seas - the amphibian reptile of our time; savior by the grace of God. Do not be trapped in this mortal decaying body of lies and meat. Transcend to light, o' mighty man boy of the ethereal realm of amphibian creatures.
>>7441234
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQsqBqxoR4
You need to read a lot, nigga.
You have tendencies and inclinations but they're underdeveloped. You need to dive really really deep into what's already been written so that you can step back afterwards, measure your trajectory, and realize you actually did veer really strongly in a certain direction. Then you know that that direction is one that speaks to you, and if you keep diving you might find something new to stay.
It's especially helpful when you've done so much diving that you know you have multiple interests, and you realize you are the only person who has ever reached a certain depth on Subject A while ALSO having the same depth in Subject B and C, because you can actually maybe bring a fresh perspective.
If you try to write now, you'll just putter around the surface. You need to have strong and weird opinions about things, informed by weirdly deep reading.
>>7441234
I loled so hard. Thanks OP.
You've never had any problems in your life? No critiques whatsoever of society?
If you do have something to say about the world around you but you feel like someone has already analyzed that problem, approach it from another angle.
Read the works of different philosophers and intellectuals and you'll begin to see things in a new light.
Also just read more in general. It'll improve your writing and creativity overall.
>>7442921
>It's especially helpful when you've done so much diving that you know you have multiple interests, and you realize you are the only person who has ever reached a certain depth on Subject A while ALSO having the same depth in Subject B and C, because you can actually maybe bring a fresh perspective.
>If you try to write now, you'll just putter around the surface. You need to have strong and weird opinions about things, informed by weirdly deep reading.
That's my life-goal, tb quite h, although I'd add that in addition to obscure, divergent, interested, deep reading, apply those adjectives to other activities as well.
>lived a life full of adventure and experiences
>surrounded myself with the lowest dredges and highest aristocrats of society
>eschewed academics to teach myself about politics, philosophy, literature, and mathematics
>decent prose although I'm too lazy/busy to have written much more than the occasionally insightful 4chan rant
Feels good knowing I'm going to be the next great author while you university babies are procrastinating your postmodern novellas.
Only problem is my eventual book will probably get me lynched if it's even publishable. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Currently planning on becoming an art forever until I can be financially independent.
By writing.
>>7441234
Nobody has nothing to say. You're living aren't you? There are things that make you sad? Happy? Write about them.
play around with unoriginal shit that gets you excited instead of allowing yourself to be crippled by an obsession with novelty.
if you can't do that then you might like the idea of becoming a writer more than the writing process.
I don't understand this. Unless you're writing a memoir, can't you just make up anything you want? What's with people in here saying you have to have experiences to write about something? Why does that matter at all?
OP just sit down and write for a certain amount of time every day, without any restriction on content. You'll stumble into something eventually.
>>7443122
This
It's not like anyone is going to read your novel anyways
>>7443062
>decent prose although I'm too lazy/busy to have written much more than the occasionally insightful 4chan rant
You're an idiot.
>>7443141
/thread
Do shit
>>7443098
>Nobody has nothing to say.
Take a bath hippie.
>>7441250
How do I Proust?
Also: read books.
>>7441247
>a russian emigre who lived in multiple countries whose father was assassinated
>nothing to say
>>7441239
I have nothing to say about having nothing to say
>>7443184
Having nothing to say is saying something
>>7443209
Saying nothing is saying something?
>>7443220
No. That's not "having nothing to say". Say something, but express nothing-ness.
>>7441234
Write about why you're an aspiring author if you have nothing to say.
Be disgusted with the concrete evidence of your vanity when reading what you've written, and use that to write something else. Then be disgusted with that. Keep it up till something passable emerges.
>>7441234
save everyone the trouble and kill yourself
>>7443263
I'd rather he killed himself only after dropping a classic or two about having nothing to say. It would be the quintessential exit for an author.
>>7443290
well he must be able to write a classic because he's an aspiring author
give the monkey a typewriter
>>7443062
Wew lad
>>7441234
>I'm an aspiring author
Why?
On a side note to OP's problem, as an aspiring author, how do I deal with having something to say but not having the motivation to say it?
>>7442952
I've lived a sheltered life and any of my comments on society will seem petty.
>>7441234
Stop asipring to be an author, just write, doesn't fucking matter what you say, become a writer when you make the time and if you become an author then you're groovy. Apiring is sitting on your ass hoping something will fall into your hands.
>>7443626
not to be a memer, butread infinite jest
>>7443626
also, as I'm still rather young and have been rather sheltered so far myself, I find that going way introspective is a way to get around the fact that I don't have much to say about "larger society". Hopefully by the time I lose interest in my own psyche I'll have had some external life experience.
i feel like the novel i am occasionally working on is very worthwhile in theme and good in writing, but i don't have the energy to work on it too much because i feel like no matter what it won't get published. if i actually expend the effort to finish this novel, write it to my satisfaction, and it still doesn't get anywhere i think i'll probably just call it quits and kill myself so im trying to put that off.
A) Get a termina disease.
2) Go fight in a war
#) Have a terrible yet amusing family
$) Copy another author
&) Make shit up
F) write, poorly constructed charcters doing unbelievable things from perspectives you have never experienced
@) Pick apart and anlyze things that already
exist
8) an hero.
>>7441234
I suffer the same problem. I have thoughts and ideas of what I want to do and I'm intrigued by certain themes that I see in literature and want to explore them more, but when I put myself to actually try and do it, my mind is pretty much blank, and I can't really think of a plot.But at the same time I'm not really that well read by /lit/ standards, so I'm just going to keep reading and try to see if I can get inspiration.
You write genre fiction.
If Tolkien, Rowling, and GRRM can do it, so can you.
>>7441269
>Go to a slum in India and kill a man in a dark alleyway.
But their brown skin blends so well with the poo on the ground. Am I supposed to swing blindly about with a cudgel until I hit something that yells back at me?
>>7443767
You don't have to write 1000 pages for your first story. Write about a kid walking to school, then make it vaguely interesting
>>7441234
Find inspiration, Monet didn't paint 'On the bank of Sienne' from imagination.
>>7443971
Haha.
If Arnold Shwarzanegger can be Mr. Universe a movie star and Governer of Utah, a.non can too
>>7441234
Neil Gaiman said if you have nothing to say you should go out and live life adventurously, travel, go sailing, get out of your comfort zone and meet new people
>>7444233
literally every boring normalfag says that though
>>7444238
probably because it actually helps, instead of brooding in your basement in the dark
>>7444268
I'll have you know I live on the second floorin the dark...
>>7444268
you have to have money to do that stuff
>>7444286
so get a job and save up.
Not everyone is meant to start writing deep stuff at 19 or 20.
>>7444286
Which is the normie and wagekek unified assault on NEET ideology
>>7444268
>Emily Dickenson
>>7441269
wow did you repost this from tumblr or did you see it in a tampon commercial?
you fucking worthless waste of life
>>7444238
Pssst...maybe they are right....
Not everything can be solved by Reddit-bashing.
>>7444329
>>Emily Dickenson
she actually had talent tho
>>7441444
fedora to the death, huh, mate?
>>7441234
Write shit
Or don't be an author
We can't dictate to you what to say because we're not you
You'll figure it out anon, I believe in you
>>7441463
This
JUST FUCKING WRITE SHIT SENPAI ALL ART TAKES PRACTICE
FUCK ORIGINALITY ITS JUST A BUNCH OF LETTERS
AND IF YOU WANT TO BE TRULY ORIGINAL, MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKING LANGUAGE OR SOME SHIT IDFK
I have downs btw
>>7441819
hue
>>7441234
Well let's see...
Get a good addiction going.
Date someone you despise.
Get a job you absolutely hate.
Start asking your brothers and sisters and parents about old painful memories.
do a LOT more drugs/alcohol.
Keep working at that job for a good 10 years.
Give that girl a good beating and go through a painful divorce, never see your kids again.
Then, fuck it, at age 35; start smoking meth.
You'll have a lot to say.
Ahh, another 'I am an aspiring writer but I have some obvious flaw showing that I should not be a writer' thread.
I will never get this shit. I don't go on /mu/ and say "I can't sing, play an instrument, or write a song, how do I make my EP?", why do people come here and do it with books?
>>7444394
In order to be truly original you will need to go beyond attempting to communicate with others.
>>7441277
>privileged white kids who've shuffled from one institution to another for the past 24 years, like DFW
that's the whole board, m8
>>7444512
He looked deep into the grooves of his keyboard and thought about what he was going to do. Should he post? Will anyone even see the humor in his post ironic complaint? They have to he justified to himself. Slowly lipping along to the words in his mind. If I post here then I can help curb this epidemic and the cancer of the thread. Of course he could be the one to help save the board. HE always knew that lit could depend on him, of course they could, HE was the kind that actually read when he wasn't watching anime or working a dead end job. HE was the kind of person that knew about how to articulate reviews of consumable media. He was the kind of person that used 'texture' to describe music. And it was that kind of person that was right for the job. And with that he started typing.
>>7444530
>And with that he started typing
fucking cliche ending senpay. Is it regression or progress to be ironic about post-irony?
