/lit/ - Literature

>>17863639
A little, but not too much. I heard a story, I think it was about Tolstoy. Possibly apocryphal. Anyways, someone asked him about his battle sequences, must have been in War and Peace. This person praised him, saying how exciting and realistic they were, and asked him how he was able to write them so convincingly. His response: I saw a bar fight once.

>>17863639
The more the better, but it's all about quality over quantity. Just going out and getting fucked up at bars every weekend probably won't be enough. I recommend you do something that's as interesting as it is uncomfortable like work on a fishing boat, travel through the middle east, or try stand up comedy

>>17863639
Honestly, no. I think that’s a trope pushed by people trying to cope with the fact that they started old. Some of the best authors in history started writing very young and presumably had no life experience beyond being holed up in their books. They wouldn’t go on to write anything truly great until they were in their 20s at least, but consider all these people who apparently “needed life experience” that didn’t write anything even good until their 30s at least. My single biggest regret in my life is not writing from a young age, life experience be damned.

Yes, you do, unless you want to write great masterpieces about NEET virgins and their adventures in their mom’s basement

>>17863671
so just watch liveleak vids

>>17864805
this. You will become a great writer desu.

>>17863639
It might make it better, but you can still be a great writer even if you do. not live at all

>>17863639
No just absorb other people’s experience through books look a beautifully horrific mixture made of the minds of hundreds long dead

>>17864796
Disagree, even Joyce who wrote portrait in his twenty's drew from lived experience. People only see the written work not the many days the writer sweated under the sun to bring this to fruition. A great work needs lived experience, Moby Dick, he actually worked on a boat, To The Lighthouse, she lived a mediocre middle class existence, The Trial, he worked as a clerk, Gravity's Rainbow, he was both a bit beatnik and worked in military hardware.

A person who only reads and writes can only write about reading and writing. Every annoying novelist protagonist is testiment to this. BTW I hate this trope don't do it.

The work is mearly the remainder of a full life of learning and striving.

>>17864803
This

>>17866801
Of course he drew from lived experiences. We all live and we all experience. I don’t like this narrative that you should put off writing because you haven’t “lived” or something by the time you’re 20, 30, 40. It’s not only arbitrary nonsense but most people, especially modern people, do very little “living” between say, 25 and 35 anyway. At 16, you’re far more imaginative, naive, creative, easily pulled by passion, immersed into fantasy, and able to construct narratives that actually compete with reality. Adolescence or the feeling of adolescence, I believe, can actually be a powerful tool on a writer’s tool box. People also forget that like anything else, writing is a craft, which means it takes time and effort to hone it. You’re way ahead of the game if you start writing at 14 rather than 24. Sure, you might not write that great novel until you’re in your 30s either way but I’m willing to bet it’s either more like writing it at 30 as opposed to 39 or at the same age but with a superior product because you started writing. We fetishize writing and that gives us all sorts of “do this” and “don’t do that” but that’s really no different than the boomer who wants to (foolishly) approach life with this formulaic “do X in your 20s and Y in your 30s and Z in your 40s”. That’s not art. That’s not how artists work. You wouldn’t tell a painter or a musician to “wait until you have some life experience”. You’d tell them to “start yesterday”.

>>17866801
And where did this trope of needing an experience to write anything, presumably about that experience from anyway? I’ll concede that some of the novelists fundamentally write about themselves, at least in some fashion some times, but at the end of the day, the writer is just a story teller. You can tell a story without having actually lived out in reality as the protagonist of the story. Henry James said that fiction should compete with reality. He did not say it should be a depiction only of reality, and he certainly did not say it should be explicitly a depiction of you’re already lived personal reality. That seems to me far too narrow a view of what fiction, let alone writing, really is.

>>17866897
>>17866871
>We fetishize writing
Couldn't agree more, read what I said.
>The work is mearly the remainder of a full life of learning and striving.
Sure you need to hone your craft, I was writing and creating fantasy crap at 16 so I understand progression but what I was saying is you write what you are, even a fantasy author draws from passed experience, both in honing there writing and living.
>“do this” and “don’t do that” but that’s really no different than the boomer who wants to (foolishly) approach life with this formulaic “do X in your 20s and Y in your 30s and Z in your 40s”.
I wasn't saying this, no one believes this, this came from your own imagination. Your fixation on age shows you to be obsessed with symbols which say absolutely nothing about creation and show the residue of a existential crisis over a wasted life. Sophocles wrote all his great works post 50, Rimbaud at 16-20, it doesn't matter what age you do it.