/lit/ - Literature

>>20117961
I didn't start writing until I was in my mid 30s

>>20117964
What fanfiction site do you post to?

>>20117961
Don't even bother. If you look up artists who "started late" all you get is Van Gogh who became famous exclusively because he was a tragic schizo and a number of modern "artists" that make abstract poo "installations". It's probably the same for writing. Life is like a snowball, if you get stuck somewhere by your good years it's all over. Nature doesn't have plans for those that stay behind.

>>20118136
Paul Gaugin also started in his 40s. You're talking out of your ass, it's not at all uncommon for artists not to start until late in their age.

>>20117961
I think from an interview with James Murphy who'd been in bands since being a teenager, he only had success as a musician with LCD.

Henry Miller had a wife, kid, job then fucked off to be an writer after 30.
Bukowski is another example

What does a twenty year old have to say worth reading?

>>20117961
william s.borroughs, sherwood anderson, and raymond chandler are good examples. it's actually a little incongruous that literature is supposed to be a young man's pursuit when you don't have to be physically fit to do it. a man should work with his body until 40 and then with his mind thereafter

>>20117975
I don't write fiction, I'm an essayist you dildo

>>20118259
post essay DYEW

>>20118220
they can hone their craft on the whetstone of pretentiously terrible fantasy novels

They aren't doing nothing in their 20's, they are *living* in their 20's. That's how they get these experiences to base their art on.

>>20118206
bukowski was writing a bunch when he was in his 20s, he just never really got published so he gave up for awhile.

>>20118220
hot takes about campus life

>>20118136
Isaac Babel wrote his first stories at age 28 ircc

>>20118839
yep

Plato literally wrote all of his works when he was a geriatric.

>>20118136
>Life is like a snowball, if you get stuck somewhere by your good years it's all over.
Yes because a snowball that's come to a standstill never gets rolling again. Even your own metaphor contradicts your moronic point.

>>20117961
Marcel Proust didn't start writing In Search of Lost Time till he was 38. That's a good example. I mean he spent his 20s in Paris social circles and wrote magazine articles about art, fashion, and society, and an unfinished novel, but nothing really of note. A recurring theme in Lost Time is his inability to start writing.

>>20117961
Writing especially is a slow medium to produce great works. Most authors are in their 40s to 50s when they write their best works. Musicians need to be running by mid 30s at the latest. Modern music is such a shitshow that little technical ability is required. If you're a concert musician then you have either started by age 15 or you are fucked. Starting earlier than 15 is irrelevant as long as you go all in by 15. Childhood musical instrument practice is largely a waste of time and energy as the kid is not cognizant of expression beyond rote memorization. No clue on the visual art timeline, but I bet it is somewhere in the middle of mainstream music and concert musician. The bar to draw fur tits seems pretty low.

even otessa moshfegh, basically the poster child for young female author, published her debut novel at 33

Murakami began to write fiction when he was 29. "Before that," he said, "I didn't write anything. I was just one of those ordinary people. I was running a jazz club, and I didn't create anything at all." He was inspired to write his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing (1979), while watching a baseball game He described the moment he realised he could write as a "warm sensation" he could still feel in his heart. He went home and began writing that night. Murakami worked on Hear the Wind Sing for ten months in very brief stretches, during nights, after working days at the bar. He completed the novel and sent it to the only literary contest that would accept a work of that length, winning first prize.

DFW published his first novel when he was 24.

>>20117961
W.G. Sebald didn't publish his first novel until his forties. I'm sure there is a quote somewhere where he says people shouldn't start writing until they are forty. Also, Leonard Cohen didn't put out his first album until his thirties, nor did the Jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. So there you go, one of the best novelists of the twentieth century, one of the best songwriters of the twentieth century, and one of the best jazz musicians of the twentieth century.

Was he just covering up his hairline?

>>20117961
Even Jesus didn’t do shit before 30. There’s a reason “life begins at 30” is a thing. It takes until 25 for your brain to finish developing, and until 30 to kick all the ego and self-importance and idealism and hope out of you. Then you can play properly. 0-30 is the tutorial and whatever anyone does in that period is just from coincidences of birth.

>>20118194
>Paul Gaugin also started in his 40s
25 and Gauguin was a disaster upon the art world
>Yes because a snowball that's come to a standstill never gets rolling again.
Not on its own. Who is pushing it?

>>20120130
>nor did the Jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery
"By the age of twenty he was performing in clubs in Indianapolis at night"
>W.G. Sebald didn't publish his first novel until his forties
Studied literature and became a lecturer
>Leonard Cohen
In 1951, Cohen enrolled at McGill University [age 17] where he [...] won the Chester MacNaghten Literary Competition for the poems "Sparrows" and "Thoughts of a Landsman"
There is no such thing as waking up one day at like 25, 30 and going "hey, I think I'll do this thing..." and actually achieve anything. But that's not even the problem. In fact this is not very important. Talent doesn't cut it. You need talent/luck/whatever you want to call talent (that element of being passionate about the thing in your formative years) but there are so many people now who have this quality that it's just not enough to have talent. All those people will be ruthless, competitive, compliant. And all these other factors are just as important if not more important than your "talent" or "skills" in whatever. If you have in mind something that isn't aligned with the market you won't make it, not just in the sense that you will not make a living and realize your lofty auteur dreams, you will not make it in the sense that nobody will be even remotely interested in your work. If you do not have friends who can pull strings for you you will not exist. If you do not have a marketable personality you will not exist.
>I don't care I just want to git gud
Get good at what? What is the fucking point of singing for the deaf, writing for the blind? What is the point of doing any of this if there is nobody on the other end and never will be because we're in the fucking Kali Yuga? There are no more people left, only consumers. Even if you do get published (most likely by paying for everything off your own pocket) you will not influence or reach anyone. It's over. The arts are over.

>>20117961
A lot of people. Stop searching for examples and just get started, mate. You don't need any more validation, I promise you. Even someone like W Gass who wrote for his whole life continued to write until he was 92. Meaning, it's a lifelong pursuit for its own sake. You write to write and hope to be read, you don't write to read. Set aside all your dumb vanities and immerse yourself in your process and growth. I'm published yesterday for the first time and I'm 34... I started writing at 24, it took me ten years. I'm sure ten years seems like a really long time to someone who is first starting. I was lucky enough to have a strange sort of epiphany if you want to call it that, a sense of clarity one afternoon when I realised I had found my art form and would be writing until the day I died, regardless of anything else. That certainty really helped to dispel any feelings I had about "too late", "too uneducated", "BORN IN THE WRONG ERA" etc. etc. and whatever else you might be feeling. It's irrelevant. Start now and learn sooner rather than later that is all about the process and not at all about the end result, and stop thinking that's a meme!

I don't know, what makes me worry the most is the fact that I don't know any "normal" good writers. All good ones were narcissists to the extreme, alcoholics, drugged, schizos, degenerates, reactionaries, fundamentalists, etc. I'm 29 already and never got drunk.

I believe in you anon

>>20120491
>narcissists to the extreme, alcoholics, drugged, schizos, degenerates, reactionaries, fundamentalists, etc
I am literally all of these and still NGMI
>I'm 29 already and never got drunk.
how the fuck are you still alive without alcohol at 29

>>20117961

You need to be extremely intelligent, talented, and lucky to be an author. Otherwise you will write schlock. And contemporary society is no receptive to ambitious artists in any field. Why not just focus on practical things?

>>20118136

Nice mentality, you doomer faggot.

>>20120655
I'm just being magnanimous and saving everyone's time and energy

>Gautama Buddha didn’t even leave home (royal palace) til 29. He awakened/enlightened at 35. His writings/sermons came even later still.
>thread

>>20118330
I posted one in another thread. I will post a few.

http://disintegrationsystem.blogspot.com/2022/02/whats-in-name-critical-exposition-of.html

http://disintegrationsystem.blogspot.com/2022/03/democracy-and-gay-agenda.html

http://disintegrationsystem.blogspot.com/2022/03/on-mind-body-problem.html

http://disintegrationsystem.blogspot.com/2022/03/why-have-people-turned-their-backs-on.html

http://disintegrationsystem.blogspot.com/2022/03/lysenko-existentialism-and-personality.html

David Lynch was 31 when he released his debut film.

>>20120682
You're not doing jack shit

>>20121430
Thanks for sharing anon. As someone who just started writing at 26 this is inspiring.

james murphy released the first lcd soundsystem album when he was 35

>>20118136
This is kind of a brainlet argument, what do you expect me to do in the mean time? Do you just sit around all day drooling? Is it that hard for you to pick up new hobbies/interests?

DeLillo

>>20120440
Leonard Cohen was a poet before but he only became a songwriter in his 30s, retard, and he's more well known for his music than for his poetry books.

>>20120440
>There is no such thing as waking up one day at like 25, 30 and going "hey, I think I'll do this thing..." and actually achieve anything
My grandfather did this and became a very notable architect

>>20120440
Sperg

>>20122838
cope harder

Don Delillo didn't start writing until he was 26 iirc and it was even later before he published anything.

I think the main thing is really not technical skill or anything like that. Your writing at 30 is probably better than when you were 20. The difference is your ability to commit. When you are young you have a lot of free time, you are foolish, and people expect you to be foolish, so you are more inclined to take bigger risks and these can pay off creatively. Its not so much that you don't have the talent when you're older, but that you have more doubts and it's harder to mentally commit yourself to the task of say writing a novel because a proportionally bigger part of you will be wondering if it is not a fools errand.

In other words, it is easier to foolishly believe in yourself when you are younger. But it's not impossible to overcome those kinds of barriers when you are older, it's just more difficult. The solution is to write for yourself and only yourself. If you are too hung up on "am I too old to start a writing career" then you will never write. But if you want to write just for the sake of writing and because you enjoy it then your age is a non factor. If something comes out of its a bonus.

Raymond Chandler started writing when he was middle-age, after being fired from his position at an oil company.

>>20120491
You're learning from the wrong examples. Go read some Thomas Browne or Jonathan Swift or Alexander Pope or Shakespeare or something. All-time great writers who were functional people with jobs, not 20th century bohemian artistes.

>>20122867
He did publish some poetry and essays when he was in his early 20s, but it's crappy juvenilia (as are most writers' works from their 20s). He didn't write again until his 40s.

>>20117961
Ever heard of a little old guy called... mmmm ADOLF HITLER?

>>20122865
>The solution is to write for yourself and only yourself
That's great I keep a journal daily and that's enough, does it make a difference if I write a shitty journal instead of a novel if nobody's going to read it? Why would I bother putting a book together if I can just rant in a journal? Actually I have been writing less and less because I can just shitpost on 4chan. I do this 100% for myself so I am doing it right

Theodor Fontane, who occupies roughly the same place in German culture that Dickens occupies in Anglo culture, didn't publish his first novel until he was FIFTY-EIGHT. He was in his seventies when he wrote his most famous work, Effi Briest.

>>20118136
30s are the new 20s. We have a good chance at becoming older than 95 (if you're under 30 now). Life is longer, youth is extended.

>>20118136
Why do adhd zoomers always say this? Is it that hard to put effort into anything for them? Have a (you)

>>20120440
Holy brainlet cope

>>20122993
holy based.

>>20117961

Unless you have a 145+ IQ and won the prestige diceroll, your literary aspirations are completely meaningless

>>20124043
Eh, I’d say 130 is the cutoff

>>20118136
Tolstoy spent most of his early years idly self tuortoring himself, he was only able to write when he went to war and after getting married ()if it wasn't for his wife he would have not written shit.
Go read his diaries.

>>20120491
>All good ones were narcissists to the extreme, alcoholics, drugged, schizos, degenerates, reactionaries, fundamentalists, etc.
those are "artists'' in the atheist society. ie they are entertainers talking about sex and crime, nothing else.

>>20117961

>>20117961
Baudrillard only got his PhD in his 40s. Before that he was a German language teacher.

>>20120682
Your parents were psychologically abusive.

You'll never be anything. Life is a lottery and you have no free will. You are a machine subject entirely to genetics and external conditioning. Successful people are born not made and you are not an 'outlier'.

>>20124477
Yes they were. I am still right.

>>20117961
Henry Miller made a career of this

>>20117961
was he supposed to be making a statement by wearing that white bandana?

Henry Miller
Eric Rohmer
Wallace Stevens
Cristina Campo
Julio Cortazar
Saul Bellow
Jean-Claude Brisseau

>>20120440
Lmao, imagine creating anything for any other reason than a schizo connection with a distant plane of reality that is demanding to manifest in your reality. To hell with the "response". The only response that matters is that my work sculpts me as I sculpt it. That's more than enough reason to create. As if illusory world benchmarks mean anything at all compared to feeling the hand of the divine reach into your empty vessel and carve a scar into your quivering flesh.

>the arts are over
For the Christian sphere, yes. That image is played the fuck out. You are such a funny apocalyptic song bird. Don't you know better, little birdie, that destruction is just one stage of transformation? This is not the end of art it is an opportunity several life times in the making. The stage is set for renaissance--the miracle of transformation and the creation of a new dominant image that all other artists and thinkers will dutifully document. And you, if you have the sight, have as equal an opportunity as the rest of us to discover the infant as it is born from the ashes and broadcast its fresh cry, the refutation of the narrow minded, to the shocked masses. They will weep for witnessing "a miracle" and those who know will laugh at the naivete of children who do not comprehend transformation and how ordinary it is relative to every other stage of development. But, we don't make the reactive rules, we just put on the show and play the right role at the right time. Either get burning or prick your ears up. The burning will get along just fine without your help, but it can be fun. Listen for the cry of innocence.

>>20120607
>why not focus on practical things
Every single year of my 30 years of exiatence life for the "practical minded" has gotten worse. Health, happiness, and wealth have all decreased for this pursuit minded individual. I cannot ignore the consistent degradation. My patterns of behavior are not just mine own, they will influence my children if I ever have children. Knowing this I cannot in good conscience devote myself to a pattern of behavior that will produce even more diminishing returns for my offspring. It is not even a question of stasis, which is actually based, or relative greater opportunity elsewhere. It's decline. I will not repeat the sins of my father and forefather that the practical minded man in the US is rewarded his fair share. That puritanical myth is dead and its practitioners are spiritually dead. Better a spiritually attuned pauper than a nouveau riche cog of the dying machine.

>>20125137
Amen.

>>20117961
>What notable artists or authors began their life after doing nothing for the entirety of their 20s?

That is a very Zoomer way of thinking.


Translational gestion – elliptical life; rotational congestion – helical death.

Human life begins from the moment of gestation; every day, humans traverse a part of the kosmos, and convert its energy; mundane convertive revolution itself transcurs transversively —id est: through life experience.

The radical/cordiological revolution precedes, and moves counter to, the spatiotemporal/chronological one; as much as one should strive to preclude the seasons of the former from falling behind those of the latter, sometimes a cordiological layer of the radical requires more time to set/sink into the chronology of the spatiotemporal, which is why certain creative forces are revolverted at different times of life, per degree of ripeness.

Some live more than others; others die prematurely, being living dead for a season.

>>20117961
>What notable artists or authors began their life after doing nothing for the entirety of their 20s?

That is a very Zoomer way of thinking.


Translational gestion – elliptical life; rotational congestion – helical death.

Human life begins from the moment of conception; every day, humans traverse a part of the kosmos, and convert its energy; mundane convertive revolution itself transcurs transversively —id est: through life experience.

The radical/cordiological revolution precedes, and moves counter to, the spatiotemporal/chronological one; as much as one should strive to preclude the seasons of the former from falling behind those of the latter, sometimes a cordiological layer of the radical requires more time to set/sink into the chronology of the spatiotemporal, which is why certain creative forces are revolverted at different times of life, per degree of ripeness.

Some live more than others; others die prematurely, being living dead for a season.

>>20117964
it shows lol

>>20125080
>Lmao, imagine creating anything for any other reason than a schizo connection with a distant plane of reality that is demanding to manifest in your reality. To hell with the "response". The only response that matters is that my work sculpts me as I sculpt it.
This is the most based post on 4channel for artists. You put into words something I've been feeling, but for music not writing.

>>20126295
LOL

>>20118742
ahh haha right haha

The musician you're talking about is James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem, iirc.

>>20126608
No, that guy sucks

>>20118136
van Gogh is a bad example. His extended family was already well-known in the Dutch art world, which meant that both Vincent and his brother Theo gained very good jobs in that world during their teenage years. Theo would go on to work as a top art dealer in Paris, while Vincent worked closely with artworks for several years and therefore gained a first-hand education about what sold, what made an artwork good, etc. Even when he decided to commit himself to art, he had the financial and nepotistic support of his brother throughout, trained for a while with an uncle who had his own art studio, and when he returned to university or some kind of art school to learn formally his fellow students wondered why someone from the van Gogh family was wasting his time among them. This wasn't a "where the heck did this schizo genius come from!!!!" and more of a "hey one of the van Gogh boys can really paint, he's pretty cracked but his brother is shilling his stuff hard at least". Maybe that is too harsh on Vincent, but still.

>>20122086
Music is even harsher if you're not a hot twenty-year-old. Blondie was around 31 when she started putting out music and performing, which is old for a woman. Lux and Ivy from The Cramps were also in their 30s when the band started to play live in New York and get noticed. Cohen as mentioned was older when he started playing music, although he had published novels and poetry before that.

>>20126634
Yeah your best shot with music is becoming a local gigging musician, which will never pay enough to live off but for some people provides enough contentment for it to me worthwhile. You might even develop a loyal local following but you will never be picked up and promoted though past a certain age.

>>20125080
This

>>20117961
I started over at being a mathematician at 27. My first two papers were just published this year. I'd share them, but it's for the gubment and I can't :^)

>>20126838
How old are you now anon?

>>20126846
32. I've been doing research since my 3rd year as an undergrad, passed up some cushy jobs to pursue a PhD.

Proust is the go-to example. Living with mommy, viewed by people who knew him as a failure who amounted to nothing, a guy who had showed promise but didn't deliver, and simply had wasted his life on parties and salons -- he began writing In Search of Lost Time at age 38, following his epiphany about how to proceed -- an epiphany he derived from his private experimentation with a critical response to the critic Saint-Beuve. At first he had to self-publish Swann's Way ... people were like, 'what is this gay bullshit?' Well who's gay now motherfuckers?

Also would you believe that Leonard Cohen didn't start doing music until he was 33? He'd written a pretty good modernist novel before that, but no one read it -- they should, IMO

>>20120440
What about Charles Bukowski, who was an absolute failure at writing prose, virgin until 24, and alcoholic who could barely hold down a job, but somehow managed to become a successful poet late in life?

>>20118220
This.

>>20119877
this desu. He, like most of /lit/, wanted so badly to be recognized as a good writer, and when he showed off his writings to an author he respected, he basically got laughed at, and he said he was stupid for thinking he had any writing ability and to just give up.
Now, not all those who get up after failure will have success, but know that all those who have success got up after failure. Like not all rectangles are squares, but all squares are rectangles.

>>20118136
Kek. Try again, faggot.

>>20127214
you love jews huh

>>20118136
Anybody still willing to learn and practice can do it.
It's just that by 30 many people are too tired/busy making a living to developp new skills, artistic skills in particular take a lot of time and investment to pay off.

>>20127214
Interesting. I think writing to get published and get paid is an all right aim but you must be prepared for nothing in return too. All good writers from Dickens to Dosotevsky wrote to get paid but also to get that something out of their system. Keep writing

>>20125080
Your Phoenician description of a renaissance speaks volumes of who you are, anon. If anyone wants to see a glowing post, this is it.
>destruction is just one stage of transformation
Ordo ab chao, am I right, faggot?
>it is an opportunity several life times in the making
The Phoenicians have been working on this for lifetimes, yes, and you admit it. Centuries of hoaxes and the "theater" of war is coming to fruition, hm?
>born from the ashes
Like a Phoenix...
>refutation of the narrow minded, to the shocked masses
They are only narrow minded because of what your people have done to them, denying them a real education and clean food, water, and air.
>witnessing "a miracle"
Why the quotes, anon? Because it's not a miracle. You are using the tendencies of your well-bred slaves to see everything as a miracle that they don't understand. It isn't that they can't understand (that's where you're wrong), simply that they don't, and that is by design by you monsters.
>those who know will laugh at the naivete of children
And here you are again, admitting the plan.
>we just put on the show and play the right role at the right time
The world's a stage, huh, faggot?
This is their end goal. Your people infiltrated the Christian sphere, rotting it from the inside out. You create the disease and sell the cure. Hidden behind the useless cryptobabble and esoteric noise is the truth of what's going on. I had no idea insiders like you were on 4chan. Pretty nuts. It's not too late to stop, you know, and betray your "clan". Walk away from it all now before the revolution hunts you down. The world today is not the world yesterday; when the Phoenix dies this time, it won't be reborn.

>>20127804
Meds

>>20117961
The enticing incident must come in childhood. The surroundings and upbringing must encourage you to read much, maybe you'll also be writing letters to grandparents and cousins. Before you learn to read yourself, your parents will read to you, and not just bedtime stories but during the day as well.
In adolescence your literary pursuits become more known, you stand out from your peers in how much you read and how widely, often far more advanced than others in your age group. You prefer literature to sports or video games or film, but don't neglect these others, or social activities either.
As a teenager you go through puberty like everyone else and the reading you've done offers you new perspective on the changes you undergo. You seek out literature that is filled with a joi-de-vivre or with existential angst, depending on your own disposition, and as you do so you also wish to live the experiences you read, thereby leading you to an adventurous lifestyle. You write bits and pieces already, experiment with prose and poetry, maybe you write for girls you like.
As a young adult you are living fully, building up the wealth of experiences that will serve you later in life. You meet people at your new job, you listen to how they talk, you travel, you develop an ear for conversations and accents, you learn how to convey natural dialog, you collect anecdotes that will serve as a spice to enrich your work later. You complete your first pieces of short fiction that are actually worth something.
Throughout your mid to late twenties you are still building up experiences and honing the technical skills of writing, building up stamina for long-running narratives, the seeds of your first novel have already begun to sprout and you know you want to write it. It's only a matter of discipline now. You still read widely and see completely different things in books now, fiction has become a conversation between you and the people who wrote it. You feel a connection to them rather than the characters they write about.
In your early thirties the novel has matured and you sit down to complete it. You have learned everything you need to know. Your characters ring true because you have an ear for their voices, the events come from life experience and the structure is well-thought out. You're old enough to have lived a real life, you have something to say about it. You finish your first draft, you hone it. You begin to look for a publisher, an agent.
By age 36 you either publish your first book or fail and will never make it. If you are not a publisher author by the time you turn 37, forget it. Not in this life.

>>20126295
>>20126518
fuck the both of you

>>20120379

Truth

>>20121621
no problem

>>20124227
False. He met his wife after he was a successful author

>>20117961
>best italian writer
>wanted to become a priest
>joined leftwing para-political organization
>everything fails
>reads like a madman
>starts writing at 30
>lives in one of the worst neighborhoods of Milan
>survives from canned food
>punches wallas at night while writing in the bathroom to tell neighbors to shut down the fucking tv
>15 years unpublished
>writes angry letters to editors but never posts them
>they become a book
>he becomes famous
We're all gonna make it bros

>>20127401
>you can't say kandinsky is shit, he's everyone's favorite abstract artisterino!
kandkinsky is shit

>>20125080
>Lmao, imagine creating anything for any other reason than a schizo connection with a distant plane of reality that is demanding to manifest in your reality. To hell with the "response".
post something you have made right now or you are a cock gobbler.