/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15206564]

why is writing so hard?

[Anonymous No.15206647]

You're "trying to write", when actual writers "need to write".
See the difference?

[Anonymous No.15206829]

>>15206564
It all sounds better in my head anyway

[Anonymous No.15206847]

>>15206647
This is a fallacy. OP you're just out of practice. Make a habit of writing all the time. Write everything down. Write about how you made this thread, and how it sunk straight to page 10 after my post because it’s a thinly veiled blogpost that you should’ve stopped yourself from posting

[Anonymous No.15206905]

>>15206647
for a board that's supposed to be filled with cynics, they believe in the most the most romantic, trashy cliches about writing.

[Anonymous No.15206963]

>>15206564
You just wrote that? You telling me writing is hard.
No, writing isn't hard. Writing something interesting and intelligible is hard.
Writing is piss easy. Look. I'm writing right this instant, and I can continue writing? Is it any good? No. But it's writing.
Writing is fucking easy.
What are the aesthetic criteria you use to judge whether what you write is worth the time and mental exertion and attention sacrificed to create it is the real question.

[Anonymous No.15207580]

>>15206847
>>15206905
>midwits with nothing to say

[Anonymous No.15207603]

I don't find it to be all that difficult.

[Anonymous No.15207613]

Because you are trying to impress someone anon. Rather than thinking that no one but you will see this, because eventually you would want someone to read it, just write whatever the fuck you want as if your story/novel was a choose-your-own-adventure book and go through it. You may find yourself with a thousand different ideas, or a seemingly decent line of thought.

[Anonymous No.15207682]

>>15206564

>why is writing so hard?

Because you believe the stupid nonsense they spout in school and in films, about "expressing yourself" and "writing what you feel". This is all crap. Writing is a craft and you need to master the techniques.

Think about playing the piano. Think how stupid it would be to say "I feel really sad, I'm going to play the slow movement of Beethoven's Hammerklavier to express how sad I feel!" and walking to a piano for the first time in your life and pressing the keys.

Everyone would laugh at you, and rightly so. To play the slow movement of the Hammerklavier is NOTHING to do with how you feel inside. It's to do with developing the muscular skills and the knowledge of scales and arpeggios and you need to start when you're five and work at it for ten years MINIMUM. Do you really think that being a good writer is easier than playing the piano?

Everyone has feelings, and most of us feel most of the same things. (People aren't that different.) But almost no-one is a good writer. It's technique, not feeling, that makes a writer.

[Anonymous No.15207702]

>>15207682
No that aint true, thats just now hot it is. Writing is not a craft, it is synonymous with story-telling, something which many people are capable of without any kind of dedication to it as a higher craft. You just tell, you just narrate! And if what you want to say is reaching for a certain degree of stylistic distinction, then sure, it will flow a little bit less and require you to sit perhaps for hours on comparatively little amount of text, but for the vast majority of humans this is not their reality. They imagine stories, they imagine characters, they imagine scenes and chapters, they imagine dialogue, and they would like to write it down. And that is all the have to do! They become confused, frustrated and insecure when people like you tell them that one must study telling a story like one must study piano to play Beethoven in a decent manner, but it simply is not true! Dont vote for Donald Trump. You just write your story, you make notes, not because its a craft, but because you will forget a lot of things that were engaging and fun to you, and note-making will help you to keep up the spirit of joy of turning your fantasies into reality! And then just tell your story, create an image according to your own tongue, to your own fantasy. Now i'm not saying it must be ecriture automatique, it can just as well be that find you find it very enjoyable to construct sentences with great care and attention, but then it will come naturally to you, you will instinctively seek out guidance and work on it, but if this is not you and you still find frustration in writing, perhaps once it was easier to you, but now you mean business, then take a step back, lower the stakes, and write carelessly like a child.

I used to be like this. As a teenager I wrote for fun, i was very engaged in it and had no worries or difficulties. Free Healthcare It was writing informed by fantasy novels, by video games or whatever, but it was mine. As my knowledge of literature grew, the stakes also increased, and writing became more important to me. Yet I also wrote less and less, until it became a source of anxiety to me. Until writing itself was a catalyst for self-hatred, from wherever it had come. So one day... one day i just closed my eyes and started typing without any sort of hesitation or thought. I just let my fingers dance, i withdrew the ego.

[Anonymous No.15207731]

>>15207682
>>15207702
The duality of man

[Anonymous No.15207739]

>>15206564
Write about how hard writing is

[Anonymous No.15207858]

>>15207682
>Everyone would laugh at you
never fucking ever gonna make it

[Anonymous No.15207877]

>>15207702
Well said.

I think many people in their pursuit of becoming better writers often forget that there is a lot of emotion, individuality and personality mixed into writing. Literature is an extension of our thoughts, feelings and desire to express. Putting creative shackles on because of fear is very unhealthy.

[Anonymous No.15207888]

>>15207858

What are you talking about? Try reading what I actually wrote.

[Anonymous No.15207907]

>>15207877

>Well said.
No. Not well said at all. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

>creative shackles
The idea that learning the craft is "shackling your inspiration" is a great example of the pernicious nonsense I was talking about. Obviously to be a writer you need to have emotions and you need to have a strong desire to tell stories. This goes without saying. My point is that just about every human being has the first quality and a large proportion of human beings have the second. Where almost all of them fail is in the technique. But they sit around wailing and feeling distraught because they've been led to believe that the first two are sufficient. They aren't.

[Does he have a point, /lit? No.15207929]

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Thomas Mann

[Anonymous No.15207956]

>>15206564
Because you don't have a funky hot gf's love to spike your intellectual energy and creativity. Your life is not complete in some way, that's why you are not at your fullest. What is it you're missing? A good social life? A good book? A girlfriend? Spirituality?

[Anonymous No.15207970]

>>15206564
You're not neurotic enough.

[Anonymous No.15207994]

>>15207702
>>15207682
Feels is the oil that makes the squeaky wheel go brrr.

[Anonymous No.15208003]

As you can see OP, you get varying opinions that often stand in total opposition to each other from people who have probably written about as much quality work as yourself. There is no right way, just read a lot of books and write with the assumption that no other person will ever read it and eventually find your own way.

[Anonymous No.15208022]

>>15207907
I'm none of the quoted, but I agree with you. The difference is very clear between the text of someone who just needs to express himself and someone who works with it; it's like professional and amateur sport players. People like to mystify art as if it were pure emotion and no technique, when in reality one complements the other.

[Anonymous No.15208040]

Technique and feels are both important. One can't exist without the other. They are both complimentary. If you have the feels, it will flow naturally like water and the tranquility in the water will be reached. If you know techniques then you can critically asses the form of what you are writing.
I am not going to say that I am a good writer, nor that I am one, but when you get the feels, it goes easily. Suddenly ideas come up like nothing and you can see things before your very eyes. You are experiencing what you write before you even write it, so to speak, and you are practically writing down what you are seeing in your mind's eye. You then need to be critical enough and skilled enough to put that down in a form that translates what you were wallowed up with to begin with. You need to effectively translate those feels into writing. If it is romantic and it actually feels creepy or something - you failed.
It also depends on what you are actually writing. If you want to put a message across then perhaps you need to premeditate what you are going to write. If you are going to write spontaneously then feels are important, otherwise you will be scratching your head.
Sometimes when I let feels get to me and I write, I then revise what I had written and try to correct the writing to give a better literary experience.
My advice would be to read something, think about things, think about what you want in this world, what you do not like about the world, think about what you went through and how that has changed you, if you feel something needs to be said that hasn't been said. Are you trying to write a good story, or tell a good message through a story?
Try to write things down - thoughts, interesting ideas, etc.

[Anonymous No.15208056]

>>15207702
>Don't vote for Donald Trump.
How gratuitous, the very definition of rent free.

[Anonymous No.15208099]

Just write what you like reading. It's as simple as that. And once you start writing consistently, you will further realize what you want to write/read. Don't expect anything to come out of it.

Will other people want read it though? The answer to that has nothing to do with the quality or "worth" of what you're writing. People will read it, if they have it showed down their throat. If you have an appealing image, presence on social media, adverts, spam your shit, if it's cool and hip - yes, people will read it then. If you write degenerate smut - yes you will get a lot of people reading it as well.

[Anonymous No.15208160]

>>15208099
Listen to this guy, OP. I'd just add that sometimes planning can help you not to care about your mediocrity before having something to show for it. If you start writing without knowing where it's going, you'll want to overanalyze what's already been written. That's the editing part, but to edit you need to have something done beforehand. Think about your writing as a rough diamond that needs lapidation.

[Anonymous No.15208162]

I dont know, Neil Druckmann, writer of the last of us 2

[Anonymous No.15208183]

>>15208099
I only read CYOAs about sexual things tho...

[Anonymous No.15208185]

>>15206647
Unless you "need to write" in order to put food on the table, no one needs to write. This is a thing MFA programs say to filter candidates.

[Anonymous No.15208197]

>>15207580
Trotting out tired adages isn't saying anything.

[Anonymous No.15208228]

>>15206564
I suspect writing is hard because the demands of form, audience, and writer are ever changing. But why should the difficulty be lamentable? Write every day. Accustom yourself with the grind of revision. Embrace the iteration. Remember that every sentence, paragraph, or page that sucks today can suck less tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.15208464]

>>15208183
Then how do you expect to write "literature" if you don't even like reading it? Stick to CYOAs then.

[Anonymous No.15208790]

>>15208228
>Write every day. Accustom yourself with the grind of revision. Embrace the iteration.

[Anonymous No.15209213]

>>15206564
>want to be a bricklayer
>find it really hard to build a wall
>realise you'll never be a bricklayer

>want to be a writer
>find it really hard to write a novel
>insist that you're still a writer

[Anonymous No.15209260]

>>15208185

Guess you aren't a real writer.

[Anonymous No.15209266]

>>15209213
>want to be loved
>find it really hard to get a date
>insist you still want to be loved

lmao just an hero