ten years ago I won two short story competitions and was featured in the local newspaper under the headline “next big writer” Well, that was ten years ago and I still haven’t come close to getting published. I understand that success depends on perserverance, but I find it emotionally draining and all other aspects of my life suffer from such a narrow focus (writing).
I’m about to give up in the sense that I want to get a regular job and be a regular person. What I’m wondering is . . . have any of you condsidered yourself an artist, whether it be writing, painting, music, comedy ect, only to eventually give it up for a more rewarding peaceful life? In general, have any of you given up anything you were passionate about?
If you have to decide to be an artist, or try to be an artist, you are not an artist. Its one of those things that happens to you effortlessly, I think.
Any other kind of “artist” is cliched, like a role that one is playing to be like what he believes is an artist. This isn’t true…it is generic and cheap.
“Dude, quit your job, sell your house, and become a homeless painter!”
I believe I have, though I seldom think about it. That is, I don’t want to think about it.
There’s something to be said for a ‘generic’ life. You used the word peaceful. I concur. But supposing this is indeed our only go-round in this place, it’s difficult to imagine anything more misguided. It seems to me we ought seek to do precisely the opposite, even if it results in failure.
Here’s a suggestion - ignore those people telling you to ‘write about yourself’ or ‘write about what you know’. Kerouac, Ginsberg - they were crap because they were so tediously personal and overblown about everything. Write about the world - go see the Easter Island Statues and write about them, I dunno. Write about something people can relate to and give a toss about and no offence, but your personal grief and anxieties just aren’t that interesting in an age when lifestyle magazines are full of stories about how people were sodomised by their rottweilers but got over it because of the magic of TV chat shows.
I will never give up writing. I find it immensely draining on my time and my emotional and intellectual resources. But I never stop feeding inspiration into my mind and I never give up the hope of publishing.
Yours was the reply that I think I was hoping for. I will definitely consider how much art has become a burden versus my only go around purpose. I might just have to face failure for what it is.
Do what you do for yourself. Not why that, that. Artists do what they do because they are compelled by the muse. Anything else is not being but being as. If you can let your writing go, you weren’t going to write in the first place. Most artists are never published, have their own gallery show, are never recognized. Their true success isn’t in the accolades, but in the process of creation. It is agony and ecstasy.
This has nothing specifically to do with it but Gobbo’s first quote reminded me of it:
We are not alone, we feel an unseen love
We are sons and heirs of grace, we are children of
A light that never dims, a love that never dies.
So keep your chin up, child, and wipe the tears from your eyes.
I believe in sacrificing other things to the things I’m passionate about.
If a peaceful life were more rewarding, why would you not be passionate about that?
In general, however, I frustrate, not following my passions.
There must be found a way to make one’s passions economically profitable – that’s the American way.
You can even find ways to do things locally – untill “discovered”.
…Just some advice from someone who has no right to give it.
Once again I have to disagree - I don’t think this was the central ‘suggestion’ was to ‘write about yourself’. I think writing inevitably invovles ’ what we are as a Self- it’s impossible to escape - whether writing an non-fiction piece or a fictional-novel or a collection of poems - they will encompass the writer in a totality that only hindsight can best understand.
Now I’m not the biggest Beat reader ever - I own ‘On the Road’ and ‘Howl’ - and I think both pieces of writing a not ‘crap’ in the slightest nor are the as AWESOME as everyone sings about, but siatd, always overstates his criticism that they are ‘tediously personal’ and ‘overblown’ (Ginsberg may well be overblown, haha).
If you read back upon these writers they encompass an age, a period in time, not just themselves, but as part of America, in that respect they write about a generation, a reaction, and a feeling - the spirit of the age.
Ignore siatds claim to become a boring pedant who writes only about what he feels is ‘intelligent’ or ‘precise’ or ‘a grand structure’.
The sphere of personal life and private emotion is not to be dismissed as mere self-indulgence, particularly if you know how to elevate it from mere dairy typing to some kind of artistic bent or style.
Practically every guide or lecture or whatever on creative writing that I’ve ever come across says to write either ‘about yourself’ or ‘about what you know’. Perhaps you’re reading different documents to me.
A totality? You’re just throwing this in to try to make your argument sound more intelligent than it is. No way in hell is a writer present as a totality in any book, ever. And whether or not a reader can ever transcend the gap between words and people is also dubious. Regardless of how intelligent, insightful, imaginative, passionate or knowledgeable they are.
I’m not overstating in the slightest. I think that Howl is absolute rot. On the Road is dressed up as exciting and radical but I never finished the thing, it was that dull.
Sure, an age of petty individualism standing in the way of cultural revolution while claiming to be motivating cultural revolution.
And what did that age achieve? Practically bugger-all, from what I can see. What did that generation achieve? Again, very little.
Ignore Colin’s fruitless attempt to insult me by completely misrepresenting what I said. He’s in one of his paranoid moods where he thinks that I think he’s an idiot and so I’m avoiding him. As such, he’s letting his own paranoia damage an otherwise decent friendship. I wouldn’t normally state such private things out loud but Colin’s got to learn that getting pissed off and insulting people, however dramatic and artistic he may think it is, gets you nowhere.
Yeah, fuck it, just add your name to the growing list of writers who had nothing more interesting or important to talk about than themselves. I mean, it’s not like we’ve got a whole psychology/chat show/magazine industry entirely composed of boring people wanking on and on and on about their emotional situation using a million comforting cliches that then get spread around as excuses for the masses for their own failure to say what they mean.
Oh, wait, it is like that. And that’s precisely why writers should seek to contribute something different to society. Of course, some people don’t think about writing as playing a role in society, because they are too wrapped up in themselves. Hence, self-absorption as a writer can become a circular logic, a self-perpetuating cycle…
It’s a Woody Allen movie about a writer who wants to be an artist. He realizes what it means to be an artist in the end. He says to be an artist you have to have your own moral universe. I’m not sure what that means, but in the movie it meant that you have to be willing to kill someone to get your art right. In reading interviews with Woody, you can see that he himself does not see himself as an artist. He’s a 9 to 5 guy. He says Charlie Chaplin was an artist because he would do anything to see his work through. I don’t know if you’re a fan, but I think Woody Allen is a genius.
Sure, I agree most guides suggest this as a starting point, but my point is that this is not the suggestion of Ginsberg and Kerouac or the Beats in particular.
A writer is present in a totality: albiet - a vague totality of notions, asscociations and impressions.
Perhaps I am overstating. I think how is quite an imaginative rant of decadence and exprience - certianly not rot - but then it depends what your expecting: I take it on its own terms. On the road - a ranting travel through deabeat skid cross-country escapist mind-set (and sure dull in parts). It marks a piece of time. (If i had my way i’d eventually read everything…)
Powerful books can and should be…but sometimes BOMBS are more effective.
Sounds like want your shelf to topple the world, invoke social change, achieving something…and sure books can help in the process…spread ideas/spread perspective/communicate/play with power ideas… what does any age achieve through its writing?
O Tom, come on, that has nothing to do with it! and was never my intention.
You’re saying because I think the area of private emotion and experience are valid places to write from that I’m somehow a shallow boring wanker spreading around cliches for my own failure? (I’ll need a shower after all that). Wow! Perhaps your right…but I’m trying not to take myself to seriously at this point.
Writing does play a role in society - first and foremost: story telling. from the tiniest ineffectual childs book, to spirited but lost deadbeats, stuffy intellectual thinkers, grand political satires, fictional social commentaries, dystopian/utopian assessements, absurdist tales, love, madness, privacy, sentimentality…it’s osmosis (no, not the ozzy osborne album) the chemical process of a gradual, often unconscious process of assimilation or absorption. And yes! You may well say why absord that Beatnik shit or anything like it! Cause it’s all part of the process…(well, for me anyway) (am i still typing)
Imagine if African Americans gave up the bus boycotts. That was a HUGE challenge, I think it lasted for months if I remember right. Some walked for miles to get around, but it certainly paid off in the end.
All in all, good things happen if you try hard enough.
That’s crap. You do have to write about what you know. It doesn’t mean write about yourself and I know shit about writing, but all my favorite bands talked about their lives.
I mean, you advise, go see the easter islands, isn’t that writing about your experience? YOU went to the easter islands.
The point these people are trying to make is you need to be yourself and not pretend to be someone else. Even the shit you talk about what you don’t like, people talking about their lives, just makes the point of talking about what you know more true. These people are not being themselves. Their telling stories like everyone else is. They’re not doing what they know. They’re doing monkey see monkey do and just applying their own experiences in the formula.