There's nothing wrong with not having much formal education. But just recognize what you don't know, and don't make assumptions about it. If you don't know how literature is taught in higher education, don't make pronouncements about how it's taught--don't assume you know. Ease off on the negative-self-talk. Everyone's fine.
Exactly. Quit flogging yourself, GuardianWynn. Give yourself some space, give yourself time. No one starts off writing like Charles Dickens. Start small, write some scenes and give them to us for critique. We can help you get there, but you must stop flogging yourself like this.
But I don't know how. It is like ripping emotions out? I like people with different ideas than me. I liked the idea of your story(your baby) purely based on the fact it is an idea I would not have had myself. I just don't understand.
Just think about your story. Your story, not anyone else's. Don't compare your stuff to their stuff. Focus more on where you were few months ago, where you want to be a year from now and how you can get there. Stop worrying about what makes doesn't make art. Focus on your story. What do you want to write about and start writing. We, the forums, will be here for you to help out, OK? Don't flog yourself over this. No one starts off writing gold.
I think you misssed a page. I am not self-depricating because I am a bad writer(not to say I am good) I was doing it because I am a over critcal analizer that is having too harsh standards and being judgemental and am not sure how to stop while being true to myself.
I'd never in a million years have had your idea or been able to build a magic system and associated world like you have. I don't understand how you have that much imagination and creativity. The difference is, it doesn't make me angry or sad that you DO have that skill or that you see writing differently from me. In the same way that I don't understand how @BayView and her brother enjoy the taste of wine, because to me it's like drinking vinegar, but my only emotion related to that is a vague happiness that people are enjoying themselves.
It depends. Sometimes an apparently-trivial event reflects more general truths about society. And it's hard to tell which one will have that result. "Wardrobe malfunction"? Meh. Howard Dean's scream? That will be remembered for a while. The debate about whether Richard Nixon lost because of his lack of television chrisma? That continues. But it's not obvious from the beginning. The movie It's a Wonderful Life, for example, did badly at the box office. My understanding is that Ingrid Bergman was in a hurry to get Casablanca over with so that she could move on to a film that was regarded as more important. I disagree. Are we talking about film school or regular public school? I disagree, in both cases. In public school, most of what is taught is rules, not quality criteria. There are some things taught in public school that imply some consensus on quality. For example, there are some "classic" books that are taught, and sometimes we're taught why those books are thought to be good. But, no, I wouldn't say that that is evidence of even a consensus, much less an objective standard. Film school may have enough people who agree on enough aspects of quality to form a school. But that doesn't mean that that agreement is objective, and it doesn't mean that it reflects a societal consensus. I like Memphis-style barbecue. That style of barbecue has enough defining characteristics that someone could teach it. But the fact that someone teaches it doesn't mean that those characteristics are an objective definition of quality, or that someone from Georgia or Texas would even agree that the barbecue is any good. I don't see an example of different tastes or measuring something outside those tastes. I think I need a specific example. Why? Who defined the recipe? It wasn't handed down by God. The ability to follow a recipe and get a result precisely the same as that achieved by the writer of the recipe may signify skill, but if it's not a good recipe, it certainly doesn't signify quality. If people disagree on whether or why it's bad, then by definition, that's not an objective measure. And I certainly don't agree that "how good the item is for you" is the defining measure of quality. You chose that as a measure of quality. You chose that based on your priorities and ideas. You made a subjective choice. Maybe we need to agree on a definition of "objective"?
Yeah, but if I am wrong, if I don't have art, then I have nothing. I am nothing. I realize this must sound horrible and I am sorry for that. I know what you mean, but honest truth. It feels like no other response is honest. I feel bad for that being true. But heck, I don't know how else to do it. Life isn't a fairytale, not every gets a happy ending. I don't know what else to say. I wish I had more.
@GuardianWynn, I suspect that you believe that linking this discussion to yourself, suggesting that our disagreeing with you makes you a bad person, is a sort of useful humility. It's not. You are setting us up as the bad guys who are beating you up. Please stop that. This is a discussion, and you have every right to an opinion, but it's not working for you to suggest that our contrary opinion is painting you as a bad person.
You never mad me angry or sad. Actually as in site to my character. This is true even outside of art. Maybe that is the part I have been missing. See, I was at GoodWill, and they wanted me to say "Welcome to GoodWill" to everyone that walked in. I... refused. Because it felt fake. They didn't want people to feel well. Coperate just said to do it. That the numbers reflected higher sales. They could fire me before I would say it. Not to say that I refused to greet people. But I would not repeat "welcome to goodwill" like a zombie. I came up with all sort of ways to say it, from singing it, to writing it on a board, to arranging things to say it. I had no problem greeting and showing love to customers. But just "welcome to goodwill" felt insulting. Like they were children that needed to be reminded where they were. That is the thing about you I can't imagine. Writing for a living. I couldn't do it in that sense. I can't put it in a vacuum. If I don't mean it. I won't say it. (not to say, that my phrasing is perfect. I do not always say it well.)
Have you ever been hungry? Like, legit, long-term, don't-have-enough-food hungry? Have you ever been homeless? Cold, without money for heat? If you've lived through all that and still stand by your "I'd rather be fired than welcome people to a store" principles, then, okay... I don't understand, but at least I accept that you really mean them. But in general, I feel like maybe you're operating with a pretty cushy safety net, and it's a lot easier to say all the things you wouldn't do when you're just saying them rather than living them.
I don't get the GoodWill analogy, because nobody is forcing me to write. Not even in an indirect way, because my livelihood doesn't depend on it. I'm perfectly happy writing this plot that you think is so paint-by-numbers - just as happy as I was writing my baby. Perhaps even happier, because I can see the $$$ signs at the end of it and I like my $$$. or £££ to be more precise.
I think that you're telling us, among other things, that you see the world in black and white. And I think that you would be a happier person, and quite possibly be able to produce better art, if you could see it in shades of gray. Everything is gray. Everything is doubt. EVERYTHING. Some things are close enough to certainty that we put the word "objective" on them, even though they're not truly certain. But most things are not.
Yep. My life is nice now much better, but homeless, no food, cold. Slept on a park bench. And even when life was better as a child, staying away from home was often perfferable. I have been there. All I had at those moments was the memories of the stories that captured my heart. Getting a job at goodwill is how I got out of said situation. But I would rather starve to death than not be true to myself. Perhaps that is the big error I have made in my logic. That if someone's motive is money I am somehow connecting that as they are being fake in order to make money. Which can be true but is certainly not always true. Perhaps I figured it out.
I was referring to your job where you have no creative control as you said. And I was trying to express perhaps the breakthough, that I had internalized a linking idealism to these trait that doesn't exist being perhaps my mistake. And I was using the goodwill example to reference how that same thought process has shown itself up in other parts of my life.
I won't argue my logic has been and probably is black and white-ish But I see an innate flaw in your counter. How can everything be doubt? Everything is a black/white view. I believe in black/white and grey. I think sometimes it is grey, and sometimes it is black and sometimes it is white.
Why? Is everything, EVERYTHING you might do in your subsequent life made utterly, totally worthless because you once said "Welcome to GoodWill" a hundred times a day? Is that really such a terrible sin that even if you create a world-changing novel, even if you cure cancer, those efforts are worthless because you obeyed a silly order in your workplace, an order that never harmed anyone?
That being the revoluation I was making, that I had connected two things incorrectly. Because this thread wasn't about you because I didn't see your work as faked.
I can't think of any thing that's black and white, to me. Everything has context and nuance and shades of meaning and doubt and complexity and arguments for and against...
First. Thanks everyone. You probably gave me more attention I deserved here. Its value will be treasured.
I will agree that the silliness of being to starve over obeying that order is well silly. I just didn't get it. If the meaning behind the idea is to make them feel good by greeting them, why did if have to be a safe/tested phrase. Why couldn't I sing it, or spell it. Why couldn't we make it our own. I guess in an extreme way, I feel the idea of something forcing my creativity in such a way was like a destruction of my being and, yeah even today, I would rather die first. Silly but true. Gonna have to explain how everything is not everytihing? How is "can't" not capible of happening, not a black-white response? I mean, take the phrase. "nothing is impossible" BULLSHIT bcause how about the possibility of something that is impossible? If that is possible by definition, something is impossible. and if that is not possible than again, something is impossible.
