Lemex, Jouce was relating his own childhood, not some other child in the different world he saw around him as an adult. Therein lies the difference. Joyce was drawing from his own experience, which was perfectly legitimate for the character he was writing.
Exactly, so it is still childhood, just his verson of it. Life is subjective like that, which is one of the points of that very book. Like how children are shown in Steven King novels. They are always rather similar. Unless they are meant to be different. I found the children in Salem's Lot to be very alike the children in IT and The Body.
The point I am making (and I think Maia is too) is that my having been a child does not give me a great deal of insight into the world a child faces now. To write a child in a contemporary setting, I would need to do research. It does help that I do have children a lot closer to that age, and my girlfriend's children are still in high school. But it would require research, and children (particularly teens) don't tend to show their natural behavior when they know adults are present and paying attention. They behave differently when surrounded solely by their peers.
I know, and I fully agree with that, but my point is that a childhood is unique to the person who lives it, my childhood will be different to yours, it will also be different to someone in my own age group, and it is (as psychology tells us) what mostly makes us who we are. And no two people are completely the same. It is impossible to write a universal childhood as there is no such thing, which leads me to conjecture: why can't we use our own experience as a child to think about how we would act if we were children in another time. Everyone's opinions and experiences are different, so why not just image ourselves re-learning the world around us.
That is true of any characterization. Members of a group remain individuals. But as children, we were also surrounded by other children. So we have a wealth of characters available for that setting in space and time. We are not dependent only on ourselves as models. It just does not extrapolate well at all to different time/space settings.
I tend to disagree, I think we can make good guesses at how children are in any era, we just need to pay attention to the society of that time, and then it comes down to research. But, I admit without shame, this will just be a guess.
Yeah but so many experiences are universal, aren't they? Take a 15yr old falling in love.... the emotion or fixation would be the same whether we're talking 2007, 1981 or 1845. Obviously the language and expectations of what happens next would be different in different times but thats the job of research. But people haven't changed. We're all mostly doing the same things (falling in love, dying, being greedy, whatever) I recently read 'My Sister, My Love' by Joyce Carol Oates where she gets into the mind of a 1980s small boy/ male teenager very competently. She was never a boy or young in the 80s.
After a little reading of replies, and a little thinking – the most painful part! – I think I can answer the question confidently. Age affects writing in a number of ways. Age gives a writer a wealth of experiences to draw from, and also knowledge that has accumulated after observing the world, reading, and interacting with others. Also, one cannot argue that the brain develops, especially early on, and continues to change until death. Nevertheless, the individual has the power to hone her craft. She can make use of the experiences she has already collected. She can put the time and effort into being the best writer she can be. So, writing well is not a simple matter. Age effects writing, and is a huge factor, but the individual has the power to excel, to overcome disadvantages. Therefore, a young writer can be successful, but it is less likely. She must use fewer resources more efficiently.
Agree. The great consolation of writing is that you know you are (probably) only going to get better as you get older, unlike so many other things you can do. People rush out and buy a new John Updike or a Doris Lessing even though they are as old as the hills (or dead?). Under what other circumstances would you seriously listen to an OAP? (I'm being a bit facetious here, but only a bit...)
...not really... because the social concept and expectations of 'falling in love' are not the same now, as they were 150 years ago... and a 15 yr old 'falling in love' is much more likely to be experiencing what's called 'puppy love' or a teen-aged hormonal drive, than the more mature version a 40 year old would be... but the question at hand is the biological age of the person doing the 'loving' not the [year] age in which it's being done... of course not, but she's an accomplished writer who knows how to do the requisite research to get what she writes right, while a young, inexeperienced writer more likely wouldn't...
Ouch! No false modesty there! My recommendation at this point, Gallowglass, is to print out your post and frame it and mount it above your bed. Somewhere down the road, as life seasons your awareness with humility, you may be embarrassed by your youthful certainty and find you are inclined to take it down. THAT's experience. Even the most intelligent of youth cannot hope to compare to his future wisdom of age - at any stage in life. At every stage in our lives, we find ourselves proud of our maturity and knowledge and how far ahead of others our own age we may be. And with each step forward, we are able to look back on our former selves and see how much we did not know and how much more we had to learn. One of the most important things I ever had to learn in my life was humility. Another was temperance ... of emotion and of the overt display of confidence - which, in turn, led me back to humility the more I learned in life. I know that I am, intellectually, far smarter than most people I meet on a daily basis. I also know that I presently find myself on a road that I know will teach my future self a great deal. So I struggle to be patient and humble and measure my confidence with a strong dose of introspection. Like daily vitamins, it is something we should all have a dose of every day.
HA! Wordsmith, you don't know Gallowglass very well, do you?! He's actually very talented, and sometimes a little bit of over-inflated self esteem can help the writer on their path. Humility has it's place, however a bit of higher self-esteem, in a sea of low-self-esteem-emo-vampire-death-suicide loving-cutters, can be a refreshing change.
This question seems to be interpreted in two different ways, that's why I think we are seeing a schism here. One group sees writing as Experience: being the result of mortal longevity almost by its self. Though I do not fully agree with this, I can definitely see the point being made. The other camp sees writing as down to mostly hard work and talent, experience being merely one of a number of equal factors; which I must admit I am favouring, though this may be that I am young myself. I guess this comes down to how you interpret the (almost) literary dogma: 'Write what you know'.
I have only one real issue with this observation or, perhaps, this is indicative of yet a third school of thought? Experience, as many have already noted, is not, in and of itself, a matter of lengevity. It has been pointed out by many that the range and manner of experience is not determined by living long but, for want of a better term, living well. The comparison has been made that a young person may have a great number of life experiences while a more mature person's experiences may be limited. The types of experiences, too, go into the mix to alter a person's range of experience and views on life and people as a whole. There are so many things that can effect an individual and, as writers, we tend to look at that body 9f experience differently from, say, a plumber or a riverboat pilot or a professional dancer. What is important to them, is not the same thing that is important to a writer. If you accept the belief that 'writers are born not made' (which I do), for the most part, even before a writer "discovers" he or she is a writer, they will have a certain mindset which leads them to see things in a different light. The writer will find things interesting in a different way than someone who does not have 'the calling'. So, even at a young age, the identical experience will effect two people differently both because the body of experience behind them, which effects their reference points for the experience, and their general mindset, which effects how they absorb a specific experience. Experience, in and of itself, is not a determiner of one's ability to write any more than putting a monkey in front of a keyboard makes him a writer. Now, as to the matter of talent, I believe that, too, is manipulated by one's body of life experiences. Even an extremely gifted young person (considerably younger even than you, Lemex) will find his or her style and manner of writing changing with their external life experiences. Borrowing the dog bites man, scenario: Obviously, a young person (Let's say he is 16 years old) would create a tale of the tail based on his life experiences and points of reference. This would include his generally less-mature perspective on things such as dog bites. HOWEVER, If this 16 year old is the son of a military family and has lived in seven different countries since he was born, been bitten by a python in India, stung by a scorpion in China, and mauled by a wild orangutan in Sumatra, his realm of reference is considerably different and his account of the dog bite would be considerably different as well. Stretching this scenario to an extreme, if this 16 year old had lived a terribly sheltered life and never seen a dog before or been bitten by any animal, the experience would likely be far more traumatic. Yes? So even the most gifted of young writers will find his own body of experiences will change his body of work.
I don't think I suggested that he was not talented. My implication was that the over-inflated ego might be a little misplaced. In any line of work, high self-esteem is essential to success but a healthy dose of awareness that, no matter how good you really are 'you ain't all that', can help, too.
Let me clarify what I meant when I said age brings experience. I didn't mean life experience but rather writing experience. An older writer obviously has more writing experience, which is why he/she is almost always better than a young writer. Life experiences don't help much, although they can serve as good starting points for ideas. Also, no matter how good of a writer you think you are now, you will be better in 5 or 10 years.
I'm not sure age makes any great difference, which is why most writers tend to have longer careers than most pop stars, but experience really does make a difference.
Age makes a difference not necessarily if you're older; i believe there's a specific way of thinking and acting when you are younger that you may not be able to reproduce when you are older, and as such, can produce different paths in writing. Altough, like many have said on this topic, experience makes a difference - i can tell that by myself - and surely has a considerable impact in your writing skills. Being young aint bad, being old neither, except girls wont look at you the same way i guess
