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Sometimes I think to be able to write with style, have style, and be an engaging speaker you need to have experience and have led an interesting life. No one i
by Mikeb85 10y ago
Sometimes I think to be able to write with style, have style, and be an engaging speaker you need to have experience and have led an interesting life. No one is just born with any of this, and I don't know of any teacher that can suddenly make someone interesting. And indeed, most of my favourite authors seem to have led interesting lives.
- betenoire 10y agoThen again, I've met people who can tell the story of eating breakfast and have me eating every word up
- cousin_it 10y agoYes! The davesecretary stories [1] are a great example of that. I think good writing is more about the attitude of pulling a fast one on the reader's mind (in the good sense), it doesn't require unusual life experience. [1] http://tilde.club/~maryr/TIMEFORSOMESTORIES.html http://tilde.club/~maryr/TIMEFORSOMESTORIES.html
- austinz 10y agoI think an interesting life is important. I also think, though, that many people lead far more interesting lives than they realize. Some people are better than others at noticing and extracting the interesting parts of what would otherwise be humdrum everyday tedium.
- zasz 10y agoLiving an interesting life helps a lot, but being observant is much more important. There are plenty of people with great style who have lived boring lives. Emily Dickinson, Proust, and Wallace Stevens are three of the more obvious examples that come to mind.
- sharkweek 10y agoI disagree - I think it more has to do with being able to recognize and communicate how complicated even the most seemingly simple things are, but in an elegant way. Maybe that's a byproduct of living an exciting life, but to me, it represents someone who pauses and observes, taking countless mental notes in everyday life, considering things with an open mind from all angles. Then, most importantly, practice communicating all of this. Nobody is born a good writer/speaker, like most things, it's just a lot of work.
- svensken 10y agoI can think of one great example of this. Charles Lindbergh won the Pulitzer prize in 1954 for his Spirit of St. Louis autobiography. He worked on it for 15 years and refused to use a ghost writer, and the result was a masterpiece. Between his poetic writing style and the mountains of fascinating details leading up to the historic trans-Atlantic flight, I wouldn't hesitate to rank it as the most inspiring book I have ever read. https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-St-Louis-Charles-Lindbergh/dp/0743237056 https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-St-Louis-Charles-Lindbergh/dp/...
- svensken 10y agoI got a hold of my old copy of the book and wanted to share an excerpt from the first page: > Searching memory might be compared to throwing the beam of a strong light, from your hilltop campsite, back over the road you traveled by day. Only a few of the objects you passed are clearly illuminated; countless others are hidden behind them, screened from the rays. There is bound to be some vagueness and distortion in the distance. But memory has advantages that compensate for its failings. By eliminating detail, it clarifies the picture as a whole. Like an artist's brush it finds higher value in life’s essence than in its photographic intricacy. I can flip to any page and find a sentence or two that I've underlined for being as well written as the page above.
- mwetzler 10y agoEvery person has an internal life that is completely unique, and can be vastly complex. Some good storytellers know how to weave their inner tensions and wanderings into a narrative.