3 ms·

> I will never have the full package of skills it takes to write well, day after day. Surely like most things, it starts by writing badly day after day (for wa

• dhosek 6y ago
  Exactly. To become good at something, you must first suffer through being bad at it long enough to get better.
  • WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    After 40 years I sometimes nail entire paragraphs. I hope to write for slashdot by the time I'm 200.
    • dhosek 6y ago
      It was seven years (and an MFA) between when I resumed writing fiction seriously in my late thirties until I had my first publication. Since then, I've managed to publish at least one short story a year. I've managed to crack the bottom of the top tier (or maybe the top of the middle tier) and gotten a personalized rejection from The New Yorker. I ignore those kids who write something as an undergrad that their English professor passes on to their agent and end up with their first publication in The Paris Review when they're 19. The key is to just keep going.
      • WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
        All communication is tough for me. I have to manually assemble the sort of language skills that most folks take for granted. To achieve even basic communication, I have to collect and process huge amounts of social/human data. For speaking, this means composing & practicing entire conversations until I've mastered enough variations that I can sound reasonably natural. With text, I need rewrite my sentences numerous times, before I achieve basic readability between them. However, when I can pull off mundane communication, getting out something that's excellent or interesting is normally ~0 steps further.