4 ms·
Nice read. I like how he doesn't wax philosophical about knowing if one is talented or not. If one can't take enough queues from the real world, then they most
by Dirlewanger 12y ago
Nice read. I like how he doesn't wax philosophical about knowing if one is talented or not. If one can't take enough queues from the real world, then they most likely are delusional.
For the HN audience, #4 is the most relevant one. Too many things I read here have high school-level writing. The authors cared more about getting their half-baked opinion out on their Medium blog over proofreading (excluding ESLs). One of the best lessons from college is when one of my history professors metaphorically tore me a new asshole for not knowing how to write on one essay, and out of pity, gave me a grace period to fix it. He highlighted enough of my superfluous fluff that I finally got writing and how one must write as little as possible. I had other writing-intensive classes after that one and never had such an event happen again.
- teach 12y ago*cues
- dr_bloodmoney 12y agoNo, queues. You gotta wait in line just like everyone else.
- AngrySkillzz 12y ago> You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it later.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 12y agoYes, but don't forget to get back to that "correct it later" step...
- Dirlewanger 12y agoClearly didn't proofread enough...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Jimmy 12y ago>He highlighted enough of my superfluous fluff that I finally got writing and how one must write as little as possible. Right, because Joyce, Pynchon, and Nabokov would have benefited from being told to write "as little as possible". If you're writing non-fiction, maybe. If you're writing literature, to hell with rules. How impoverished our culture would be if all writing held itself to the same standard.
- sdrothrock 12y agoHe actually seems to cover this point in "know the market." If your market is high literature, then the words that would be extraneous in a newspaper aren't extraneous there.
- coldtea 12y ago>Right, because Joyce, Pynchon, and Nabokov would have benefited from being told to write "as little as possible". They might have. Especially Pynchon, but Joyce too.
- AnimalMuppet 12y agoIn fact, if Joyce had written nothing at all, that might not have been a bad thing. I was afflicted with having to read "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in high school. In it, Joyce puts forth his theory of art - that to be pure art, it should cause no response whatsoever in the viewer. Joyce is a great writer, and was able to achieve the effect he wanted - to write a book that produces no response whatsoever in the reader (other than the feeling of revulsion at being forced to waste my time reading it). But because his theory of art is rubbish, he wastes his talent producing "art" that is a complete waste, both of his talent and of the reader's time.
- Jimmy 12y agoWould you be able to quote a passage from the book where Joyce claims that that's his view? It's been a long time since I read Portrait of the Artist, but I don't recall that being in the book, nor does it sound like something Joyce would say. At any rate, even if that really was the goal he set for himself, he failed. Ulysses elicited a wide range of responses from me.