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Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

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Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I could run a marathon if I put in the effort. The reason I "can't" is truthfully that I can't be arsed . If you want to run a marathon what you're saying is that you're happy for training for that marathon to take over your life for, probably, about a year, and I'm not motivated to do that. With that being said Eddie Izzard, with little training, ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He didn't break any records or wi…

But I could do it, because I've absolutely written a book's worth of words over the past few years. It depends on the genre and if it's fiction or non-fiction. Non fiction, yes. But fiction is harder because of stylistic attributes and the fact it all has to connect. It's not like writing 300 300-word blog posts.

>Non fiction, yes. But fiction is harder because of stylistic attributes and the fact it all has to connect.

Ever read Dan Brown?

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I could run a marathon if I put in the effort. The reason I "can't" is truthfully that I can't be arsed . If you want to run a marathon what you're saying is that you're happy for training for that marathon to take over your life for, probably, about a year, and I'm not motivated to do that. With that being said Eddie Izzard, with little training, ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He didn't break any records or wi…

But I could do it, because I've absolutely written a book's worth of words over the past few years. It depends on the genre and if it's fiction or non-fiction. Non fiction, yes. But fiction is harder because of stylistic attributes and the fact it all has to connect. It's not like writing 300 300-word blog posts.

It could be a book of short stories, perhaps. Plus, with self-publishing these days, the bar to publish is probably the lowest it's ever been.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#43
post #30
post #11

It's actually possible almost everyone, or at least a great many people, have a good book in them. The hard part I would think is getting it out of them. It takes work and practice. I've been a professional writer for much of my life, in the sense that for periods of time I've actually been able to eat and pay NYC rent by virtue of people paying me to write things. But I don't know if I have a book in me. Because eve…

> But I don't know if I have a book in me. Because every time I try to write things that could possibly turn into a book I read them and they don't sound very good. I know what I'd have to do to change that, namely write a lot every day for a few years until it clicked. But I don't. Could you expand on what you mean by this? problem: you write down something, but it doesn't sound very good solution: write a lot every…

Consider it from an engineering perspective:

Problem: I write some code, but it doesn't work very well.

Solution: Write a lot of code every day for a few years.

The implication is that you learn what kinds of things are good and bad through practical experience, rather than simply re-writing the same implementation/prose every day.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#44
post #30
post #11

It's actually possible almost everyone, or at least a great many people, have a good book in them. The hard part I would think is getting it out of them. It takes work and practice. I've been a professional writer for much of my life, in the sense that for periods of time I've actually been able to eat and pay NYC rent by virtue of people paying me to write things. But I don't know if I have a book in me. Because eve…

> But I don't know if I have a book in me. Because every time I try to write things that could possibly turn into a book I read them and they don't sound very good. I know what I'd have to do to change that, namely write a lot every day for a few years until it clicked. But I don't. Could you expand on what you mean by this? problem: you write down something, but it doesn't sound very good solution: write a lot every…

The problem is a lack of skill.

The solution is lots of practice.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#45
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the reason why some ppl cannot run well is due to lactic acid buildup and VO2 max level. This means some people will cramp up and get exhausted no matter how hard they train or even if they lose weight. Similarly, with regard to writing, some people are simply not smart enough. If you didn't get a near-perfect score on the verbal part of the SAT, maybe fiction writing is not for you (but non-fiction is always a possi…

I got a near perfect score on the verbal part of the SAT, but I don't see how good reading comprehension and a large vocabulary are particularly important to being a good storyteller. Reading comprehension is mostly about subject knowledge and vocabulary is something you can learn. If you can craft an engaging story and you have the motivation to write, an editor (or a thesaurus) can help with vocabulary.

generally, good writers are good readers. Competent writers have a varied vocabulary which does not come across as forced (which is often the case when someone relies on a thesaurus). I don't think too many are surprised that mathematicians get perfect scores on the math part of the SAT, so I dunno why writers scoring equally well on the verbal is different. Yeah obv. being a mathematician is a lot more involved than scoring well on a test, but it shows potential.

I don't think vocab can be taught. The reason is, vocab is very highly correlated with IQ, which is stable thought life and cannot be boosted. A large vocab requires a strong crystallized memory, which is a part of IQ. Most people when they encounter new words either are unable to infer the meaning and or forget it, but smart people do both.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overwhelming majority of people are capable of running a marathon distance, even if at a slow pace. Not perhaps today, but by working up to it in a very achievable way. Similarly, the overwhelming majority can produce a book length manuscript, even if it isn't particularly remarkable. Again, they may need to work up to it. In this, near-perfect verbal SAT is pretty much irrelevant.

But I mean a good marathon time, and getting a book accepted by a publisher, in which there is an advance and royalties (not self-publishing). If by publishing you mean Amazon, then yeah, anyone can do that. Even robots can. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-kindle-spam/spam-c...

I guess my point was that success in these things at a reasonable (i.e. definitely not expert) level has far more to do with perseverance than "natural" talent or physiological characteristics - you seemed to be suggesting that the latter has far more to do with it than it really does. Neither of them are out of the normal range of human capability the way, say running a 10s 100m is. People consistently underestimate what they are capable of in these sorts of things.

Ignoring the problems and gatekeeping attendant in publishers, I belive most people could write a book that a significant number of people they didn't already know would pay to read (this may fall well below the numbers that would make a publisher interested). It probably wouldn't be their first book. Similarly most people could run enough to post a decent marathon time - again, probably not on their first marathon.

The main characteristic is not "raw talent" or physiology, respectively - the main characteristic is trying, failing, learning from your errors, trying more.

I forget who said it but "talent is a pursued interest". If you pick a random person and they choose to put the time in odds are extremely good they could write an ok book or post an ok marathon time. They aren't likely to write a best seller or break 2:30 - but that's not the point.

It is undeniably true that the overwhelming majority of people will never do either of these, but that is not because they are incapable of it but because they do not choose to focus time there.

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the reason why some ppl cannot run well is due to lactic acid buildup and VO2 max level. This means some people will cramp up and get exhausted no matter how hard they train or even if they lose weight. Similarly, with regard to writing, some people are simply not smart enough. If you didn't get a near-perfect score on the verbal part of the SAT, maybe fiction writing is not for you (but non-fiction is always a possi…

I got a near perfect score on the verbal part of the SAT, but I don't see how good reading comprehension and a large vocabulary are particularly important to being a good storyteller. Reading comprehension is mostly about subject knowledge and vocabulary is something you can learn. If you can craft an engaging story and you have the motivation to write, an editor (or a thesaurus) can help with vocabulary.

>Reading comprehension is mostly about subject knowledge

Actually reading comprehension is about everything _besides_ subject knowledge.

It's about the pure ability to understand something you've read -- e.g. to understand tone, intent, turns of phrase, idioms, writing styles, patterns, argument building, etc -- not about having some particular domain knowledge.

In other words if you read an article about a physics experiment but didn't understand it because you don't know what "spin", "wavefunction", or "interferometer" means in QM, then you don't have a reading comprehension problem. You just have a lack of physics knowledge.

If, inversely, you read an article about something you know very well in real life (e.g. baseball), but miss what the author tries to say, mistake the intent of some metaphor, misunderstand the argumentation, etc, then you do have a reading comprehension problem.

Of course to comprehend something you read you also need to be familiar with the thing it's talking about to. But reading comprehension is about everything else but that part -- it's about being familiar with the written word and the ways people express things in writing in themselves [1].

[1] "Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions answered in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer"

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#48
post #20

I suppose this is the literary equivalent of a software developer writing an article "No, you probably can't program computers"

I think a better analogy would be an article along the lines of "Sorry, your good idea isn't necessarily a startup"

Right, but based on the article title and phrase that's repeated throughout the article, it would be called "You can't write a computer program", but the point of the article will be "your good idea isn't necessarily a startup."

Re: Everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them

#49

> for many reasons too boring to get into here, and no, it’s not just cheaper to do ebooks, either Guessing he's not counting kindle publishing here, but regardless I'd love to know all the little details of why publishing e-books are so difficult

A print book costs less than $1 to print, $0.5 to handle/ship, and $0.5 to sort/shelve. Books cost around $10, and printing companies aren't growing unboundedly, so the money has to go somewhere. It goes to the process that is shared between print books and e-books.
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