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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

#71

Post by ghaff »

pm90 wrote: post #69
pnathan wrote: post #63

Has anyone just farted around self published books or fanfic a bit? Let me tell you: there's a lot of writing that is nearly unreadable. Sure, you can do it. It's probably best written down and then gently carried over to the archives, only taken out for a good laugh down the road. Writing well is like programming. You have to spend some time doing it before its really ready for public consumption. Then you get to be…

> Writers have workshops and critiquing circles. They have editors. Review, review, review. Draft, draft, draft. Sure, that is probably how "professional" writers get good. But we've had good writers before there were all these tools , didn't we? I find it hard to imagine e.g. Bukowski attending a writing workshop. Some people just have the talent. Others are mediocre and get better with effort.

Sure, some people have more natural talent (and upbringing, background, etc.) But I suspect you're underestimating how hard talented people still have to work to produce quality output.

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

#72

Post by B0btheBuilder »

paulpauper wrote: post #45
learc83 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>vocab is very highly correlated with IQ, which is stable thought life and cannot be boosted.

Yet, from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient):

>Raw scores on IQ tests for many populations have been rising at an average rate that scales to three IQ points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

syndacks wrote: post #6

>I put it like this: I have been running since I was about a year old. Almost 40 years! But I cannot for the life of me run a marathon. I am not physically capable of it, even though I can run a few miles in a row. Yes, you are. You just tell yourself that you are not. And yes, you can write a book. Whether it gets published or not is another story. I don't understand why someone whose job it is to find the next best…

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by saulrh »

syndacks wrote: post #6

>I put it like this: I have been running since I was about a year old. Almost 40 years! But I cannot for the life of me run a marathon. I am not physically capable of it, even though I can run a few miles in a row. Yes, you are. You just tell yourself that you are not. And yes, you can write a book. Whether it gets published or not is another story. I don't understand why someone whose job it is to find the next best…

Tell that to my knees.

I'm mostly fine walking around. I can even do short flights of stairs. In fact, up until a few years ago they only bothered me when I sat in a really unergonomic chair for a while. Then someone convinced me to try this "couch to 5k" thing, and said that literally anyone could do it, and that I liked like I weighed maybe half as much as people that'd actually followed the timetable and gone from couch to 5k.

Fast forward two months. The doctor says "stay off your feet and see if it gets better". They haven't started feeling better. It's been almost three years.

I understand the viewpoint you're trying to hold, and I sympathize. Knowing there are things you can't do really sucks. Especially when you try and fail at something you really wanted, in Brooklyn or otherwise. Unfortunately, you're being a little bit insensitive, verging on offensive. "Just put down the crutches and walk". "Just stop being depressed and be happy". "Just focus". "Just try harder". "Just stop telling yourself you're incapable".

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

#75

Post by alister »

paulpauper wrote: post #31
bartread wrote: post #12

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.

> But fiction is harder

Too general a statement. Sure, an engaging consistent story is much harder than, say, the average cookbook or travel guide.

But many textbooks in science and math seem like absolutely Herculean effort. Gravitation[1] by Misner, Thorne, & Wheeler (a work of non-fiction) in my opinion would be the equivalent in intellectual effort to several thousand average works of fiction.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/06911...

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

#76

Post by majos »

joe_the_user wrote: post #24
dalbasal wrote: post #17

The tldr is that writing books is hard and most attempts fail.. especially if made by amateurs haphazardly and without practice, instruction or plans that involve learning to do something before being good at it. It finishes with a satisfying lesson in curmudgeon economics. ... Anyway... it's interesting that so many people want to write a book. They may be naive, but they do know it's hard. That's why they haven't d…

"...it's interesting that so many people want to write a book" Indeed, The article's main conclusion, that not everyone can write a best selling novel or biography, is nearly truism in that there are a few bestsellers per months and millions of people in this country (or any country). I think it the interest of many average people in being best selling writers, along with interest in making and staring in TV shows, c…

My read on why writing a book is seductive is more cynical: most people believe that writing a book is an achievement and signifies something about the writer -- depth of thought and feeling, intelligence, vague specialness, etc. So writing a book seems like a fine way to transform an unspecial life into a special one.

What's even better: from the outside, anyone can write a book. We all tell stories, most of us can read and write, and those are the only technical requirements. By contrast, when you're 50 you know there's just no viable path to say becoming a surgeon or painting like the old masters or finally writing that symphony. The skill barriers are just too obvious and high. But you can start writing a book today, and indisputably, you'll be writing a book.

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

#77

Post by modells »

This story is a duplicate of Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does. -Groucho Marx sometime between the 19th and 20th centuries.

I hope not everybody has a book in them, that sounds mildly annoying and not sure if someone could cough that up on demand, unless they need to book it to an appointment that they booked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ C’est la vie.

Disclaimer: everything should be taken reactively literally, no exceptions... straight to the gallows without a cigarette for a passive-aggressive send-off.

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

#79

Post by jdietrich »

syndacks wrote: post #6

>I put it like this: I have been running since I was about a year old. Almost 40 years! But I cannot for the life of me run a marathon. I am not physically capable of it, even though I can run a few miles in a row. Yes, you are. You just tell yourself that you are not. And yes, you can write a book. Whether it gets published or not is another story. I don't understand why someone whose job it is to find the next best…

>Yes, you are. You just tell yourself that you are not.

Eeesh. Any able-bodied person can walk a marathon, given sufficient motivation. You might be able to run parts of it, but you can't run a marathon through sheer force of will if you haven't done the training.

A book is technically just a bunch of bound pages, so anyone can write one in the loosest sense of the word. I can just type the word "beige" 80,000 times and call it a day. Writing a book that someone will actually read past the first chapter requires a certain level of skill. The author isn't telling people not to try - his closing paragraph makes that clear - but he's warning people of the amount of work and practice involved in writing something that people want to read.

To quote the great Ronnie Coleman, "everybody wanna to be a bodybuilder, but ain't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight". The number of people who like the idea of being an author is vastly greater than the number of people willing to learn how to write well. If you enjoy the process of writing, then by all means write for your own pleasure. If you harbour dreams of being the next J.K. Rowling, you're likely to be sorely disappointed.

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

#80

Post by Skunkleton »

coldtea wrote: post #41
paulpauper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Renowned author Dan Brown
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