Losing My Passion For Literature

The truth is that I no longer read. I was once a voracious reader and writer with mountains of ambition and imagination in order to progress. It appeared, when I was 14 years old, I was on the path to become a capable student of literature, and perhaps one day an author. Three years on, and I've reached a certain plateau in my writing. I used to write and read daily, sifting through books effortlessly. But now, I’ve lost my intellectual curiosity, my attention-span for reading and writing is rotting away, with my interests deviating towards sex, drugs & alcohol. I still plough the same time and effort into literature, but it appears that things no longer click for me.

With the opportunity to attend Oxford University a possibility, it’s terrible that I’m pissing around in my A Levels. True, I’m still on course to nail A*s, but I’m no longer the free-thinking mind that I used to be. The truth is that I can get away with slacking, I have both natural and attained ability in this subject, but I don’t just want to attend a top university, I want to attend a top university and be in the right frame of mind in order to appreciate the experience. Three years ago, haven already written two novels, I would have embraced the experience of having a published poet at my English Literature Teacher. Back then, I needed to voice my literary opinions, and my teachers couldn’t cope, now that I have one who can, I slump in my chair with apathy.

I talk and act like pseudo-intellectual; I’m still streets ahead of my peers, but every day, the streets become closer and closer. I have this terrible arrogance, which I don’t live up to. Back in my writing peak, I was embarrassed of the hobby, I penned two novels, and embraced the craft with my full-commitment, and not a soul knew. Nowadays, it is everybody’s business, in this time frame; I’ve become a social-being. And being a writer is now a tag applied to me, a tag which is secretly unfulfilled. The only fiction happening for me is that tag itself.

I don’t feel like I’ve learnt anything in a long time. The last novel I read was A Clockwork Orange in January. Although in the last 18 months, I've settled upon blogging, the making of me. Every day I write 5-6 pages of expression, whether it’s my thoughts, emotions, opinions, hopes, dreams ... there is a feeling that my entire life in that time period has been captured. And it’s wonderful, although it wasn’t the narrative ball rolling, it was a ball. This blogging led to some intellectual clarity. Selfish vain intellectual clarity. But intellectual clarity nevertheless. The long-term goal was to extract the core themes from my bloggings and rework it into a roman au clef novel. However, the expression continued with no end product. And recently, a terrible thing happened. My hardrive was wiped, no back-ups, all of my works gone. Hundreds of pages. Personally, I think it’s a blessing in disguise. A fresh start.

And it is at this point that I ask for your advice, boys and girls, if you have any advice on how I can reignite my passion for literature, I would be most grateful.

Starting at ground zero; what kind of books do you believe I should begin reading? Contemporary yet relevant literature? Or back to the stone cold classics?

You sound as though you need to do some livng for a while. You'll be fired up again when you get some inspiration. I don't think it's an uncomon experience you're having. Just do what you feel like for a bit. :thumbs_up

A passion for life is often expressed in a passion for literature.

First of all, that's a very well chosen avatar. Suits your post perfectly :).

Second, (and I'm really sorry if I sound pretentious) have you considered the possibility that you're taking life too seriously? Your level of intelligence can be a curse early in life. 14 is a very young age to start writing. First of all, no matter what we think as teenagers, we just don't have the right amount of life experience to peak as writers at that age. I'm not speaking from a huge distance, I'm only 22, but I'm sure things will change for you in the next few years. Maybe your mind got saturated with literature and intellectualism, so no wonder you crave sex, drugs & alcohol. It's completely normal! The thing is to find a balance between intellectual work and hedonism, and it is pretty hard, but it can definitely be done. The most obvious answer would be- go out every night, get pissed a lot and have lots of sex and you'll get tired of that eventually and turn back to reading and writing. The only problem is that you might find yourself throwing your education away in the process.

To avoid that, I guess you should go back to basics and ask yourself what it is that made you read so much in the first place. Why do you love literature? What were you looking for in it? Why do you read? Answer that, and maybe you'll see things more clearly.

I think you've got to just let this happen. Look at excerpts on Amazon and poke around the library. You're in an enviable place right now if you ask questions about why we read literature at all. You'll be a better reader than you otherwise would have been, for thinking about the basic things, and the enthusiasm and "beginner's mind" of a fresh start. All this will happen, in its own way.

At such an age you are bound to be distracted by a whole host of other things, which is perfectly natural, but why wouldn't you want to go to Oxford if you have the opportunity? Unless you are plenty rich and can attend at a later stage, I would snatch at the chance. Though I suppose you might be bright but you can't teach life experience.

As for what to read, I'm sure you will get many different replies from many different people. Personally I would give yourself a good grounding in the classics, but I suppose you should follow your nose and your own path in more ways than one.

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Originally Posted by escapologist

The most obvious answer would be- go out every night, get pissed a lot and have lots of sex

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I can definitely recommend it.

You're only doing A-levels, at your age, and you're worried about it?!? Stop taking life so seriously, you ain't going to get out of it alive, and, as someone else said, get a bit of living done. If you are reading because you think you ought to, it's a pretty rubbish motive. Relax, take life a bit easier and remember the old maxim - the first symptom of a nervous breakdown is starting to believe that what you do is important!!!

burntpunk--As everyone else on this thread has said, the first thing you should do is take a deep breath and relax a bit. One thing about being very young is that you don't have the perspective to know that you are very young yet. When you're a bit precocious for your age and have been seriously engaged with something like writing earlier than many others are, this can give the impression that you've already achieved at the very highest level and should be settled in your path for life. In fact, no matter what you've done at the age of 14, you're still very much at the beginning of things when you're 17 and you are guaranteed to encounter some challenges and some failures as well as successes. This is both an exciting and a possibly frightening/discouraging thing. One part of what seems to be going on is that you're encountering the possibility of not being the smartest thing going for the first time, of not having easy success, of not possibly living up to the expectations that you and others have built up for you. This can be troubling for many reasons. One is that you enjoy and are comfortable in the role of being the "smart guy (or gal?)" who is special and marked apart. You're worried that you may no longer be "streets apart" from others, and so far ahead of the game that the teachers can't cope. You worry that the division between yourself and them may not be so large, may in fact be nonexistent (or that the other person may be even smarter/better!). This is a normal feeling for someone who has been in the habit of excelling as a youth, and it doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you haven't given yourself permission to explore the part of yourself that is like everyone else. You won't really lose your identity or what you think of as your core self if that street narrows down to where you're facing people who are your equals. Instead you'll be uncovering a previously hidden part of your identity, probably a much richer and satisfying one than the somewhat insecure sense of being superior that previously hid it.

That brings up a second reason that you seem to be going through a troubling time with this, which is that you're thinking a lot about the pressure of expectations from others and from yourself. It is probably your self expectation that is giving you the most grief, because it is through that that you are imagining how terrible it will be if other people see you failing. Then it becomes a vicious cycle in which the "arrogant" part of yourself that enjoys feeling different from everyone else lets you puff yourself up to the point where you feel you're making empty claims and boasts that you can't follow through with and you then feel so insecure and frightened by the possibility that everyone will find out that you can't follow through that you hide behind yet another of pretense and arrogance in the hopes that no one will find out. You'll only really break this cycle when you become comfortable with the idea of not being perfect, of being able to fail, of even appreciating your failures for being part of what connects you to every other person on this earth. The truth is that if you fail a little people will probably like you a bit better for it. Your writing and your study of literature will definitely be better if you are more in touch with any other part of yourself that is more in touch with other people, whether that involves failure or not.

This may mean spending some time being young, relaxing, even indulging in sex, drugs and alcohol a bit. Just be careful, especially with the last two, that you aren't so focused on filling an insecurity that you're starting to get unhealthily dependent or that you're messing with the sort of hard drugs that could seriously endanger your future. I know it sounds prudish, but it is important to have some moderation between enjoying life and engaging in rigorously disciplined and ambitious pursuits. It sounds like maybe you've been doing way too much of the latter, which leaves you vulnerable to overdoing the former. There's a difference between giving yourself some room for experimentation and surrendering yourself to screwing up so spectacularly that you lose out on some potentially really rewarding opportunities in life. There's also a difference between having some fun that supplements your pursuits in life and allowing things like drugs or alcohol to wholly become unhealthy replacements for what could be a much more rewarding focus or pursuit in your life. If you find that you're turning to these things only to avoid facing something else or especially if you start thinking you can't do without the drugs and alcohol, i.e. you're showing signs of becoming dependent (and don't lie to yourself if the signs are there), then you need to back off, perhaps even get some outside help. If you're doing these things just because you want the experience, because you're young and having fun and you need to have some kind of release that doesn't involve having to think too seriously once in awhile, then by all means enjoy.

As a note of parting, it sounds as though you do have the capacity of admirable discipline in sticking to your writing for a certain number of hours a day etc., which will hold you in good stead when inspiration strikes again and if you do ultimately decide you want to be a writer and/or literary scholar. You may, of course, decide you want to do something entirely different: "the world is all before you where to choose." If you do end up going into literary study then I can tell you already have a good sense of the necessary discipline for when ideas do come and you are now learning the necessary patience for when they don't. Every single writer of any kind has had to cope with writer's block. The main thing is to reassure yourself that it will pass and to remember that you will only make it worse by allowing yourself to worry about what others will think of you instead of biding your time, keeping yourself in decent practice technically speaking and keeping your mind alert to inspiration when it does come :

"FAME, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;"

It's been annoying writers, and people in general, for several centuries at least. ;)

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Originally Posted by dafydd manton

You're only doing A-levels, at your age, and you're worried about it?!? Stop taking life so seriously, you ain't going to get out of it alive, and, as someone else said, get a bit of living done. If you are reading because you think you ought to, it's a pretty rubbish motive. Relax, take life a bit easier and remember the old maxim - the first symptom of a nervous breakdown is starting to believe that what you do is important!!!

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haha i love this post!!

but it is true, being a younger person myself and being in the same position as you in my last year of high school, my mother said this to me.
'why are you stressing, life is life and it will live on with or without you in it'

hmm... got me thinking, indeed not the predicated logic I long for, but nonetheless effective. you are off to university, hopefully doing something you enjoy, for me it was medicine. so being stuck in this futile arrogance and self loathing of a time when knowledge was beautiful and the black ink sustained more than just the poetic justice of a free thinker. I found myself drawn to that which I loved, and then what I had previously loved (writing and reading non-medicine based books) flowed back. I now enjoy writing stories again, have a novel getting published, started the second novel and have now just started to collaborate a book of short stories with a friend.

you said you wanted to be in the right frame of mind for university, that is a naive look at something you couldn't know. what is the right frame of mind? why can't you go in with any mindset and still attain the highest of experiences? I didn't have a clue what to expect, I found myself wondering what the hell I was doing there on many an occasion, and yet, here I stand a fully fledged doctor, graduated this year and have had the best experiences of my life. time is your teacher, university is your drunk friends ready to show you a good time and your books, well they'll become your mentor.

just spend some time doing what interests you now, your literary ingenuity may have been your pleasure in the past, but you now just need to refuel. hence why you mind has wandered to a different green pasture, and in time it will wander back and you will be the wiser and the more fruitful because of it. University is a whole new beast, experience it in its entirity and trust me, you will have stories to write for the 10 years after.

good luck at uni, hope you have as much fun as I did!!

I'm glad that you posted this thread, because I'm a 21 year old Canadian student going through sort of the same thing and there's been some great advice. When I was in my high school of two hundred people, I was the best writer and top biology student. My success became the only thing that defined me. When I got to the U of A (which has about 40,000 students) I fully expected to be the best again. Unfortunately, the U of A is known as the best scientific research school in the country (naturally attracting some of the best biology students in the world) and I wasn't as special anymore. I lost my identity, and school lost its allure.

Petrarch's Love, your post helped me a lot.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

I'm glad that you posted this thread, because I'm a 21 year old Canadian student going through sort of the same thing and there's been some great advice. When I was in my high school of two hundred people, I was the best writer and top biology student. My success became the only thing that defined me. When I got to the U of A (which has about 40,000 students) I fully expected to be the best again. Unfortunately, the U of A is known as the best scientific research school in the country (naturally attracting some of the best biology students in the world) and I wasn't as special anymore. I lost my identity, and school lost its allure.

Petrarch's Love, your post helped me a lot.

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True, but it also provides you with a sense of community. The biggest problem I have is that none of my closest friends really read anything and consider my literary taste as me putting on airs (to a degree). The University, or at least my English professors, provide someone with specific interests (that may or not be life defining) with people who are interested in the same.

With such lengthy replies, I doubt if we will help our friend rediscover his love of reading! :D

I say go out and have some fun; do physical things, maybe or give the kind of books you wouldn't read a chance and then try again.

Good luck! :)

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Originally Posted by mayneverhave

True, but it also provides you with a sense of community. The biggest problem I have is that none of my closest friends really read anything and consider my literary taste as me putting on airs (to a degree). The University, or at least my English professors, provide someone with specific interests (that may or not be life defining) with people who are interested in the same.

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Why care about what your friends think? or better yet. Get some friends who share your tastes? In this case, a liking for Literature? The University and the teachers are there to provide a path. It's up to you to take that path or leave it be. Shape that path the way you want to; but always remember, Potential wasted is a a great crime.

Everyone can do what your ego is asking for: drinking, clubbing, and the other aspects of physical interaction with women.

Not everyone can be said, can think of lastly, to be a writer.

Take it for me. The ' wild life' ain't worth it. Drink gets boring after a while(and who knows - you might develop a drinking problem) women are interesting to deal with when you don't have much experience with them - sadly, your interest will probably lower itself, naturally, as it happens to any human being who finally has the object of desire.

And clubbing. Well, it's just a place where you hear music really loud.


Focus on the energy that dwells inside of you: your creativity.

I'm going through something similar. It's not the same situation because whereas you are interested in the common activities of the young male, I've come out of it and now, what interests me to the uttermost level of being is to achieve what Hemingway achieved.

Nothing, besides creativity, the operation of the pen that makes a man an artist of the ink, is worth salt.

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

The truth is that I no longer read. I was once a voracious reader and writer with mountains of ambition and imagination in order to progress. It appeared, when I was 14 years old, I was on the path to become a capable student of literature, and perhaps one day an author. Three years on, and I've reached a certain plateau in my writing. I used to write and read daily, sifting through books effortlessly. But now, I’ve lost my intellectual curiosity, my attention-span for reading and writing is rotting away, with my interests deviating towards sex, drugs & alcohol. I still plough the same time and effort into literature, but it appears that things no longer click for me.

With the opportunity to attend Oxford University a possibility, it’s terrible that I’m pissing around in my A Levels. True, I’m still on course to nail A*s, but I’m no longer the free-thinking mind that I used to be. The truth is that I can get away with slacking, I have both natural and attained ability in this subject, but I don’t just want to attend a top university, I want to attend a top university and be in the right frame of mind in order to appreciate the experience. Three years ago, haven already written two novels, I would have embraced the experience of having a published poet at my English Literature Teacher. Back then, I needed to voice my literary opinions, and my teachers couldn’t cope, now that I have one who can, I slump in my chair with apathy.

I talk and act like pseudo-intellectual; I’m still streets ahead of my peers, but every day, the streets become closer and closer. I have this terrible arrogance, which I don’t live up to. Back in my writing peak, I was embarrassed of the hobby, I penned two novels, and embraced the craft with my full-commitment, and not a soul knew. Nowadays, it is everybody’s business, in this time frame; I’ve become a social-being. And being a writer is now a tag applied to me, a tag which is secretly unfulfilled. The only fiction happening for me is that tag itself.

I don’t feel like I’ve learnt anything in a long time. The last novel I read was A Clockwork Orange in January. Although in the last 18 months, I've settled upon blogging, the making of me. Every day I write 5-6 pages of expression, whether it’s my thoughts, emotions, opinions, hopes, dreams ... there is a feeling that my entire life in that time period has been captured. And it’s wonderful, although it wasn’t the narrative ball rolling, it was a ball. This blogging led to some intellectual clarity. Selfish vain intellectual clarity. But intellectual clarity nevertheless. The long-term goal was to extract the core themes from my bloggings and rework it into a roman au clef novel. However, the expression continued with no end product. And recently, a terrible thing happened. My hardrive was wiped, no back-ups, all of my works gone. Hundreds of pages. Personally, I think it’s a blessing in disguise. A fresh start.

And it is at this point that I ask for your advice, boys and girls, if you have any advice on how I can reignite my passion for literature, I would be most grateful.

Starting at ground zero; what kind of books do you believe I should begin reading? Contemporary yet relevant literature? Or back to the stone cold classics?

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Do not feel desperate my friend, for people are vulnerable to anything in life and today particular we do not hold traditional values and man is getting more and more disoriented and estranged. Something must hook you in life. I for one revel in the world of books and therefore completely get lost in imaginations. I know I am a bit far from reality and yet I enjoy there and feel that life is really full of fascinations if one is hooked to books.

Life becomes a celebration if you know how to live it or else it will be onerous and you cannot live the way you want in fact. There is no philosophy that can teach us how to live in the best possible way, and of course there are volumes written on life and its meaning but they are just documents or papers but not just life. We cannot say a peasant lives better or a professor worse or the vice versa; but the point to live it the way one wants it. But to me living with books is really fascinating and why choose to live with books is it enables me to share with others what I feel inside and sharing is more possible in the world of writers. For, some writers can fictionalize their lives, that means they can translate a life into a good novel. I could enjoy as a farmer but now it is not that easy and reading books and writing has been something ingrained in my life and in the lives of many.

In your case as I came to know thru your post once you were a voracious reader with an interest to be a writer. Revive that interest and read and write hungrily and I am sure life will pay you munificently.
Today I am so much absorbed in books that I cannot think about living without books and if I do not read books a day I feel really bored and I am intoxicated with books. You said you succumb to sex, drugs etc. Drug yourself into books and not into chemicals and you will be finding yourself in a different world.

The single most beneficial thing to me personally now is books and books have spiced up my life and life I take as a boon and I feel really drunk with life and I want it to be infinitely longer so that I can complete so many books I want to read and visit so many places and people before I die.

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

The truth is that I no longer read... I still plough the same time and effort into literature...

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That's called a logical contradiction You might want to read some Aristotle if your cannabis & alcohol addled brain can handle it... Start with the Nicomachean Ethics translation by Crisp and concentrate hard when he starts to talk about temperance.

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

With the opportunity to attend Oxford University a possibility, it’s terrible that I’m pissing around in my A Levels. True, I’m still on course to nail A*s...

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A* aren't a big deal, juts look around at all the average folk who get A*'s. You need a bigger challenge! (Aristotle again...) You want to get into Oxford? You better start reading some serious stuff or they will destroy you at interview...

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

The truth is that I can get away with slacking...

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You can pass easy school exams, but you are not getting away with anything real... Try reading Joyce's "Portrait" or Coetzee's "Youth" to see what real writers are like when young.

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

I have both natural and attained ability in this subject...

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Says who? Yeats said the young Joyce had natural ability after reading his work -- so you can believe Joyce really had it. Send Coetzee your work and ask him...

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

... haven already written two novels...

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So what? Are they any good? Have you published them? Anyone can stick 100 000 words on paper and call them novels. Many dismal failures do.

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

Back in my writing peak...

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What peak? Sounds more like a bump in the toddlers sand pit to me.

Do not send your manuscript to another writer. Van Gogh was deemed not good enough a painter by the critics of his day, yet he is now deemed one of the greatest. The same as Monet in the beginning. Zola had a hard time in the beginning too. There are countless writers that don't get published because no-one wants to take the risk. Austen was chucked in the bin by modern publishers during an experiment. A manuscript of P&P was sent to several leading publishers and most of them even did not recognise it... So whether your two novels are published or not... Does it matter? More crap is published everyday and probably more good stuff is chucked in the bin.

You are in need of approval. Have you let anyone read your novels? or any writings whatsoever (blogs f.e.)? Style is style. Even though it is not a novel your style can be annoying/imaginative/fantastical/... or not. That is not to say that everyone will like it or everyone will hate it. That someone hates it, is not a disaster. That everyone really hates it, is a disaster.

If you are worried about your inspiration (writer's block), then you need to live a bit, as people here have said. If one always sits inside, then one is bound to run out of imagination to think up stories.

So, you want to go to Oxford. On this point I agree with Mal4mac: that everyone these days gets A*'s or even better and that Oxford is probably not really impressed with that anymore. Your ability is probably more important to them than your score on your A-level (of course do not slack so much that you'll get a B, because then your chances are absolutely 0). Having a published poet as your literature teacher is not a guarantee for success. It means that he knows how literature works (working for Oxford) and that his poetry was liked too (his published). He will not teach you to write (well) and hand you the magic stick of Harry Potter on how to get published.

You might be able to tell me this more accurately, but I don't believe that a writer writes plots with in mind his general point. So, in the end, it is not really necessary to get taught certain points. If you are talking about courses in creative writing: it is no guarantee that one will be published. The same as acting school is no guarantee for someone to become a great actor. RADA might be a leading school and a lot of actors might have studied there, but there are loads of them that do not get anywhere. Certainly if you think about the fact that agents come to recruit there (students have more chance to get good agents at RADA). Publishers do not recruit in Oxford. Publishers recruit manuscripts.

Post your writings on the writing forum if you want approval, and get out into the world. You canno force yourself to write or to read, it does not work.

As for the publishing issue: publish your works yourself. One of my country's greatest Poets(well, now that I think of it. Several) began their literary career by publishing their own works. These same novices went on, becoming great Poets.

Now, if you want to be published, commercially.. why don't you write something that sells? Look at the Harry Potter books, the Twilight books?


What do you have in those books? A formula that can be used by anyone willing enough to write that sort of well, "literacy?"

Then, when you are a published writer, you can use your fame and market value to get true works published, I guess.

There was a writer who got his first novel rejected some 600 times. That book won him the Nobel Prize of Literature, if I remember it correctly. Don't ask me the name of the Author: I don't remember it.

Creative writing courses are useful in the sense that you have someone watching you as you progress. That is fine, when you are a novice. But, when you already have the fundamentals, there is no reason to take "creative lessons."

Da Vinci didn't exactly pick up some paint and created the Mona Lisa. First of all, he learned the principles of painting - when he was a kid - then, he developed his craft "ending" with the birth of the Mona Lisa.

Second, usually, a writer doesn't spend that much time worrying about plots. What mesmerizes people is the message. So, you can have a book pertaining a house in the prairie(familiar?) with a basic set up on the plot but enough space to develop a cult following.

Frank Herbet, the father of the Dune saga earned his inspiration for the book/books of Dune, after doing a documentary on dune sands. See?

You can pick up a computer mouse and make elaborate a story that envelopes the mouse as the space ship of a dusty Alien Species.

Endless possibilities; endless rewards for the author in, emotions, accomplishment and success.

You don't necessarily become a force to be reckoned with if you follow the academic path, but it sure helps. I'm interested in studying English Literature and American Literature in College because what more fun can be in the world? But to study the works of Yeats, Brownings and their kin, while getting an education?

"You canno force yourself to write or to read, it does not work. "

Sure it does. Don't you at times prefer to stay inside your warm bed instead of going to work/class? You still force yourself to come out of bed?

Creativity is a muscle. An emotional muscle. There's the logic, critical thinking writing; Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov - there's the Emotional, dramatic(drama is conflict) writing, such as Anne Rice in her "The Vampire Chronicles" or in the "Phantom of The Opera."

Basically, the more you work your abs, the more defined your six- pack becomes. Likewise, the more you write and read, the more your mind(creativity) develops over time, effort and desire.

Some writers are naturally talented(like soccer stars) but most human beings can become great writers. They just need to share something in common with the natural writers: taste for the art.

That taste will lead them into honing their craft until they can enter the hall of fame, join Tolstoy, Joyce, Camões and so forth.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

Do not send your manuscript to another writer. Van Gogh was deemed not good enough a painter by the critics of his day, yet he is now deemed one of the greatest. The same as Monet in the beginning. Zola had a hard time in the beginning too. There are countless writers that don't get published because no-one wants to take the risk. Austen was chucked in the bin by modern publishers during an experiment. A manuscript of P&P was sent to several leading publishers and most of them even did not recognise it... So whether your two novels are published or not... Does it matter? More crap is published everyday and probably more good stuff is chucked in the bin.

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Depends on the writer. Joyce was very lucky with Yeats! Joyce started out by writing 'secular epiphanies', short paragraphs, many of which later appeared in his great works. These were great things to show to potential mentors -- short enough to not waste their time and good enough to make an impact. His choice of Yeats was lucky. Yeats comes across as a very encouraging character in Ellmann's biography of Joyce. He actually later gave Joyce a lot of material help as well as encouragement. But point taken, if you do show work then you might come across a harsh misanthrope rather than someone like Yeats -- so don't get too discouraged at knockbacks.

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Originally Posted by Leannain

Basically, the more you work your abs, the more defined your six- pack becomes.

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Tangentially related: This isn't true.

I can't see publishing your works yourself being much use, you need feedback from the literary world and you can get that by trying to get published properly. Publishing yourself is publishing in a vacuum and risks you again becoming self-satisfied for no reason -- almost as worthless as writing novels and showing them to no one, or writing a blog that no one reads.

I can't see how publishing rubbish commercial works will help you in any way to gain a literary reputation -- quite the opposite! I've never read of anyone substantial taking that route. Read biographies of great authors to see how they actually did it - Ellmann's biography of Joyce shows that Joyce never descended to writing commercial trash, and Joyce was incredibly good at selling himself and his work (even though it was good enough to sell itself...)

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Originally Posted by glover7

Tangentially related: This isn't true.

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Do berpees. It works.

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Originally Posted by Leannain

Do berpees. It works.

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No, abdominal definition is a function of cardio and diet. As they say, "Abs are made in the kitchen." Simply doing "toning" (god, I hate that word) exercises does not make you more defined.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I can't see publishing your works yourself being much use, you need feedback from the literary world and you can get that by trying to get published properly. Publishing yourself is publishing in a vacuum and risks you again becoming self-satisfied for no reason -- almost as worthless as writing novels and showing them to no one, or writing a blog that no one reads.

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Agree totally. Beside the huge cost involved, it's a great risk. What serious bookshop will buy your self-published books from you? I see the prospective writer already going past all bookshops with his suitcase full of copies... That's not the way to go. The only thing you can do is keep sending manuscripts to prospective publihers and hope that one actually read it and likes it (because a lotery it is).

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I can't see how publishing rubbish commercial works will help you in any way to gain a literary reputation -- quite the opposite! I've never read of anyone substantial taking that route. Read biographies of great authors to see how they actually did it - Ellmann's biography of Joyce shows that Joyce never descended to writing commercial trash, and Joyce was incredibly good at selling himself and his work (even though it was good enough to sell itself...)

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That I agree with. You'll only get yourself a nasty reputation with the publi you want (the iterature fans). For Harry Potter there are fans and non-fans among them, but for most authors that is not the case. Either you are the best-selling crap author, or you are the modest selling quality one. Once you've done mediocre stuff, you are rarely redeemed. 1 bad impression takes 10 god impressions to get to the neutral point agin. (That is a scientific fact) Based on that, you better go in with a bang rather than a fart ;).

I still do not agree about sending stuff to writers. Most writers don't know why they are liked and just do their stuff, so why is one sending them one's manuscripts (be it small or big)? As Mal4mac said in the 'overrated writer'-thread: writers are not necessarily good critics, or one neds to find one that is a critic...

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Originally Posted by mayneverhave

True, but it also provides you with a sense of community. The biggest problem I have is that none of my closest friends really read anything and consider my literary taste as me putting on airs (to a degree). The University, or at least my English professors, provide someone with specific interests (that may or not be life defining) with people who are interested in the same.

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I have a different literary taste from most people; I read loads of plays. Lots of my friends are readers, but they don't read plays or really understand why I read them.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

I'm glad that you posted this thread, because I'm a 21 year old Canadian student going through sort of the same thing and there's been some great advice. When I was in my high school of two hundred people, I was the best writer and top biology student. My success became the only thing that defined me. When I got to the U of A (which has about 40,000 students) I fully expected to be the best again. Unfortunately, the U of A is known as the best scientific research school in the country (naturally attracting some of the best biology students in the world) and I wasn't as special anymore. I lost my identity, and school lost its allure.

Petrarch's Love, your post helped me a lot.

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Glad if my post was of some help. :) As you seem to be discovering, acclaim from others is fickle. It comes and goes and will eventually disappoint if that's all you're motivated by. A quiet and steady love for, enjoyment of and dedication to something (or multiple things) regardless of whether it makes you noticed or not will ensure your own personal satisfaction and may even lead to, not only truly meriting, but receiving acclaim from time to time.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

I still do not agree about sending stuff to writers. Most writers don't know why they are liked and just do their stuff, so why is one sending them one's manuscripts (be it small or big)?

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Again it worked for Joyce! But he was subtle about it. His entry into literary life began with a very positive review of Ibsen in an obscure Irish magazine. Ibsen (somehow!) got to see it and wrote about it to his translator (William Archer) who forwarded his praise of the review to Joyce. This sparked off a correspondence between him and the influential Archer, and Joyce sent him his first play to read, and asked for comments, and he got some very useful ones! He also invited Archer and the magazine editor to lunch (very precocious for a 20 year old unpublished writer! But it worked...)

So I guess, the message is "only connect", and exploit all those connections to the limit!

This going to University and finding you are not that special is a great theme for a writer. Coetzee explores it with great distinction in "Youth". And it didn't stop him becoming recognised as a great writer! Joyce doesn't explore it, because he was still obviously top of the class at University (although, sometimes, his grades didn't show it...)

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

This going to University and finding you are not that special is a great theme for a writer. Coetzee explores it with great distinction in "Youth". And it didn't stop him becoming recognised as a great writer! Joyce doesn't explore it, because he was still obviously top of the class at University (although, sometimes, his grades didn't show it...)

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Well, after getting my curiosity spiked on that Coetezee fella, I visited Wikipedia. I think, it's a bit hard to use Coetezee as a model of comparison since he has what, 3,4 degrees? he even got a PHD. Impressive. Writers don't tend to be that smart - unless we're talking of Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Again it worked for Joyce! But he was subtle about it. His entry into literary life began with a very positive review of Ibsen in an obscure Irish magazine. Ibsen (somehow!) got to see it and wrote about it to his translator (William Archer) who forwarded his praise of the review to Joyce. This sparked off a correspondence between him and the influential Archer, and Joyce sent him his first play to read, and asked for comments, and he got some very useful ones! He also invited Archer and the magazine editor to lunch (very precocious for a 20 year old unpublished writer! But it worked...)

So I guess, the message is "only connect", and exploit all those connections to the limit!

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So he didn't send his play to Ibsen at any rate, and did not get approval, unasked. Possibly Ibsen was flattered and then put his translator on it. That afforded Joyce with a person who was predisposed to consider him as a writer. The reviews of (I guess even translations) of their works were always sent to writers. So someone at the publisher's obviously picked up Joyce's review of Ibsen's work and then forwarded it to Ibsen's translator...

In the same way we could also argue that being a journalist opens the way to become a writer of fiction... Dickens was one, Eliot was one. It is in no way a guarantee.

Some writers are kind to non published writers and are happy to consider their writings with an open mind, others are full of conceit and do not want to do that because they see the unpublished one as a threat to their own fame... Not to mention that they have each their own taste. The comments of Woolf about Joyce should suffice to illustrate that point.

Writers are not superhuman and they are also part of the reading public as much as we are. So what puts their personal opinion above ours?

The time of connections that bring you somewhere has long gone. It is not because one writer tells his publisher that he likes this unknown writer, that the publisher will take notice. Unless he is maybe a Nobel prize winner or equivalent, and then still... it depends on how much mioney the publisher has too much as each new name is a financial risk. The market has severely changed. Before, intellectuals were the writers and the intellectuals were the people who read the greatest amount of books. They were also the ones that published. Essentially, they published and read one another. Beside a few exceptions that were also read by the working classes in periodical form (as Dickens f.e.), the overall amount of books was too expensive for them to buy. If one wanted to be published it sufficed to show one's nose among the elite and one of them would like you and recommend you to a publisher he knew. Suffice to say the market and the mechanisms of that market have severely changed and that life is not as easy as before. More crap is published everyday while unsellable books (regardless of what is their quality) are thrown onto the paper pile. What does one have to do to get published? Write something that appeals to the wider public, but which is also satisfying for oneself, and if one wants to win prizes: that has a deeper level, but still is interesting for the ones that are not intrerested in that deeper level.

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Originally Posted by burntpunk

Starting at ground zero; what kind of books do you believe I should begin reading? Contemporary yet relevant literature? Or back to the stone cold classics?

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Your entire post sounds so arrogant. You really ought to have edited it if you didn't want to come off as 'pseudo-intellectual'. Reading the classics isn't a punishment- people do it because they love it.

All universities require a great deal of reading- for Oxford you have to be positively fanatic.

'Natural and attained ability', hey? So you were born a genius yet you've learnt to become a genius? Right.

My advice to you is to grow up, take a gap year and do something where you have to think about something other than yourself and your fragile literary reputation.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

So he didn't send his play to Ibsen at any rate, and did not get approval, unasked... The time of connections that bring you somewhere has long gone. It is not because one writer tells his publisher that he likes this unknown writer, that the publisher will take notice...

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I'm not sure this is true. Several successful writers have emerged from the University of East Anglia writing school, which uses 'connected' writers to do the teaching. Surely a combination of the right teaching and connections must be helpful? Look at all the writers who sent their work to hundreds of publishers before their prize-winning worth was noticed. Surely it's worthwhile trying more direct routes!

Joyce was pushier than I hinted at. He forced his entrance into Dublin's literary circle by knocking on the door of the most famous man of letters resident in Dublin (George Russell, who did not know him from Adam) at midnight. On gaining entry, he spoke slightingly of all of Dublin's literati and outlined his own plans to change the conscience of the race. When pressed, he read some of his poems to Russell, first stating he didn't care about his opinion of them. Anyway, Russell invited him back for further conversations, and arranged a meeting with Yeats.

I'm not recommending this kind of approach -- it's likely to get you arrested as a stalker, unless you really are a genius.

It's intriguing how Joyce could get instant acceptance from leading figures like this. Maybe he was just obviously a genius, even on first meeting, to those capable of recognising it. Part of his genius was being able to avoid the small minds who might have rejected him and his work.