bad/good/great writers
Mette Harrison
insistence that good writers couldn't become great writers and bad writers
could really only get up to the leve of fair. This tied in my mind to his
idea that writers are like Michelangelo with a piece of stone. We
"discover" stories, then write them down. We can do the writing part
better, but I guess not the discovering.
I find this interesting because of the number of really, really bad writers
I have met who never seem to make progress regardless of all the time they
spend on their writing. Then my writing group had a "bad writing" party and
we were all supposed to bring our worst examples of our own writing. I
courageously looked through my archives and found the same piece of writing
I had brought the first time I'd gone to the group five years previously.
How we all hooted at it. I think the best line was "She was a shepherdess
without a single sheep." Or maybe it was the beginning, "Long, long ago in
a land far away and very near." Anyway, it did make me wonder if I am
doomed never to become even a good writer. Or if not, then what makes the
difference? How goes the leap?
Mette Harrison
Dorothy J Heydt
Mette Harrison <mhar...@nospam.itsnet.com> wrote:
>One of the things I thought interesting in Stephen King's On Writing was his
>insistence that good writers couldn't become great writers and bad writers
>could really only get up to the leve of fair. This tied in my mind to his
>idea that writers are like Michelangelo with a piece of stone. We
>"discover" stories, then write them down. We can do the writing part
>better, but I guess not the discovering.
Since turn about is fair play, I am now trying to remember who it
was said, "The thing about Stephen King is, he's a middlebrow, he
writes like a middlebrow, and you can't FAKE that."
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Mary K. Kuhner
>I find this interesting because of the number of really, really bad writers
>I have met who never seem to make progress regardless of all the time they
>spend on their writing. Then my writing group had a "bad writing" party and
>we were all supposed to bring our worst examples of our own writing. I
>courageously looked through my archives and found the same piece of writing
>I had brought the first time I'd gone to the group five years previously.
>How we all hooted at it. I think the best line was "She was a shepherdess
>without a single sheep." Or maybe it was the beginning, "Long, long ago in
>a land far away and very near." Anyway, it did make me wonder if I am
>doomed never to become even a good writer. Or if not, then what makes the
>difference? How goes the leap?
I have no idea about the general case, but I know of a couple of
specific things that can go wrong.
Some people fall into the idea that criticism of their story is
criticism of themselves, and that they need to defend themselves from
it. I think if you (generic) feel this way about other peoples' criticism,
you will have a hard but not impossible time becoming a good writer. You
will need to work in isolation and ship the stuff off unread by anyone
else, since criticism is actively harmful if all it elicits is defense.
But there are good writers who've done this.
However, if you makes the leap to feeling this way about your *own*
criticism, I think you're stuck. If you can't get from "something is
wrong with this" to "how can I fix it?" because defense mechanisms
pop up and intervene, you're never going to be able to fix anything,
and you're unlikely to improve.
I don't think anyone who can hoot at her five-years-ago story as comfortably
as you can is likely to be in that particular trap.
The other specific thing I know about is exemplified by someone I was
tutoring in genetics. He was totally unable to tolerate uncertainty.
He'd throw himself on the first glimmer of understanding that he saw
like a drowning man attaching to a log. It was extremely hard to pry
him loose, and he would only consent to be pried if you had a new log
to offer. Genetics is a problem-solving science, and it proved
completely impossible for him to succeed since he wasn't willing to look
at a problem that he didn't immediately know how to solve. You have
to be willing to sit and look at the problem, knowing you can't solve
it right away, and turn it over in your mind until something clicks.
You have to consider alternative ways to solve it, some of which won't
work. He panicked when asked to do this.
He was the most frustrating student I have ever had. He worked
longer hours than anyone else in the class, and he got a D (near failing).
He wasn't, I don't think, stupid, but he had a catastrophic learning
disability. I don't know how he'd gotten as far as he had.
I think this would be equally devastating to a writer. If you have to
have a solution to all of your writing problems *right now* and can't
let go of one solution unless you have a fully-worked-out alternative
already available, you're going to have a tough time. You might get
lucky if your hindbrain gives you a fully-fleshed-out story, but not
many people seem to be that lucky. (I know I'm not.)
I don't, personally, believe that being unable to become a good writer
(given motivation) is the normal or default setting; I think writing is
something most motivated people can learn to do, given plenty of practice.
I suspect that in the case of people who write for years and years and
never improve at all, something bad is often happening. My two examples
above are that kind of bad; probably there are others.
"Great", well, by definition not everyone can be great or we'd have to
redefine the word. (Once only really smart people could understand
calculus; now most people willing to make the effort can, and it's no
longer a mark of genius.) I don't think it's worth worrying about
"great"--the thing to worry about is "good", and perhaps "as good as
I can make it."
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Joshua P. Hill
I remember vividly a tape I saw a few years ago of a child prodigy, a
young violinist, playing a concerto with a major symphony. What most
impressed me was not the violinist's remarakably precocious though
still unfinished technique, but rather the grim expressions on the
faces of the orchestra's violinists--serious musicians, themselves an
elect within a highly competitive field, who had spent their lives
practicing, had attended the most selective music schools, but would
never become soloists or attain the skill the child had.
Sure, we're born with talent--at least some people say we are--and
onto that talent are grafted a whole lot of childhood experiences
that determine what we'll be best at as adults. And I have to confess,
as someone who does a lot of critiquing, that it's usually apparent
fairly early on whether or not someone has what it takes to be good.
But I don't think that precludes the possibility of an artistic
breakthrough. More than a few successful writers have been late
bloomers. And I certainly don't think you can judge how far you'll go
on the basis of your first, clumsy efforts. Everybody writes crap at
first. A genius may do it at age 5, but it's still crap. One can't
judge artistic potential until a writer has at least the bare minimum
of skill and craft to make her potential manifest.
I think it's fairly easy to identify some of the main factors that
make for a good writer. Verbal skill, of course, and a wide
acquaintance with literature. Love of the craft, and the bravery to
share one's work with others. Empathy, sensitivity, a canny eye for
the ways of the world, and the people in it. Imagination,
intelligence, a willingness and ability to think independently without
losing one's place within the group. A certain bravura, a conviction
one has something valid to share and the need to share it (it's no
accident that many of the best sf writers have had fabulously
oversized egos!). And last but not least, the special quality that
makes for a unique voice, sets one apart, makes one interesting to an
audience that is flooded with many more stories than it can ever read.
So--I wouldn't be realistic if I didn't say that there's a good chance
that, as an adult who's been writing seriously for a couple of years,
you may have mined most of your talent. But likelihood isn't
certainly. More than a few abandoned mines have yielded unexpected
gold, and more than a few successful artists have struggled for years
to find their voices, piling up rejection slips while they studied the
works of those they admired.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <XjIL5.4$H%2.1...@e420r-sjo3.usenetserver.com>,
>Mette Harrison <mhar...@nospam.itsnet.com> wrote:
>>One of the things I thought interesting in Stephen King's On Writing was his
>>insistence that good writers couldn't become great writers and bad writers
>>could really only get up to the leve of fair. This tied in my mind to his
>>idea that writers are like Michelangelo with a piece of stone. We
>>"discover" stories, then write them down. We can do the writing part
>>better, but I guess not the discovering.
>
>Since turn about is fair play, I am now trying to remember who it
>was said, "The thing about Stephen King is, he's a middlebrow, he
>writes like a middlebrow, and you can't FAKE that."
So I'm not the only one!
I love it.
Josh
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
: One of the things I thought interesting in Stephen King's On Writing was his
: insistence that good writers couldn't become great writers and bad writers
: could really only get up to the leve of fair. This tied in my mind to his
: idea that writers are like Michelangelo with a piece of stone. We
: "discover" stories, then write them down. We can do the writing part
: better, but I guess not the discovering.
I disagree. I think a lot of it is perspective. People's life experiences
alone can make dramatic changes in who they are and what and how they see.
Essentially, King is arguing that there is no such thing as enlightenment.
: I find this interesting because of the number of really, really bad writers
: I have met who never seem to make progress regardless of all the time they
: spend on their writing. Then my writing group had a "bad writing" party and
: we were all supposed to bring our worst examples of our own writing. I
: courageously looked through my archives and found the same piece of writing
: I had brought the first time I'd gone to the group five years previously.
: How we all hooted at it. I think the best line was "She was a shepherdess
: without a single sheep." Or maybe it was the beginning, "Long, long ago in
: a land far away and very near." Anyway, it did make me wonder if I am
: doomed never to become even a good writer. Or if not, then what makes the
: difference? How goes the leap?
For me, it's been a very long road, but I made another jump lately: I at least
got back a long letter requesting revisions. Yay!
Then again, if my word count was more consistent and my submission policies
were as well, this would have happened years ago.
--
_Deirdre * http://www.sfknit.org * http://www.deirdre.net
"You had thesaurus flakes for breakfast again, didn't you?"
-- Eric Williams
Peter Knutsen
"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
> I think it's fairly easy to identify some of the main factors that
> make for a good writer. Verbal skill, of course, and a wide
[...]
My hypothesis is that fictionwriting draws on several talents.
I'm not sure which one it is, exactly, but an incomplete list
could be: language talent, plot creation, character creation,
worldbuilding.
You can then either excel at one and be somewhat good at
the others, or be pretty good at all of them. The later
type of writer will probably find it easier to get
published, but the first type might end up with a smaller
but more devoted audience, the audience who values the
strength of the writer very highly. Assuming this skewed
type of writer manages to get published, that is.
Of course you can also be bad or worse at most or all of
these skills, but then you won't get published.
> Josh
--
Peter Knutsen
Anna Feruglio Dal DAn
> Since turn about is fair play, I am now trying to remember who it
> was said, "The thing about Stephen King is, he's a middlebrow, he
> writes like a middlebrow, and you can't FAKE that."
I don't think he ever even _thought_ for a moment to do it.
--
Cut out attenzione to mail me
Togli attenzione per scrivermi
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Patricia C. Wrede
> We
>"discover" stories, then write them down. We can do the writing part
>better, but I guess not the discovering.
You know, when I saw that bit in the King book, I had three immediate reactions
in equal parts. The first was "That's not what I do." The second was "I'm so
glad that he said this, for all the people who *do* work this way; so many
writing books talk about the other ways of working that it's nice that the
'discovering' folks will get some validation for their method." And the third
was "Oh, heavens, why did he have to be so positive that *this* is the One True
Way that everybody works?"
If you, personally, happen to work in the same highly intuitive,
seat-of-the-pants fashion as King does, then you should probably listen to what
he says about it. Judging from my experience, his "discover the story" method
is far from the only way writers go about writing; it is also far from being
the way some hypothetical majority of writers work. (I don't, in fact, think
there *is* one way of writing that works for 51% of writers, not unless you go
to really general groupings like "thinks about it first" vs.
"makes-it-up-as-they-go.")
Which is a very long-winded way of saying that I disagree profoundly with
King's portrayal of the way all writers supposedly work.
>I find this interesting because of the number of really, really bad writers
>I have met who never seem to make progress regardless of all the time they
>spend on their writing.
There are a number of reasons why this can happen. I've met one or two folks
who are the written equivalent of tone deaf; they have no ear for language or
syntax. I've met others who are wedded to the "inspiration" theory of writing
-- like King, they feel that they don't invent anything, they discover it, but
unlike King, they also feel that to tamper with that first fine burst of
discovered prose is to ruin it. Consequently, they never work on their craft,
they never revise, they never even *think* about the flaws in their writing,
because after all, it's divinely and mysteriously inspired. I've met others
who were essentially in denial; for one reason or another, they could not admit
to themselves (much less to anyone else) that their stuff was flawed, and "if
you can't see it, you can't fix it." Plus, in the most extreme examples, if
your later stuff gets better, then it implies that your earlier stuff was
worse, and so they can't *allow* themselves to improve because it would call
into question the brilliance of their first few much-loved works.
There are people who can't take criticism/critique, or who consider it a
personal attack (no matter what the source -- if they, themselves, find a flaw
in their work, they react as if they'd just committed a heinous crime). There
are people who are so focussed on one aspect of writing (usually the ideas or
the storytelling, but sometimes the prose) that they neglect or ignore all
others...and their one strong aspect isn't strong enough to compensate for the
severe problems in all the other areas that they aren't improving in. There
are people who can only see flaws and how to fix them if they are told about
them by somebody else...and who have bought into the "don't show your work to
anybody until it is done" dictum, and so never find out what the problem is
(because they know there's a problem, so it isn't done, but they can't find the
problem and fix it, so they never show it to anybody).
Writing is like anything else: it's a mixture of craft and ability. Some
people can't seem to learn to cook, to the point where they can burn water;
most people can learn to cook well enough to meet their needs; most people can,
if they apply themselves, learn to cook quite well indeed; a few people have
the patience and application and coordination and taste buds to become
genius-class gourmet chefs. You can't train yourself to be a genius, but there
are very, very few people I've ever met that I didn't think could train
themselves to be decent writers *if they wanted it badly enough to put in the
time and work.*
>a land far away and very near." Anyway, it did make me wonder if I am
>doomed never to become even a good writer.
And that's the other problem: "a good writer" is a subjective judgment.
Writing is not like arithmetic, where two apples plus two oranges equals four
fruits, and if you say it equals five or three, it's pretty easy to demonstrate
that you're wrong. "Good" in writing is subject to fashion and taste, both
personal and cultural. If you go over to rasfw, you will see this demonstrated
in the various, occasionally passionate, arguments over whether X book is
"good" or not.
Furthermore, the bar changes constantly. The writer who is passing out stuff
to friends and family wants to be pubbed in a fanzine; the one who has just
gotten her first acceptance from an unedited zine wants the prestige (and
validation) of getting into an edited, high-status zine; the ones who write for
the high-end zines want to break into paying publication; the ones who've sold
their first stories want a following, or to quit their day jobs, or to get a
good review from Publisher's Weekly, or to get sales like Stephen King's, or to
win the Pulitzer, or...
In other words, it's practically impossible to say what "good writing" is,
except by the same definition Damon Knight used for science fiction: "It is
what we point at when we say 'that's good writing.'" I know more than one
published writer who is never satisfied, regardless of what marks of success
zie achieves: if the book sells well, it didn't win an award; if it won an
award, it didn't get good reviews; if it got good reviews, it didn't sell well
enough; if it got all of the above, it was just because the story was a cheap
pablum lowest-common-denominator knockoff and everybody was too blind to see
its flaws. These people are *never* going to be "good writers" in their own
estimation, and they're fairly likely to convince everyone else that they're
not any good, either.
>Or if not, then what makes the
>difference? How goes the leap?
The top three things a writer needs are perseverence, motivation, and
discipline. Talent/inspiration is a distant fourth, maybe fifth or sixth --
*even for the people like Stephen King who work by the inspiration/discovery
method.* Because no matter how much talent and inspiration you have, it does
no good writing-wise until it is *down on paper,* and the down-on-paper part
takes perseverence, motivation, and discipline.
Worrying about whether you are a "good writer" is pointless, because you can
define "good writer" in so many ways. Worrying about whether you are doing *as
good a job as you currently can* is another matter -- that's a self-judgement
of whether you are working up to your ability or whether you are sluffing off.
It has very little to do with external judgments of how "good" your writing is,
and it is the main thing that matters. It's like exercise: if you never do
anything but sit on the couch and watch TV, your muscles don't get stronger,
but if you walk around the block every day, your muscles improve, and if you
keep trying to walk a little faster every day, or a little further every day,
your muscles improve a lot more. If you are constantly *trying* to work at the
top of your writing form and to push the limits of what you can do, you will
get better. Some people get better fast; others take longer. But I've never
seen it not work.
Patricia C. Wrede
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
Who was it who said that if you were good with the science or good
with characters you'd do well--but if you were adept at both you'd be
unstoppable?
I think there's a lot to what you say. It seems to me that talent is
sort of like bandwidth--the more you have, the more you can do, but
within your allocted spectrum you can choose what you want to
emphasize. Those with more bandwidth can do what they want without
dropping the ball on anything; the rest of us have to work hard to
balance the load.
And from what I've seen, the areas in which people have relative
strength or weakness depend to a large extent on personal affinity.
Forex, the poetry groups I'm on are pretty cleanly split between free
verse modernist types and structuralists. I dabble in both, and
experience tells me that if I post a decent free verse effort, I'll
get glowing comments from the free versers, while if I post a
reasonable structured one, I'll get accolades from the formalists.
It seems to me that one of the most difficult tasks we face as writers
is to learn to write out of the box, to work on our weaknesses even if
it means sacrificing some of our strengths. That's not to say that, as
you suggest, people can't or shouldn't write for those who share their
affinity. But sometimes it's necessary to shed a significant amount of
ego and personal preference to produce a well-rounded work, and as
Mary suggests, many have difficulty with that. I've seen very serious
artists fail because they wouldn't negotiate their personal styles.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>The top three things a writer needs are perseverence, motivation, and
>discipline. Talent/inspiration is a distant fourth, maybe fifth or sixth --
>*even for the people like Stephen King who work by the inspiration/discovery
>method.* Because no matter how much talent and inspiration you have, it does
>no good writing-wise until it is *down on paper,* and the down-on-paper part
>takes perseverence, motivation, and discipline.
>
>Worrying about whether you are a "good writer" is pointless, because you can
>define "good writer" in so many ways. Worrying about whether you are doing *as
>good a job as you currently can* is another matter -- that's a self-judgement
>of whether you are working up to your ability or whether you are sluffing off.
>It has very little to do with external judgments of how "good" your writing is,
>and it is the main thing that matters. It's like exercise: if you never do
>anything but sit on the couch and watch TV, your muscles don't get stronger,
>but if you walk around the block every day, your muscles improve, and if you
>keep trying to walk a little faster every day, or a little further every day,
>your muscles improve a lot more. If you are constantly *trying* to work at the
>top of your writing form and to push the limits of what you can do, you will
>get better. Some people get better fast; others take longer. But I've never
>seen it not work.
>
>Patricia C. Wrede
What a wonderful reply. Goes in my save file, fer sure.
Josh
Lisa A Leutheuser
Peter Knutsen <pe...@knutsen.dk> wrote:
>
>
>"Joshua P. Hill" wrote:
>
>> I think it's fairly easy to identify some of the main factors that
>> make for a good writer. Verbal skill, of course, and a wide
>[...]
>
>My hypothesis is that fictionwriting draws on several talents.
>I'm not sure which one it is, exactly, but an incomplete list
>could be: language talent, plot creation, character creation,
>worldbuilding.
>
>You can then either excel at one and be somewhat good at
>the others, or be pretty good at all of them. The later
>type of writer will probably find it easier to get
>published, but the first type might end up with a smaller
>but more devoted audience, the audience who values the
>strength of the writer very highly. Assuming this skewed
>type of writer manages to get published, that is.
My hypothesis is that the above "talents" are actually "skills"
that can be learned. Some people learn some of these skills more
easily than others, some people can't seem to learn any of them
at all. The ability to learn these skills is founded on other
things that I have a hard time defining. These things might
include a bit of inborn talent, the way one was taught to learn
about the world, the books one grew up reading, the activities
one likes to do, encouragment from teachers, etc. But I really
don't know. I do know is that, IME, people who grew up with
literate and verbal families seem to have an easier time with
writing skills, BUT I think it's never too late to start and
that MOST people who know how to learn, can be honest with
themselves, and persevere can learn to write fiction and write
it well. (This doesn't take market considerations into account.)
Now, leaving the sadly hopeless cases and the prodigies aside...
You need to know how to learn so that you can learn the craft;
you need to be able to be honest with yourself so you evaluate
your writing and throw out the crap; and you need to persevere
because good fiction isn't easy to write and this is a tough
field to succeed in. You could have the first two and not
enough perseverence to become good enough to sell.
Note, I don't mention a time limit. Someone might need one year
to become good enough to sell their fiction, another person might
work ten or twenty years to become good enough. If you need more
time, this is where the perseverance really counts. How badly do
you want it?
I think there's a tendency to judge people's "talent" based on
how long it took them to become successful at whatever. It's
as if if the skill comes more easily to you that somehow makes
you a better person than others who take longer. Not only is
this BS, but it is a disservice to those who do take longer to
develop their skills because it sends a negative "if you haven't
succeeded yet you never will" message.
(BTW, there's a new study that shows negative stereotypes may
adversely affect people's performance, and positive stereotypes
may enhance performance. E.g. telling women that "girls are bad
at math" before a math exam may cause them to do worse on the
exam. It's in the current "Newsweek".)
--
Lisa Leutheuser - eal (at) umich.edu - http://www.umich.edu/~eal
Any advertising or other links in this post were not inserted by
the poster.
Mette Harrison
Lisa A Leutheuser wrote in message
<9j_L5.8635$O5.1...@news.itd.umich.edu>...
>Note, I don't mention a time limit. Someone might need one year
>to become good enough to sell their fiction, another person might
>work ten or twenty years to become good enough. If you need more
>time, this is where the perseverance really counts. How badly do
>you want it?
>
>I think there's a tendency to judge people's "talent" based on
>how long it took them to become successful at whatever. It's
>as if if the skill comes more easily to you that somehow makes
>you a better person than others who take longer. Not only is
>this BS, but it is a disservice to those who do take longer to
>develop their skills because it sends a negative "if you haven't
>succeeded yet you never will" message.
>
Thanks! I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but you're right. There is
this idea that the faster you do it, the better you are. Not necessarily
true at all.
Mette
Mette Harrison
Patricia C. Wrede wrote in message
<20001101092038...@nso-bd.aol.com>...
>In article <XjIL5.4$H%2.1...@e420r-sjo3.usenetserver.com>, ">Writing is
like anything else: it's a mixture of craft and ability. Some
>people can't seem to learn to cook, to the point where they can burn water;
>most people can learn to cook well enough to meet their needs; most people
can,
>if they apply themselves, learn to cook quite well indeed; a few people
have
>the patience and application and coordination and taste buds to become
>genius-class gourmet chefs. You can't train yourself to be a genius, but
there
>are very, very few people I've ever met that I didn't think could train
>themselves to be decent writers *if they wanted it badly enough to put in
the
>time and work.*
>
terrible cook. My family made all these jokes about my cooking. There was
the story about the pizza with the grated butter instead of cheese. The
pizza where I blended up the blender lid with the canned tomato sauce. And
so on. Now I still don't think I'm a great cook, but the jokes are over.
I'm competent, and that's all I care to be. If I put time into it, I could
be better. And who cares about what other people think is "genius." I
think Stephen King is, but clearly there are plenty of people who disagree.
Even Shakespeare isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Mette
acch...@virginia.edu
> The thing people leave out about child prodgidies is that they don't
> do anything else. That's a whole human being, burned up to get that
> skill.
What you're describing sounds more like an obsessive savant than a
child prodigy to me. Most of the people I've known who have been
termed 'child prodigies' have had varied interests and a fairly
un-singed humanity.
In fact, child prodigies, in my experience, tend to have more trouble
with too much breadth ("Everything is so interesting, and I can do it
all!) rather than too much depth.
--
A. C. Chapin acch...@virginia.edu www.cs.virginia.edu/~acc2a
Naugahyde is Murder!
Patricia C. Wrede
<XXjos...@mindspring.com> writes:
>yr that the latter completely mastered his style--but not his
>genius. Too bad, because as much as I regret it, no writing course or
>program of self-improvement will ever give me the abilty to write like
>Dickens (if a writing course could do that, we'd have a whole lot of
>geniuses about!).
Of course a writing course can't do that. The only thing it can do, if it can
in fact do anything at all, is to teach you to write *like yourself*. If the
main thing you really want is to write like Author X, there's something
fundamentally wrong about your approach from the get-go.
Furthermore, I don't think the original question had much of anything to *do*
with writing courses. Writing courses are *one way* that *some* people use to
try to improve their writing; there's no evidence I can see that they are
universally effective (though some of them are certainly touted as if they
were). Rather a lot of the writers I see -- published and not -- haven't taken
any writing classes (apart from basic high school English and Freshman
Composition, which really aren't the same thing at all). Classes are a red
herring in this discussion, I think.
>At some point fluid intelligence and other such
>factors come into play.
Maybe, but last I heard, fluid intelligence was trainable/exerciseable in a
fashion similar to muscles. Which says to me that somebody who has been an
intellectual couch potato for thirty years is going to have a lot more trouble
getting a decent novel finished than someone who's been using his brain -- much
the same as a physical couch potato for thirty years is going to have to do a
lot of work just to get her muscles in shape before she can even *think* about
running a 5K, much less a marathon.
>I've seen too many people struggle for years with the most basic
>elements of writing, getting stuck, sweating over every little bit of
>progress, and too many people who take to it like a fish in water not
>to think that we bring something with us from our early years and
>possibly the womb, something that is difficult or impossible to attain
>in later life.
Well, you know, I've seen a lot of the same sort of thing: some beginners
struggling to master the basics, others who seem to just whoosh straight to
publishable prose straight out of the hat. And it just doesn't impress me the
same way it seems to impress you (in the sense of "getting an impression,"
rather than the sense of "being impressed with"). Because *I've* seen too many
of the people who "take to it like a fish takes to water" give up after
publishing one or two very promising books or stories, and too many of the ones
who sweat over it go on to long and happy careers, and *far* too many of the
obviously highly talented who never did *anything* with it *at all*, to put
much stock in the talent side as some sort of necessary and sufficient
prerequisite.
Patricia C. Wrede
raks...@my-deja.com
>
> (BTW, there's a new study that shows negative stereotypes may
> adversely affect people's performance, and positive stereotypes
> may enhance performance. E.g. telling women that "girls are bad
> at math" before a math exam may cause them to do worse on the
> exam. It's in the current "Newsweek".)
When I was in college, I once stage managed a play that one of the
professors, Danny, was directing. One night we were sitting in the
audience watching two of the actors rehearse. Their performances
weren't very good.
Danny turned to me and whispered, "Pretty bad, huh?"
I nodded.
"Watch this." He yelled, "Good!"
Suddenly, both their performances improved. I was astonished.
Danny shrugged. "I don't know why that works, but it always does."
My theory is when you think you're doing something right, it inspires
you to commit more fully, and that always leads to an improvement.
On the other hand, I acquired a permanent suspicion of praise from
teachers. I never know whether they're sincere, or practicing the
Danny Technique.
Rachel
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
: There are a number of reasons why this can happen. I've met one or two folks
: who are the written equivalent of tone deaf; they have no ear for language or
: syntax.
I was in a class with one of these. It turns out that he was mostly deaf.
: There are people who can't take criticism/critique, or who consider it a
: personal attack (no matter what the source -- if they, themselves, find a flaw
: in their work, they react as if they'd just committed a heinous crime).
Yes, I think we all know these. My late husband couldn't handle the rejection
of being a writer, but he never worked on it long enough to really excel. I
was the better writer and even my stuff wasn't publishable. One of his novels
was published by a UK company, but the publisher couldn't pay the printer and
thus they were never distributed.
: The top three things a writer needs are perseverence, motivation, and
: discipline. Talent/inspiration is a distant fourth, maybe fifth or sixth --
: *even for the people like Stephen King who work by the inspiration/discovery
: method.* Because no matter how much talent and inspiration you have, it does
: no good writing-wise until it is *down on paper,* and the down-on-paper part
: takes perseverence, motivation, and discipline.
Agreed. And that's what keeps the pen moving.
Mette Harrison
Patricia C. Wrede wrote in message
Because *I've* seen too many
>of the people who "take to it like a fish takes to water" give up after
>publishing one or two very promising books or stories, and too many of the
ones
>who sweat over it go on to long and happy careers, and *far* too many of
the
>obviously highly talented who never did *anything* with it *at all*, to put
>much stock in the talent side as some sort of necessary and sufficient
>prerequisite.
>
Ah, that's encouraging to me, too. What doesn't cost much, isn't worth
much, I suppose.
Mette
Patricia C. Wrede
<mhar...@nospam.itsnet.com> writes:
>Thanks! I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but you're right. There is
>this idea that the faster you do it, the better you are. Not necessarily
>true at all.
The really odd thing about this is that the stereotype cuts into reverse
*immediately* the minute you get published -- if you have more than one book
out in a year, readers and publishers start worrying that you are writing "too
fast." Lois and I both got that complaint near the beginnings of our careers,
when we each had several books come out within three or six months of each
other...even though the books in question represented the *previous* four or
five years' worth of work (once the first one sold, so did the second and
third...or, in Lois' case, when the second one sold, so did the first and
third).
"Good writers" are apparently supposed to whoosh straight into publication and
then slam on the brakes and pootle along at a sedate
one-book-every-year-and-a-half pace, regardless of how fast they are in truth
capable of producing really good books.
Who comes up with these idiotic rules, anyway?
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
<mhar...@nospam.itsnet.com> writes:
>Ah, that's encouraging to me, too. What doesn't cost much, isn't worth
>much, I suppose.
For at least a couple of really highly talented people I know, the problem
wasn't that it wasn't worth much -- it was that they'd never learned how to
*work.* The first few steps in the process came easily; they were used to
straight A's in English class, getting all their stuff in the school literary
magazine, winning local high school/college awards, etc. Then they started
sending off to the paying magazines, and the first couple of things sold, and
they were quite good, for beginner fiction, and got more praise, for being good
beginner fiction. So the writers wrote more, and sold another thing or
two...and the praise stopped, and turned to criticism, because readers and
critics expected the writers to *get better*. And they'd gone as far as they
could coast on talent alone; if they wanted to get better, they'd have to start
*working* at it. And they didn't know how (and some of them didn't think they
ought to have to, being as how they were so talented and all). So they quit.
They are, I think, a special sub-set of the sort of person who doesn't actually
want to write, he merely wants to have written.
Patricia C. Wrede
Jaquandor
>of the people who "take to it like a fish takes to water" give up after
>publishing one or two very promising books or stories, and too many of the
>ones
>who sweat over it go on to long and happy careers, and *far* too many of the
>obviously highly talented who never did *anything* with it *at all*, to put
>much stock in the talent side as some sort of necessary and sufficient
>prerequisite.
>
>Patricia C. Wrede
Not really apropos of the current discussion, but don't the members of that
last sect make you want to throttle them? I have a friend on whom I would bet
vital parts of my anatomy in terms of his raw talent, but he is quite content
to write when he feels like it, waiting for "the Muse" to strike, et cetera.
--
-Jaq.
"That invisible hand of Adam Smith's seems to offer an extended middle finger
to an awful lot of people." -George Carlin
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
: Furthermore, I don't think the original question had much of anything to *do*
: with writing courses. Writing courses are *one way* that *some* people use to
: try to improve their writing; there's no evidence I can see that they are
: universally effective (though some of them are certainly touted as if they
: were). Rather a lot of the writers I see -- published and not -- haven't taken
: any writing classes (apart from basic high school English and Freshman
: Composition, which really aren't the same thing at all). Classes are a red
: herring in this discussion, I think.
As for me, I had a lot of writing classes, in part because I had so avoided
the process of writing for so many years.
: Well, you know, I've seen a lot of the same sort of thing: some beginners
: struggling to master the basics, others who seem to just whoosh straight to
: publishable prose straight out of the hat. And it just doesn't impress me the
: same way it seems to impress you (in the sense of "getting an impression,"
: rather than the sense of "being impressed with"). Because *I've* seen too many
: of the people who "take to it like a fish takes to water" give up after
: publishing one or two very promising books or stories, and too many of the ones
: who sweat over it go on to long and happy careers, and *far* too many of the
: obviously highly talented who never did *anything* with it *at all*, to put
: much stock in the talent side as some sort of necessary and sufficient
: prerequisite.
I've seen too many friends give up. It's very disheartening to me, because
I'm finally *getting somewhere.*
Brenda
Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> In article <oW1M5.271$sd5....@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>, "Mette Harrison"
> <mhar...@nospam.itsnet.com> writes:
>
> >Ah, that's encouraging to me, too. What doesn't cost much, isn't worth
> >much, I suppose.
>
> For at least a couple of really highly talented people I know, the problem
> wasn't that it wasn't worth much -- it was that they'd never learned how to
> *work.* The first few steps in the process came easily; they were used to
> straight A's in English class, getting all their stuff in the school literary
> magazine, winning local high school/college awards, etc. Then they started
> sending off to the paying magazines, and the first couple of things sold, and
> they were quite good, for beginner fiction, and got more praise, for being good
> beginner fiction. So the writers wrote more, and sold another thing or
> two...and the praise stopped, and turned to criticism, because readers and
> critics expected the writers to *get better*. And they'd gone as far as they
> could coast on talent alone; if they wanted to get better, they'd have to start
> *working* at it. And they didn't know how (and some of them didn't think they
> ought to have to, being as how they were so talented and all). So they quit.
>
Alas, there are also cases of people who work really hard at writing all their
lives, and Just Can't Get It.
I find that a far more hopeful augury of future success (in addition to some raw
talent and a fair share of willingness to work) is facility. In other words, the
core of the art shouldn't be hard. It should be easy. A kid who can run like the
wind anyway is a better prospect for the hundred-meter race than a kid who can't.
It is easier to generate good words, if generating -any- words comes entirely
naturally.
There's a fine example of this in the movie AMADEUS, when the young Mozart,
presented with a short piece written by Salieri, immediately sits down at the
harpsichord and starts tinkering with it. Turn this bit around, speed this part
up, crescendo here, and hey presto, it sounds entirely different, so let's do it
again, flip this note around, jazz this passage up here, and why does it go up here
when it should so obviously go down in triplets? And poor Salieri is standing
there with his mouth open, realizing that this is a talent that is an order of
magnitude more brilliant than his own.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of DOORS OF DEATH AND LIFE
From Tor Books in May 2000
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
The defining moment for Salieri; his gift was not to write great music but to
recognize great music, and instead of being happy with that...
It's a great character play - I had the play, once, and lent it to someone and never
got it back (grrrr).
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
The writers who pootle along at one-book-every-year-and-a-half pace, of course
<g>.
I recall a Charlie Brown cartoon wherein Linus shows a drawing he's done to Lucy,
who, of course, takes one look at it and tears it up. "But it took me 45 minutes
to draw that!" wails Linus, whereupon Lucy retorts in her inimitable style, "Yes,
but everyone knows a true work of art takes at least an hour."
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <rve00tsgbndf3fdc3...@4ax.com>, Joshua P. Hill
><XXjos...@mindspring.com> writes:
>
>>yr that the latter completely mastered his style--but not his
>>genius. Too bad, because as much as I regret it, no writing course or
>>program of self-improvement will ever give me the abilty to write like
>>Dickens (if a writing course could do that, we'd have a whole lot of
>>geniuses about!).
>
>Of course a writing course can't do that. The only thing it can do, if it can
>in fact do anything at all, is to teach you to write *like yourself*. If the
>main thing you really want is to write like Author X, there's something
>fundamentally wrong about your approach from the get-go.
>
>Furthermore, I don't think the original question had much of anything to *do*
>with writing courses. Writing courses are *one way* that *some* people use to
>try to improve their writing; there's no evidence I can see that they are
>universally effective (though some of them are certainly touted as if they
>were). Rather a lot of the writers I see -- published and not -- haven't taken
>any writing classes (apart from basic high school English and Freshman
>Composition, which really aren't the same thing at all). Classes are a red
>herring in this discussion, I think.
Perhaps, but that's why I went out of my way to mention "program of
self-improvement"--I was trying to encompass the broad array of means
we use to improve our skills as adults.
And when I said "write like Dickens," I didn't mean I wanted to
imitate him! It was a rhetorical example.
>>At some point fluid intelligence and other such
>>factors come into play.
>
>Maybe, but last I heard, fluid intelligence was trainable/exerciseable in a
>fashion similar to muscles. Which says to me that somebody who has been an
>intellectual couch potato for thirty years is going to have a lot more trouble
>getting a decent novel finished than someone who's been using his brain -- much
>the same as a physical couch potato for thirty years is going to have to do a
>lot of work just to get her muscles in shape before she can even *think* about
>running a 5K, much less a marathon.
I think the athletic analogy is a good one overall. Some people put on
muscles with little effort, and given maximum effort, some people
develop more muscle mass than others. And all other things being
equal, someone who was well nourished as a child will be larger, and
so better able to gain strength, than someone who was not. These
factors do set limits on our athletic performance, and affect the ease
with which we can become athletes. But does anyone doubt that training
and dedication are, for the typical person, more important factors in
determining athletic competence than heredity? A fellow can have all
the hereditary tendency to put on muscle mass in the world, but if he
doesn't train while a less naturally blessed individual does, the
other fellow will beat him. And I think that's true of writing as
well.
But still, both talent and dilligence are part of the game. The less
blessed workaholic may do better than the more blessed couch potato,
but once one assumes a certain unsurpassable level of dedication and
training, talent becomes the determining factor.
>>I've seen too many people struggle for years with the most basic
>>elements of writing, getting stuck, sweating over every little bit of
>>progress, and too many people who take to it like a fish in water not
>>to think that we bring something with us from our early years and
>>possibly the womb, something that is difficult or impossible to attain
>>in later life.
>
>Well, you know, I've seen a lot of the same sort of thing: some beginners
>struggling to master the basics, others who seem to just whoosh straight to
>publishable prose straight out of the hat. And it just doesn't impress me the
>same way it seems to impress you (in the sense of "getting an impression,"
>rather than the sense of "being impressed with"). Because *I've* seen too many
>of the people who "take to it like a fish takes to water" give up after
>publishing one or two very promising books or stories, and too many of the ones
>who sweat over it go on to long and happy careers, and *far* too many of the
>obviously highly talented who never did *anything* with it *at all*, to put
>much stock in the talent side as some sort of necessary and sufficient
>prerequisite.
Actually, I don't disagree with you. At least I don't think I do. My
own empirical observations are something like this:
Of the many beginners who write manuscripts, the vast majority will
lose interest early on, shelve their manuscripts because they got a
girlfriend, had a kid, developed an interest in petunias, or what have
you. That includes people who write crap, but it also includes some
people who do good work from the start--like the friend who submitted
a story to Analog as a teenager, received three pages of detailed
comments, and never bothered to revise or write another story. But
those who do extremely well at first are more likely to stick around.
Maybe half of them do, while the firgure for the others is much lower.
All of those who become serious about the craft improve with practice,
but the improvement is much more dramatic in those who didn't do as
well at first.
Still, and again referring only to the group that cares enough to
continue, those who evinced talent early on are the ones who seem to
produce the best work a couple of years later. And while some of the
less talented acquire a mind-boggling degree of knowledge, and display
a good deal of polish, they're frequently unable to transcend the sort
of respectable stuff one has to be polite over. That, to me, is the
saddest group, and it always makes me think of a friend, a very
serious songwriter, who sent his work to Paul Simon and received in
return a note that said "I can detect no talent here."
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Heh--I was thinking about that scene too.
One of the things I find interesting about artistic talent is that
fluid intelligence (of the sort Mozart had up the wazoo) is just one
component of it. I've known more than a few brilliant men and women
who just couldn't write good fiction, no matter how hard they tried,
because they lacked one or another necessary skill, or were just out
of tune with any conceivable audience--they were too cerebral or
verbose, say, or not interested enough in plot or characterization.
And some people try and try to imitate a style that they love, but
that doesn't play to their own strengths. Even great artists sometimes
make that mistake, e.g., TS Eliot's repeated attempts at drama.
Josh
Doug Wickstrom
>There's a fine example of this in the movie AMADEUS, when the young Mozart,
>presented with a short piece written by Salieri, immediately sits down at the
>harpsichord and starts tinkering with it. Turn this bit around, speed this part
>up, crescendo here, and hey presto, it sounds entirely different, so let's do it
>again, flip this note around, jazz this passage up here, and why does it go up here
>when it should so obviously go down in triplets? And poor Salieri is standing
>there with his mouth open, realizing that this is a talent that is an order of
>magnitude more brilliant than his own.
A reminder that this was fiction, and that Salieri was an
extremely accomplished, and _successful_ musician.
Graydon's caution about child prodigies applies. Mozart was a
prodigy, a human being sacrificed by his father on the altar of
music. Salieri was a complete human being, and an adult.
--
Doug Wickstrom
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
immane mittam.
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <oW1M5.271$sd5....@e420r-sjo2.usenetserver.com>, "Mette Harrison"
It's a problem I'm intimately familiar with. I've no aversion to
working or revising, but writing is such an easy, intuitive, and
pleasureable process for me that I've never acquired conscious
craft--and as a result, I'm unable to transcend the limits of my
intuition or revise effectively (my revisions frequently make things
worse).
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
The problem in a nutshell.
There's a famous study in which randomly selected classes were
assigned to teachers, half of whom had been told they were teaching a
special group of talented children, the other half of whom had not.
The students who were taught by the teachers who thought they were
special ended up doing much better than the ones who hadn't been. It
seems that the teachers communicated their enthusiasm.
At the opposite extreme, there's a trend today to praise kids no
matter what--and that produces incompetent kids who grow up into
adults who consider honest criticism a personal attack.
Josh
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>of the people who "take to it like a fish takes to water" give up after
>publishing one or two very promising books or stories, and too many of the ones
>who sweat over it go on to long and happy careers, and *far* too many of the
>obviously highly talented who never did *anything* with it *at all*, to put
>much stock in the talent side as some sort of necessary and sufficient
>prerequisite.
Success is 10 percent talent and 90 percent hard work. - attribution
forgotten.
Although ... talent *is* necessary, but far-far-far-far from
sufficient. In writing just like in anything else. *Completely*
untalented person couldn't be successful in writing, just like someone
with a tin ear couldn't be successful in composing.
You can learn the skill of writing, but you can't learn ... for the
lack of a better phrase, I'm going to call it _je ne sais quoi_ (sp?).
No, I'm not turning mystical.
Hm. It's like Salieri and Mozart. Salieri came with a perfectly good
piece in the technical sense, while Mozart came up with new/different
ways of connecting notes. *The idea of looking for the ways* is what
makes a talent.
There, I've put it into words.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Doug Wickstrom
<vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> excited the ether to say:
>Hm. It's like Salieri and Mozart. Salieri came with a perfectly good
>piece in the technical sense, while Mozart came up with new/different
>ways of connecting notes. *The idea of looking for the ways* is what
>makes a talent.
A reminder that this was a fictional Salieri, and a fictional
Mozart.
Anna Feruglio Dal DAn
> Graydon's caution about child prodigies applies. Mozart was a
> prodigy, a human being sacrificed by his father on the altar of
> music. Salieri was a complete human being, and an adult.
I have a friend who used to be a child prodigy. Or at least he was by
our provincial standards: he played Bach on the clavier when he was 4
and never had anything but excellent votes at school. He could draw
impressively well and was a genius with everything mechanical (his
father, a mechanical engeneer, had been forced to give up a career in
music by his own father). After the mandatory 12 years schooling he
didn't attend a regular high school but went to music school (where they
don't teach you things like history or language skills, only composition
and so on). He became an organist, with top grades, and went on to
attend the Mozarteum in Saltzburg where he graduated in clavier and
composition, again with top grades and in record time.
He never became a world-class organist. He never became a famous
composer. I don't think he was really interested in it; he just wanted
the good things from life, music among them. I think by nature he was a
very good engeneer - and as a matter of fact, in Saltzburg he acquired
superior computer skills and is now a very successful and highly-paid
sound technician.
Anyway, he always told me in a sort of affectionate voice that Mozart
really didn't care one whit about music. All he wanted was to happily
frolic around with his wife. He had to write music to keep himself, but
was rather annoyed by this necessity. My friend says this with a
sympathizing voice.
--
Cut out attenzione to mail me
Togli attenzione per scrivermi
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Sherwood Smith
<XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>At the opposite extreme, there's a trend today to praise kids no
>matter what--and that produces incompetent kids who grow up into
>adults who consider honest criticism a personal attack.
>
I am a part time teacher. I work on fourth and fifth graders to learn
to rewrite (something I never had to do, and wow, did it distress me
for years) and for the most part they are quite happy to do it.
The trouble I get is with parents.
This is a composite of many conferences I get:
A New Age Dialogue
TEACHER: Good afternoon, Ms. X
PARENT: <waving expensive folder> I believe we have an issue to
discuss, if you have a minute.
TEACHER: Of course.
PARENT: Why did you give McKynzi a C on this report?
TEACHER: Well, the assignment was to write a two-page biography
of L. Frank Baum--
PARENT: This is six pages!
TEACHER: Yes, but it's downloaded off the Internet. I gave the
children two two-page handouts as examples--
PARENT: But those were boring. This is a much more interesting
biography, and it even includes all the names of his books.
TEACHER: Well, yes, but the assignment was meant to teach the
children how to evaluate two sources and put what they've learned
into their own words.
PARENT: So =six pages= gets a C?
TEACHER: Well, but McKynzi didn't actually write it.
PARENT: No, but she searched it on the Internet, downloaded it,
picked that creative font, and she colored all those drawings--
TEACHER: <knowing that McKynzi didn't come anywhere near any of
the work except to color in the xeroxes of John R. Neill illos>
Yes, but that's not writing a report--
PARENT: It's a creative interpretation of the report.
TEACHER: Well, one can see it that way, Ms. X
PARENT: And McKynzi is a very creative child. She wanted this to
look special, and look at all these pages in her report. She
said children who barely did two pages got As, so why didn't she?
TEACHER: Because they actually wrote their reports.
PARENT: Do you have issues with McKynzi?
TEACHER: No--she's a bright, creative chi--
PARENT: Then why didn't you give her an A?
Lisa A Leutheuser
Sherwood Smith <sherwoo...@worldnet.nospamatt.net> wrote:
>
>I am a part time teacher. I work on fourth and fifth graders to learn
>to rewrite (something I never had to do, and wow, did it distress me
>for years) and for the most part they are quite happy to do it.
>
>The trouble I get is with parents.
>
>This is a composite of many conferences I get:
>A New Age Dialogue
>
Don't the parents know what plagiarism is? I would think
4th and 5th graders are old enough to learn the principle.
Parents should certainly know.
I hope your principal is a good, intelligent person who
backs you up.
Joshua P. Hill
Not to mention a friend of Mozart's, rather than his poisoner! But
I've heard Salieri's music, and while he possessed enviable craft, he
was hardly a major composer.
Anyway, while I decry the young Mozart's commercial exploitation, it
doesn't seem to me that his concentrated musical education was part of
that. He was doing what he wanted to do and what he was born for, in
an age when if they had any education at all most children from his
background were apprenticed. As such he was significantly more
fortunate than today's young genius, who would have been forced to
concentrate on topics of no interest or use to him, and dragged down
by the pace of students who couldn't begin to keep up.
At the age when Mozart was composing operas, you and I were singing
songs about little doggies. Imagine how he would have suffered in such
an environment! And we wonder why we don't seem to produce artistic
geniuses anymore . . .
Josh
Sherwood Smith
wrote:
>Don't the parents know what plagiarism is? I would think
>4th and 5th graders are old enough to learn the principle.
>Parents should certainly know.
You would think that the p-word is the Rock of Ages, but in fact it
can get you into even more hassles.
Most parents are perfectly willing to listen (and the majority of
these didn't think it was plagiarism for =kids= only in college, like,
or, um, maybe like high school?).
But if you get parents who demand you explain why plagiarism is a
no-no, you are in for maximum exasperation. Guaranteed they will not
let you get past word five of your explanation. Even mention
legalities, and you can get yourself screamed at for daring to
threaten to have a nine-year--old arrested, and who sez you can keep
children from using "free" resources off the Internet? One of my
fellow teachers, who's also had this problem, observed that these
parents (we're not talking about uneducated people) probably cheated
all the way through college and since they weren't caught, it was
okay. I don't know; I suspect that the perception of what the
Internet is, and how laws apply, is warping more by the minute.
Other parents can't seem to get their minds around the concept of
citing sources. They point out that small kids know =nothing= and of
course they are going to copy their info from books. The idea of
putting direct quotes in quotes and citing the source seems (in some
adults minds) to put far too much burden on kids. I try to say that
this is the best habit they can get into vis-a-vis writing papers, but
I don't get through sometimes.
But that attitude of "If my child makes it, it's perfect!" and
"Criticism will destroy her self esteem!" (it's not critiquing, it's
CRITICISM, social anethema) from parents gives children some very
mixed signals about the creative process.
It sure is a joy when the kids have the freedom to acknowledge that
there might be weak bits in their work, and that they can fix 'em!
After several years of paucity I have this year a group of nine kids
who are intensely into not just writing, but REwriting. (This is a
big number for a tiny school like ours.) They eagerly attack
rewriting their stories; the lesson on POV, which I always act out,
didn't net me one impatient look, but open mouths and amazement. And
two or three have brought in books they've been reading, pointing out
that they'd recognized the POV.
We've talked about hooks, and conflict, and sensory detail, and
character, and pacing--and three of these kids are ten year olds.
The one thing they're having trouble with is "showing not telling" but
one step at a time, one step at a time.
>
>I hope your principal is a good, intelligent person who
>backs you up.
Yup!
Joshua P. Hill
Heh--it isn't true, though. Mozart was passionate and serous about
music from infancy. It's said that he wouldn't even play a game if it
didn't have musical angle to it.
Despite his portrayal in that silly movie, Mozart's contemporaries
describe him as a serious man with a fun side, and his letters suggest
a brilliant, witty fellow with an unfortunate tendency, acquired from
his father, to insult those with less talent.
In one thing, though, I think the movie was right: the problem with
Mozart was not Mozart, who was as special and blessed a creature as
ever graced our species, but society's failure to recognize and
accomodate his genius. In that we haven't changed one whit: look at
what we did to Orson Welles.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Edison: genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration--or something to
that effect.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Astounding.
My stepmother, a longtime teacher, gave up the profession because of
the shift in attitude. The kids don't care, the parents fuss, and the
administration backs the parents because they pay the bills.
Josh
Jonathan W Hendry
> At the age when Mozart was composing operas, you and I were singing
> songs about little doggies. Imagine how he would have suffered in such
> an environment! And we wonder why we don't seem to produce artistic
> geniuses anymore . . .
Well, we do, at least musically. Perhaps the problem is that
they're constrained to performance, leading to an intense
schedule of rehearsals and live performance, and not given
a chance to compose and perform their own music? And if they
did compose anything, would it be taken seriously?
Kids probably aren't likely to compose music of the sort of
classical music that is in vogue with composers these days, which
IMHO tends towards either atonal noise or something akin to
a film score. Rather different from what Mozart was working
on.
A modern Mozart-like musical genius would probably end up
doing techno on his home PC. That is, if he didn't go
into programming software instead.
Anna Feruglio Dal DAn
> A modern Mozart-like musical genius would probably end up
> doing techno on his home PC. That is, if he didn't go
> into programming software instead.
Uh. This is what my friend does. :-)
Dan Krashin
That's an interesting take on Mozart, but I gotta say that his
music *sounds* like Mozart was having a hell of a good time writing it.
Danny
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Brian M. Scott
[...]
>Performing as a violin soloist with the symphony when you're 12
>represents a whole lot of practice hours, and other things not done.
This is not necessarily bad, however.
>Hours and opportunities one does not get back.
That's true no matter how one spends the hours. One makes choices.
In the case of child prodigies, one hopes that the choices really were
the child's.
Brian M. Scott
Dan Krashin
> >factors come into play.
>
> Maybe, but last I heard, fluid intelligence was
trainable/exerciseable in a
> fashion similar to muscles. Which says to me that somebody who has
been an
> intellectual couch potato for thirty years is going to have a lot
more trouble
> getting a decent novel finished than someone who's been using his
brain -- much
> the same as a physical couch potato for thirty years is going to have
to do a
> lot of work just to get her muscles in shape before she can even
*think* about
> running a 5K, much less a marathon.
>
> >elements of writing, getting stuck, sweating over every little bit of
> >progress, and too many people who take to it like a fish in water not
> >to think that we bring something with us from our early years and
> >possibly the womb, something that is difficult or impossible to
attain
> >in later life.
>
> Well, you know, I've seen a lot of the same sort of thing: some
beginners
> struggling to master the basics, others who seem to just whoosh
straight to
> publishable prose straight out of the hat. And it just doesn't
impress me the
> same way it seems to impress you (in the sense of "getting an
impression,"
> rather than the sense of "being impressed with"). Because *I've*
seen too many
after
> publishing one or two very promising books or stories, and too many
of the ones
> who sweat over it go on to long and happy careers, and *far* too many
of the
> obviously highly talented who never did *anything* with it *at all*,
to put
> much stock in the talent side as some sort of necessary and sufficient
> prerequisite.
This makes me think of my father. When I was young, he would put me to
bed and tell me a story about the inhabitants of Cat Island: a different
story every night, full of marvelous characters and settings. Then
he would put my older brother to bed, with a story about Mouseville.
He would write children's books for us and illustrate them himself,
too. I've asked him why he never tried to publish anything, and he
told me he had no interest in that; he just made stories for his
children while they were young.
So I think there are probably a lot of folks out there with the raw
talent, who don't have the necessary interest. I picture a Venn
diagram, with interlocking circles of Those Who Want To
and Those Who Can; the published writers are to be found in the
intersection of those circles, the rest of the Want-To's make
themselves known to editors, and the Can-but-don't-Want-To's
don't post to r.a.sf.c.
I'll skip the ASCII diagram, unless somebody really wants it.
Anna Feruglio Dal DAn
> That's an interesting take on Mozart, but I gotta say that his
> music *sounds* like Mozart was having a hell of a good time writing it.
Oh well, my friend says that he actually like writing it. It's just that
you had to push him in an angle and threaten him with starvation to get
him to overcome laziness - or just enjoying other things in life too
much.
And listening to his music, I'd say I can tell he enjoyed other things
in life a lot. :-))
Dorothy J Heydt
Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>Heh--it isn't true, though. Mozart was passionate and serous about
>music from infancy. It's said that he wouldn't even play a game if it
>didn't have musical angle to it.
Though Stephen Jay Gould once dug up and published a description
of Mozart as a child of about seven or eight--when nobody knew he
would grow up to be an adult musical genius, he was just a child
prodigy--which tells of how he's brought in to see a visitor, and
asked to play, but just as he begins his cat wanders in and he
jumps away from the harpsichord and insists on playing with the
cat, and won't get back to the keyboard until somebody gently but
firmly takes the cat away.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Dorothy J Heydt
Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>And some people try and try to imitate a style that they love, but
>that doesn't play to their own strengths. Even great artists sometimes
>make that mistake, e.g., TS Eliot's repeated attempts at drama.
? _Murder in the Cathedral_ is pretty damned good.
Maxwell Monningh
> On 2 Nov 2000 00:22:49 GMT, gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders) wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >Performing as a violin soloist with the symphony when you're 12
> >represents a whole lot of practice hours, and other things not done.
Jumping late, missed a few dozen posts, apologies if this is a 'me too.'
The talent comparison between prodigy musicians and good/great writers
breaks on the development of the measured parameter. An awful lot of the
musical prodigy's prodigiousness comes from neuromuscular development
(muscle memory, hand-eye coordination), which I suspect would be
differently mapped than abstract cognition. One can't revise a
performance in real time; you play it and it's out there. This
obviously doesn't hold for writing.
.max
Tautological Analyst Seeks The Obvious.
--
--
Maxwell Monningh <beta...@earthlink.net>
Heather Anne Nicoll
I think part of the focus of discussion is, or ought be, that the notion
that people are born for a specific purpose can indeed be a pernicious
one.
I am not a slave to anything, including my own talents and inclinations.
I am not a number.
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
My life is burning -- could you read by the light?
- Savatage, "Symmetry"
Lori Selke
Sherwood Smith <sherwoo...@worldnet.nospamatt.net> wrote:
>The one thing they're having trouble with is "showing not telling" but
>one step at a time, one step at a time.
Grrrr.
I'm not surprised they have trouble with it. *I* still have
trouble with it. (This is *not* a request for help. I think
the concept is mostly bollocks anyway.)
Lori
--
se...@io.com
se...@sirius.com
"But this isn't a dance! It's upright delirium!" -- The Desert Peach
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
Or peer pressure would force a "dumbing down" of the genius. I think the
advantage that Mozart had over today's kid geniuses is that he was
surrounded by adults, or other equally prodigal children (his sister, for
example) that kept him on the path of his genius (unfortunately, on the
path towards early burn-out and early death, too, methinks). "Gifted"
children, at least to my recollection, aren't encouraged to stick out like
a tall poppy, and if they do, they are mercilessly cut down, by their
peers, by their teachers, and sometimes, even by their parents, especially
the ones who can't afford the something extra special for the extra special
kid.
Joshua P. Hill
I'm not so sure that they're as distinct as one might think. Bach,
Mozart, Beethoven, each was not just the greatest composer, but the
greatest *performer* of his time. As an infant, Mozart picked up a
violin for the first time and played the second violin part in a
string quartet without difficulty.
An astonishingly smart friend of mine, the sort of guy who's mind
seems an order of magnitude beyond everybody else's, got into a
helicopter and flew it flawlessly *the first time.* That's something
that, by the book, can't be done, because the controls are too complex
to manipulate all at once. But it seems he was able to visualize all
the interactions simultaneously and in real time, just as Bach could
manipulate themes, countersubjects, and fingers to improvise a
six-part fugue, a seemingly impossible task.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <9r520tgpj1bfdud7g...@4ax.com>,
>Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>And some people try and try to imitate a style that they love, but
>>that doesn't play to their own strengths. Even great artists sometimes
>>make that mistake, e.g., TS Eliot's repeated attempts at drama.
>
>? _Murder in the Cathedral_ is pretty damned good.
Definitely the best of them.
But it seems to me that while he was a great poet, he was at best a
fair dramatist. He did better than I could do, of course, but I'd
rather he had spent his time on another Prufrock or Waste-Land!
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <jn230tgp3lmaa7h94...@4ax.com>,
>Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>>Heh--it isn't true, though. Mozart was passionate and serous about
>>music from infancy. It's said that he wouldn't even play a game if it
>>didn't have musical angle to it.
>
>Though Stephen Jay Gould once dug up and published a description
>of Mozart as a child of about seven or eight--when nobody knew he
>would grow up to be an adult musical genius, he was just a child
>prodigy--which tells of how he's brought in to see a visitor, and
>asked to play, but just as he begins his cat wanders in and he
>jumps away from the harpsichord and insists on playing with the
>cat, and won't get back to the keyboard until somebody gently but
>firmly takes the cat away.
Heh.
He also seems to have had a fascination for math. And didn't he tell
Marie Antoinette he was going to marry her?
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Feruglio Dal DAn) wrote:
>Dan Krashin <dkra...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>> That's an interesting take on Mozart, but I gotta say that his
>> music *sounds* like Mozart was having a hell of a good time writing it.
>
>Oh well, my friend says that he actually like writing it. It's just that
>you had to push him in an angle and threaten him with starvation to get
>him to overcome laziness - or just enjoying other things in life too
>much.
>
>And listening to his music, I'd say I can tell he enjoyed other things
>in life a lot. :-))
It seems that if a guest was at all interested in his music, Mozart
would sit at the harpsichord for hours, playing and improvising for
him.
They also said that he worked out his musical ideas on the keyboard at
night, and that you couldn't really understand the magnitude of his
genius until you heard him doing it.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Dorothy J Heydt
Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>make that mistake, e.g., TS Eliot's repeated attempts at drama.
>>
>>? _Murder in the Cathedral_ is pretty damned good.
>
>Definitely the best of them.
>
>But it seems to me that while he was a great poet, he was at best a
>fair dramatist. He did better than I could do, of course, but I'd
>rather he had spent his time on another Prufrock or Waste-Land!
No, on the whole I am content that Eliot wrote what he wrote. I
only wish I had a better brain and could get more out of the Four
Quartets, which I recently reread. I have the feeling I am
getting out of them about 10% of what he put into them. If that.
Joshua P. Hill
Anne Nicoll) wrote:
>Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> He was doing what he wanted to do and what he was born for,
>[. . .]
>
>I think part of the focus of discussion is, or ought be, that the notion
>that people are born for a specific purpose can indeed be a pernicious
>one.
>
>I am not a slave to anything, including my own talents and inclinations.
>
>I am not a number.
I wouldn't take the expression too literally. It's just a common
cliche that means "it's as *if* he was put into the world to do this";
I wouldn't be surprised if it dates from a time when every birth was
thought to have a purpose in a diviine plan.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
sherwoo...@worldnet.nospamatt.net (Sherwood Smith) wrote:
>But that attitude of "If my child makes it, it's perfect!" and
>"Criticism will destroy her self esteem!" (it's not critiquing, it's
>CRITICISM, social anethema) from parents gives children some very
>mixed signals about the creative process.
Over on the poetry crit groups we're seeing the damage done by that
attitude big time. Many young posters have been told to "write what
you like" and taught that writing is just an undisciplined expression
of one's feelings. They've been so gushed over by uncritical teachers
that they have no understanding of the distinction between a critique
and an insult, and don't believe you when you tell them that writing
requires craft.
Needless to say, most don't hang around to develop. It's truly sad to
see some of those who do running out to buy books on basic grammar,
because they were told that they could punctuate however they wanted.
The good news is that, with a bit of effort, they manage to learn what
they should have mastered back in fourth grade.
Josh
Dorothy J Heydt
Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>Or peer pressure would force a "dumbing down" of the genius. I think the
>advantage that Mozart had over today's kid geniuses is that he was
>surrounded by adults, or other equally prodigal children (his sister, for
>example) that kept him on the path of his genius (unfortunately, on the
>path towards early burn-out and early death, too, methinks).
Mozart died, IIRC, of kidney failure. I don't see how you can
blame that on his career.
Mette Harrison
Sherwood Smith wrote in message
<3a018554....@netnews.worldnet.att.net>...
>legalities, and you can get yourself screamed at for daring to
>threaten to have a nine-year--old arrested, and who sez you can keep
>children from using "free" resources off the Internet?
>It sure is a joy when the kids have the freedom to acknowledge that
>there might be weak bits in their work, and that they can fix 'em!
>After several years of paucity I have this year a group of nine kids
>who are intensely into not just writing, but REwriting. (This is a
>big number for a tiny school like ours.)
I've noticed that our society in general seems to have a little problem with
allowing children to face consequences. My sister complained to me the
other day that her ten year-old, who is quite overweight, had not packed a
healthy low-fat sack lunch for school in the morning and she decided she
would let him be hungry as a consequence. Not allowed, according to the
school. His teacher insisted that he take school lunch and then sent home
the charge sheet for his parents to take care of.
Mette.
Chad Ryan Thomas
> Mozart died, IIRC, of kidney failure. I don't see how you can
> blame that on his career.
As I recall, Archaeology magazine did a cover article some eyars back
examining the so-called skull of Mozart. The story they reported was that he
was found in unconscious in the street and never regained
consciousness. Examining the skull showed signs of--oh, what is the
term?--bleeding between the skull and the brain. Theory: he got drunk,
stumbled, cracked his skull on the curb, and died.
How widely accepted it is, I have no idea.
****** Chad Ryan Thomas *********** crth...@asu.edu ******
/ "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be\
\ content." -- St. Paul (Phil. 4:11, KJV) /
*********** http://www.public.asu.edu/~crthomas ***********
Jo Walton
> No, on the whole I am content that Eliot wrote what he wrote. I
> only wish I had a better brain and could get more out of the Four
> Quartets, which I recently reread. I have the feeling I am
> getting out of them about 10% of what he put into them. If that.
I once understood all of it.
I was on the London Underground at the time, between Kentish Town
where I lived, and Stratford, where I was working. I can remember
sitting there and reading it and following all the logic and getting
all the stories implicit in the imagery.
Then I spent the whole of the rest of the summer trying to write a
screenplay of "Burnt Norton", deeply influenced by the film of Pink
Floyd's :The Wall: (no, you wouldn't like it, Dorothy) and without
any knowledge of how to write screenplays at all.
That's got to be right up there with translating Horace's Odes into
fluent T.S. Eliot, which was the summer before's project.
Eliot had this _dreadful_ effect on me, it took me years to get over
it. Even now I find the words are strong drink. But in the end, I think
most of what he wrote was the loud lament of the disconsolate chimera. If
you only get 10% of it, that might be a blessing.
I say I've been writing since I was thirteen. Lots of the time I was
engaged in stupid hubristic projects that couldn't possibly get
anywhere. I wasn't writing poetry, I was trying to translate metapoetry
into a medium I understood imperfectly.
You don't only have to get on with it. You have to get on with something
which somebody else might possibly be interested in.
Still, there was that moment on the train (not fare well, but fare forward,
traveller) when I really did hold the whole thing in the nutshell of my
mind, as I read it, perfectly luminous. It might not have done anyone
any good, and me least of all, but I did.
"With these fragments have I shored up my ruins."
--
Jo J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
I kissed a kif at Kefk Take the rasfw pledge
*THE KING'S PEACE* out now! From Tor Books and good bookshops everywhere.
More info, Tir Tanagiri Map & Poetry etc at http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<jhe...@ux1.depaul.edu> wrote:
>A modern Mozart-like musical genius would probably end up
>doing techno on his home PC.
Aaaaargh!
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Holly E. Ordway
Cliche or not, it can still be pernicious. If you have the idea that
someone with a great talent at something "was born to use that talent"
or even "it's as if he were born to use that talent," then it's a very
small step to "it's a waste if he doesn't use that talent, or doesn't
use it fully." You have what talents you have, and you should be able
to make use of them in whatever way makes you happy, whether or not
that means actually utilizing any or all of those talents.
I enjoy writing, and I enjoy fencing. In all likelihood, a talent
analysis would show that I have far more talent in writing than
fencing. If I were to work at it, I am sure that I could have far more
success in writing than in fencing, because, after nearly nine years
of fencing, I am quite aware that I have no particular talent for the
sport. I just really, really love doing it, so I work at it, while
writing remains something that (at present) is a sideline. Does this
mean that I am wasting my talents? Maybe. Am I happy with how I am
using my time? Well, I wish I had *more* time, but I'm happy, and
that's what counts for me.
The fencing example actually maps pretty well onto what other people
have described about the role of talent vs. effort in writing... There
are plenty of competitors out there who are whiz kids and can kick my
butt after 2 years of training. I'll never be as good as they are
capable of being, if they work at it. On the other hand, I have kept
working at improving my skills, and I can claim a rating and a bunch
of medals (and the hope of more to come) more than some of my college
teammates who had oodles more talent and potential than I did, but who
didn't keep up fencing. It is reasonably encouraging to think that I
could end up in the same situation if and when I have more time to
devote to my writing.
--Holly
Patricia C. Wrede
jaqu...@aol.comREMOVE (Jaquandor) writes:
>Not really apropos of the current discussion, but don't the members of that
>last sect make you want to throttle them?
Actually, the ones who have talent and choose to do nothing at all about it are
merely mildly annoying. The ones I want to throttle are the ones who get
halfway through something fabulous, based on inspiration and talent, and then
stop and never touch it again because it's gotten hard, or they don't have
time, or blah-blah excuses excuses. Because I don't get to read the *ending.*
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
<XXjos...@mindspring.com> writes:
>Still, and again referring only to the group that cares enough to
>continue, those who evinced talent early on are the ones who seem to
>produce the best work a couple of years later.
Have you got statistics on this? Because in the absence of a properly
controlled statistical study, what we're looking at here is your personal,
uncontrolled sample vs. my personal, uncontrolled sample. And mine doesn't
follow this pattern at all.
>And while some of the
>less talented acquire a mind-boggling degree of knowledge, and display
>a good deal of polish, they're frequently unable to transcend the sort
>of respectable stuff one has to be polite over.
"The sort of respectable stuff one has to be polite over"? You mean the "I
can't write the stuff I want because Mom would disapprove" thing? Or something
else?
As I said initially, I have run across one or two folks who seem to be language
tone-deaf. I've run across far more folks who *claim* they want to write, and
who acquire, as you say, a mind-boggling degree of knowledge of the field, but
who in actual fact don't want *to write*; they just want to hang out with
writers, and perhaps to *have written.* They talk the talk, but they don't
walk the walk. They're not as obvious as the braggarts who strut around
proclaiming what a great novel they're going to write someday, because this
sort of wannabe *looks*, at first glance, as if they really are trying. But
after a while, you notice that they've posted 80,000 words to Usenet over the
course of a year, while producing no more than half a page of Chapter 2, or
that they've taken the exact same three short stories to each of the twenty
creative writing classes they've taken in the past five years and never gotten
around to writing anything else, though they've got some really good ideas
they're going to get to as soon as these three are properly polished...
I still put talent a distant fourth on the list of needed requirements, and
there it shall remain until I see convincing actual evidence that discipline,
persistance, and motivation are more common. Because in my experience,
discipline, persistance, and motivation are a heck of a lot rarer than talent.
Patricia C. Wrede
Anna Feruglio Dal DAn
> The fencing example actually maps pretty well onto what other people
> have described about the role of talent vs. effort in writing...
I keep reminding myself of the answer Iain Banks gave in a chat to the
question:
"How does one go about writing a novel?"
"To the best of one's ability."
I think I'll write that over my monitor. I find it very heartening.
(Especially after being told that I'm not in the same league as Gene
Wolfe. :-).
Sherwood Smith
wrote:
>Grrrr.
>
>I'm not surprised they have trouble with it. *I* still have
>trouble with it. (This is *not* a request for help. I think
>the concept is mostly bollocks anyway.)
>
>
With the kids, I draw the line roughly where they get bored with their
own work, or their audience does, because they've unwittingly fallen
into tell mode in a scene or conversation. ("Tom told his sister to
stop, and she didn't stop, so he told her she better, and she kept
yelling crazy words, and so he smacked her, and she yelled for
mom...") Often enough if I show the kids how to unpack that into a
realtime scene, they blink in surprise and know =just= what to do.
We're talking real basics here. The main thrust of the class is to
show them that rewriting can be fun, can make a story better, and to
learn a few skills in how to do it. (My motivation is personal: I
wrote for years and years, sending novels out from the eighth grade on
until I was 21, even though I suspected there were problems. Then I
gave up for 15 years--not writing, but submitting stuff. No one ever
showed me how to rewrite, and as I was a far cry from a child prodigy,
my tiny brain couldn't figure out where to begin. Learning it in my
mid thirties was like having been spiritually blindfolded, and having
the blindfold ripped away at last. If I can teach some of what I
learned so late to kids who want it, somehow their "Oh!"s of discovery
go a long way in erasing the residual frustration.)
Swank Vogel
>Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>A modern Mozart-like musical genius would probably end up
>doing techno on his home PC. That is, if he didn't go
>into programming software instead.
Somewhat off topic, and yet...
This reminds me of a scene In Vonnegut's "Timequake." The protagonist
relates the story of a struggling composer who hears a symphony
composed by his neighbors six year old in concert with a program
ironically called 'Wolfgang'. The composer recognizes the piece,
derivitave and predictable as it is, to be far superior to anything he
himself has struggled to create, and promptly ends his life in
predictable Vonnegut fashion.
When I introduced my father, a brilliant (yes, of course I'm
prejudiced) yet completely unknown painter, to Photoshop, it alarmed
him in a similiar, though less fatal way. In fifty years or so, as
humans coalesce with computers, we may all be prodigies, negating the
very meaning of the word.
Swank
"Terse Eels Put Even Thereby"
Jaquandor
Actually, I include these people in the group you describe above.
BTW, what's the lamest excuse you've ever heard for not writing from these
folks? I'm not talking about mere cat-vacuuming here, but real
honest-to-goodness BS.
--
-Jaq.
"That invisible hand of Adam Smith's seems to offer an extended middle finger
to an awful lot of people." -George Carlin
Jaquandor
>
>> The fencing example actually maps pretty well onto what other people
>> have described about the role of talent vs. effort in writing...
>
>I keep reminding myself of the answer Iain Banks gave in a chat to the
>question:
>
>"How does one go about writing a novel?"
>"To the best of one's ability."
>
>I think I'll write that over my monitor. I find it very heartening.
>(Especially after being told that I'm not in the same league as Gene
>Wolfe. :-).
I like Stephen King's answer to that same question: "One word at a time". He
wrote in the foreword to "The Stand": "It sounds too simple to be true, but
consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's
all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from
space without a telescope."
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
: For at least a couple of really highly talented people I know, the problem
: wasn't that it wasn't worth much -- it was that they'd never learned how to
: *work.*
I call this "the curse of the gifted."
The first few steps in the process came easily; they were used to
: straight A's in English class, getting all their stuff in the school literary
: magazine, winning local high school/college awards, etc. Then they started
: sending off to the paying magazines, and the first couple of things sold, and
: they were quite good, for beginner fiction, and got more praise, for being good
: beginner fiction. So the writers wrote more, and sold another thing or
: two...and the praise stopped, and turned to criticism, because readers and
: critics expected the writers to *get better*. And they'd gone as far as they
: could coast on talent alone; if they wanted to get better, they'd have to start
: *working* at it. And they didn't know how (and some of them didn't think they
: ought to have to, being as how they were so talented and all). So they quit.
I've seen a lot of this, and not just in writing.
: They are, I think, a special sub-set of the sort of person who doesn't actually
: want to write, he merely wants to have written.
I'm not sure I agree with that. Certainly in the case of the smart/gifted
people I've known (including myself, but not in English <g>), we just never
learned the discipline of practice. I wanted *desperately* to be a musician
but I just couldn't bring myself to the discipline of practice. Everything
else came easy. Then, many years later (after learning discipline the hard
way), picking up new musical instruments was much easier as I enjoyed the
practice. I busked for a summer in Ireland and, as far as I needed, I had
been a pro musician. Now that I had demonstrated to myself that I could do
it, I was able to set aside the long-failed goal. It's not that music is
unimportant, it's that other things have become more important to me.
As I tell other writers, "I knit to remind myself that writing is also a
practice. It's much easier to see the results from knitting; they're
concrete and warm. But the discipline is, ultimately, the same."
So, for me, knitting is sort of the way I remind myself that this is work
and it needs to be continual and taken seriously.
I think a lot of these guys give up because they need a bit more positive
reinforcement than the real world gives them. Opera stars have coaches for
many years. There is no one to mentor people through the process from
beginning writer to diva in the same way that you see in other disciplines.
--
_Deirdre * http://www.sfknit.org * http://www.deirdre.net
"You had thesaurus flakes for breakfast again, didn't you?"
-- Eric Williams
Dorothy J Heydt
Jaquandor <jaqu...@aol.comREMOVE> wrote:
>
>BTW, what's the lamest excuse you've ever heard for not writing from these
>folks? I'm not talking about mere cat-vacuuming here, but real
>honest-to-goodness BS.
Lawrence Block claims to have run ego-boosting interventions on
any number of would-be writers who say in effect, "If I write
this, people won't like me."
TLambs1138
>Edison: genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration--or something to
>that effect.
>
>Josh
>
Although that 1% is fun. I'm doing the Noodling part over some characters and
their setting and the 1918 flu epidemic and a Chinese warlord ten years later,
and wondering what the MacGuffin is going to be...I was going to work on
revising _Phoenix in Shadow_. Honest. But this damn Boston surgeon with a
Secret Passion for public health is hanging around, him and his somewhat
autistic twin brother, and then there's a horse race in Shanghai just before
the Crash...
Sorry. But it's fun to grin at the computer at work and nobody knows why...
Jean Lamb, tlamb...@cs.com
Now working 40+ hours a week to finance my daughter's college career...but it's
still cool.
TLambs1138
>beginning writer to diva in the same way that you see in other disciplines.
>
>--
>_Deirdre * http://www.sfknit.org * http://www.deirdre.net
>"You had thesaurus flakes for breakfast again, didn't you?"
> -- Eric Williams
>
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <bbl30t8drapd6qgkh...@4ax.com>,
>Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>>>make that mistake, e.g., TS Eliot's repeated attempts at drama.
>>>
>>>? _Murder in the Cathedral_ is pretty damned good.
>>
>>Definitely the best of them.
>>
>>But it seems to me that while he was a great poet, he was at best a
>>fair dramatist. He did better than I could do, of course, but I'd
>>rather he had spent his time on another Prufrock or Waste-Land!
>
>No, on the whole I am content that Eliot wrote what he wrote. I
>only wish I had a better brain and could get more out of the Four
>Quartets, which I recently reread. I have the feeling I am
>getting out of them about 10% of what he put into them. If that.
I feel that way about much of Eliot's poetry. But then, that's the
kind of art I love--one never exhausts it.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <3A01FBBD...@sympatico.ca>,
>Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>
>>Or peer pressure would force a "dumbing down" of the genius. I think the
>>advantage that Mozart had over today's kid geniuses is that he was
>>surrounded by adults, or other equally prodigal children (his sister, for
>>example) that kept him on the path of his genius (unfortunately, on the
>>path towards early burn-out and early death, too, methinks).
>
>Mozart died, IIRC, of kidney failure. I don't see how you can
>blame that on his career.
AFAIK, that's just one of several theories.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
Funny that you mention fencing, because I was thinking last night of
using my own fencing experience as an example. At some point the coach
walked up to another student, said "you're a natural," and asked him
if he was interested in joining the team. I had little interest in
fencing and even less talent, but that didn't keep me from feeling
jealous!
Well, I didn't stick with fencing, but I've been writing a lot of
poetry these last two years, and that's truly against my grain.
It's a stretch for me, but for that very reason it's been a special
delight.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
<dei...@rockhopper.deirdre.org> wrote:
>Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>: For at least a couple of really highly talented people I know, the problem
>: wasn't that it wasn't worth much -- it was that they'd never learned how to
>: *work.*
>
>I call this "the curse of the gifted."
So what's the solution? This is the first time I've ever seen it
discussed.
Josh
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <5j120t4stseu7i518...@4ax.com>, Joshua P. Hill
><XXjos...@mindspring.com> writes:
>
>>Still, and again referring only to the group that cares enough to
>>continue, those who evinced talent early on are the ones who seem to
>>produce the best work a couple of years later.
>
>Have you got statistics on this? Because in the absence of a properly
>controlled statistical study, what we're looking at here is your personal,
>uncontrolled sample vs. my personal, uncontrolled sample. And mine doesn't
>follow this pattern at all.
I was thinking the same thing last night. I'm genuinely curious about
the seeming contradiction. Perhaps it's because we crit different
forms--I love SF, but for the last couple of years I've concentrated
on writing and critiquing poetry.
>>And while some of the
>>less talented acquire a mind-boggling degree of knowledge, and display
>>a good deal of polish, they're frequently unable to transcend the sort
>>of respectable stuff one has to be polite over.
>
>"The sort of respectable stuff one has to be polite over"? You mean the "I
>can't write the stuff I want because Mom would disapprove" thing? Or something
>else?
I mean stuff that is technically polished and proficient, but that one
doesn't really get anything out of, because it's missing some
essential creative element! I've seen it in poetry and prose, and I
had a friend who wrote music of that sort as well. I'm reluctant to go
into it further because I'm afraid someone will chance upon and be
hurt by the post.
>As I said initially, I have run across one or two folks who seem to be language
>tone-deaf. I've run across far more folks who *claim* they want to write, and
>who acquire, as you say, a mind-boggling degree of knowledge of the field, but
>who in actual fact don't want *to write*; they just want to hang out with
>writers, and perhaps to *have written.* They talk the talk, but they don't
>walk the walk. They're not as obvious as the braggarts who strut around
>proclaiming what a great novel they're going to write someday, because this
>sort of wannabe *looks*, at first glance, as if they really are trying. But
>after a while, you notice that they've posted 80,000 words to Usenet over the
>course of a year, while producing no more than half a page of Chapter 2, or
>that they've taken the exact same three short stories to each of the twenty
>creative writing classes they've taken in the past five years and never gotten
>around to writing anything else, though they've got some really good ideas
>they're going to get to as soon as these three are properly polished...
>
>I still put talent a distant fourth on the list of needed requirements, and
>there it shall remain until I see convincing actual evidence that discipline,
>persistance, and motivation are more common. Because in my experience,
>discipline, persistance, and motivation are a heck of a lot rarer than talent.
I wouldn't argue with that, and I think it's important to recognize
that my "sample" is taken from that small subset of prospective
writers who have already exhibited discipline, persistence,
motivation, and, I would add (having suffered terribly from it myself
over the years) freedom from writer's block.
Josh
Brian M. Scott
>On Thu, 02 Nov 2000 17:15:21 GMT,
>Brian M. Scott <sc...@math.csuohio.edu> scripsit:
>>On 2 Nov 2000 00:22:49 GMT, gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders) wrote:
>>[...]
>>>Performing as a violin soloist with the symphony when you're 12
>>>represents a whole lot of practice hours, and other things not done.
>>This is not necessarily bad, however.
>It is not necessarily bad; it's not the ideal, either.
I'm not convinced that 'the ideal' exists.
[...]
>But in application to writing, I really misdoubt that the child
>prodgidy model has any relevance, as I cannot think of an example.
Certainly not of the Mozart or Gauss type, though I have seen one or
two very nice published fantasies written by 16-year-olds or so; if
I'm very fortunate I may even remember the authors' names.
[...]
Brian M. Scott
Lori Selke
>> A modern Mozart-like musical genius would probably end up
>> doing techno on his home PC. That is, if he didn't go
>> into programming software instead.
>
>Or peer pressure would force a "dumbing down" of the genius. I think the
>advantage that Mozart had over today's kid geniuses is that he was
>surrounded by adults, or other equally prodigal children (his sister, for
>example) that kept him on the path of his genius (unfortunately, on the
>path towards early burn-out and early death, too, methinks). "Gifted"
>children, at least to my recollection, aren't encouraged to stick out like
>a tall poppy, and if they do, they are mercilessly cut down, by their
>peers, by their teachers, and sometimes, even by their parents, especially
>the ones who can't afford the something extra special for the extra special
>kid.
I sense a touch of projection in this thread.
I hesitate to call them "kid geniuses" or "prodigys," but I have
known quite a few, er, gifted and talented kids in my time.
I suppose I was one, myself, so I, too, can engage in this
sport.
And so I say: peer pressure (and parent pressure, and teacher
pressure) is overrated. Boredom, otoh, is not, but I don't
think our "little geniuses" are being *stunted* by it, nly
discouraged. They find other things to do.
Lori
--
se...@io.com
se...@sirius.com
"But this isn't a dance! It's upright delirium!" -- The Desert Peach
Barnaby Rapoport
Brian M. Scott wrote:
> [...] I have seen one or
> two very nice published fantasies written by 16-year-olds or so; if
> I'm very fortunate I may even remember the authors' names.
"The Words of Guru" by Cyril M. Kornbluth is one.
Barnaby Rapoport
Doug Wickstrom
<XXjos...@mindspring.com> excited the ether to say:
>At the age when Mozart was composing operas, you and I were singing
>songs about little doggies. Imagine how he would have suffered in such
>an environment! And we wonder why we don't seem to produce artistic
>geniuses anymore . . .
At the age when Mozart was composing operas, I was playing
Mozart.
--
Doug Wickstrom
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
immane mittam.
Doug Wickstrom
<XXjos...@mindspring.com> excited the ether to say:
>I'm not so sure that they're as distinct as one might think. Bach,
>Mozart, Beethoven, each was not just the greatest composer, but the
>greatest *performer* of his time.
This is very much debatable. Bach considered the greatest
performer of his time _on the organ_ to be the Dane, Buxtehude,
and on the violin he was certainly overshadowed by Tartini.
Mozart was by no means the violinist that Viotti was, nor was he
the pianist that Clementi was.
>As an infant, Mozart picked up a
>violin for the first time and played the second violin part in a
>string quartet without difficulty.
Not true.
>An astonishingly smart friend of mine, the sort of guy who's mind
>seems an order of magnitude beyond everybody else's, got into a
>helicopter and flew it flawlessly *the first time.* That's something
"Flawlessly" as in flawlessly, or flawlessly as in didn't mess up
too badly?
>that, by the book, can't be done, because the controls are too complex
>to manipulate all at once. But it seems he was able to visualize all
>the interactions simultaneously and in real time, just as Bach could
>manipulate themes, countersubjects, and fingers to improvise a
>six-part fugue, a seemingly impossible task.
Please point me to this six-part fugue. I want to study it.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"I am sorry that I have had to leave so many problems unsolved. I always
have to make this apology, but the world is rather puzzling and I cannot
help it." --Bertrand Russell
Joshua P. Hill
wrote:
>In article <bbl30t8drapd6qgkh...@4ax.com>,
> XXjos...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> On Thu, 2 Nov 2000 18:13:57 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >In article <9r520tgpj1bfdud7g...@4ax.com>,
>> >Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >>And some people try and try to imitate a style that they love, but
>> >>that doesn't play to their own strengths. Even great artists
>sometimes
>> >>make that mistake, e.g., TS Eliot's repeated attempts at drama.
>> >
>> >? _Murder in the Cathedral_ is pretty damned good.
>>
>> Definitely the best of them.
>>
>> But it seems to me that while he was a great poet, he was at best a
>> fair dramatist. He did better than I could do, of course, but I'd
>> rather he had spent his time on another Prufrock or Waste-Land!
>
>I suspect he was motivated by the opportunity to nag a whole
>theater-full of people at a time. Read "The Cocktail Party", if
>you don't know what I mean.
>
>Danny
LOL
Josh
Dorothy J Heydt
Dan Krashin <dkra...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>I suspect he was motivated by the opportunity to nag a whole
>theater-full of people at a time. Read "The Cocktail Party", if
>you don't know what I mean.
Um, yes. I'm trying to remember who told the tale of a whole
family full of sophisticated Londoners who saw a performance of
"The Cocktail Party" and came home puzzling over what it was
about, whereupon their simple and minimally-educated Irish maid
picked up from their conversation the obvious theologically-
correct answer and told them in a few words. I guess it helps to
have the vocabulary, which leads to having the concepts.
Dorothy J Heydt
Anna Feruglio Dal DAn <ada...@attenzione.tin.it> wrote:
>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote:
>
>> Language nitpick: I think the phrase you're aiming for is "you had
>> to corner him".
>
>Yes... typical false friend. Blush. :-)
Deceptive cognates, my Spanish teacher used to call 'em, and gave
us a whole dittoed page full of them. "'Sopa' isn't soap, and 'ropa'
isn't rope, and 'privado' isn't private." (They mean soup,
clothing, and underprivileged respectively.)
And then there was the paragraph that said "Caramba, caray, and
caracoles are all right, but beware of other words beginning with
ca-." What she *wanted* to say was "Don't say 'caca', it's New
World Spanish for 'shit'," but she couldn't say that in a high
school in Orange County, California, in the late 1950s. We were
supposed never ever to have heard such words.
Lori Selke
>In article <1ejijzz.1lh3pyytjjo8gN@[151.15.166.46]>,
>Are there prodigies in any field *except* music and mathematics?
They're common in chess.
Jonathan W Hendry
> Jonathan W Hendry wrote:
>> Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> > At the age when Mozart was composing operas, you and I were singing
>> > songs about little doggies. Imagine how he would have suffered in such
>> > an environment! And we wonder why we don't seem to produce artistic
>> > geniuses anymore . . .
>>
>> Well, we do, at least musically. Perhaps the problem is that
>> they're constrained to performance, leading to an intense
>> schedule of rehearsals and live performance, and not given
>> a chance to compose and perform their own music? And if they
>> did compose anything, would it be taken seriously?
>>
>> Kids probably aren't likely to compose music of the sort of
>> classical music that is in vogue with composers these days, which
>> IMHO tends towards either atonal noise or something akin to
>> a film score. Rather different from what Mozart was working
>> on.
>>
>> A modern Mozart-like musical genius would probably end up
>> doing techno on his home PC. That is, if he didn't go
>> into programming software instead.
> Or peer pressure would force a "dumbing down" of the genius. I think the
> advantage that Mozart had over today's kid geniuses is that he was
> surrounded by adults, or other equally prodigal children (his sister, for
> example) that kept him on the path of his genius (unfortunately, on the
> path towards early burn-out and early death, too, methinks). "Gifted"
> children, at least to my recollection, aren't encouraged to stick out like
> a tall poppy, and if they do, they are mercilessly cut down, by their
> peers, by their teachers, and sometimes, even by their parents, especially
> the ones who can't afford the something extra special for the extra special
> kid.
Hm. Maybe, but a real Mozart-level genius in music (or some other
performance art) would likely set off cash register bells in many
parents. The dumbing down seems like it'd be more likely for kids
with a more generalized genius. Kids who start playing guitar,
dancing, acting, or rapping at age 2 are likely to end up being shown off,
since it can be quite profitable (Charlotte Church, LeAnn Rimes,
Hansen(sp?) )
Lori Selke
Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>Poetry is not
>something I do or understand, though a friend who does both has informed me
>that I am being an idiot and that the ways I choose words and syntax in prose
>are poetic ones.
Well, you're not alone; I have a good friend and fellow writer who
is exactly the same way.
Brent P. Newhall
On Wed, 01 Nov 2000 11:27:37 -0500, Joshua P. Hill
<XXjos...@mindspring.com> scribed:
>As for craft, yes, I agree that it's learnable--but only up to a
>point.
What makes you say this?
And even if there *is* a point, it must vary for every writer. There's
no way of knowing whether a writer has hit a particular plateau or not.
>
>It's said that Mozart did such a good job of training his student
>Sussmayr that the latter completely mastered his style--but not his
>genius. Too bad, because as much as I regret it, no writing course or
>program of self-improvement will ever give me the abilty to write like
>Dickens (if a writing course could do that, we'd have a whole lot of
>geniuses about!).
But do you have to write like Dickens?
To me, this is a bit like saying, "I'll never be able to revolutionize
science like Stephen Hawking did, so I should just give up trying to be
a scientist."
I would also argue that perhaps the reason some good writers don't
progress to become great writers are for reasons other than some innate
limitation. It could be due to any number of environmental or
personality issues, which will tend to stay static but may change.
--
Brent P. Newhall
About.com Guide for BeOS: http://beos.about.com
COO of Daemonsong Productions: http://www.daemonsong-productions.com
Personal website: http://www.other-space.com/brent/
Lori Selke
Dan Krashin <dkra...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <LCuM5.116789$bI6.4...@news1.giganews.com>,
> se...@io.com wrote:
>> Writer's block can be an incredibly productive thing. Like letting a
>> field go fallow for a while, until the soil is good again.
>>
>> Or maybe I'm just suffering from a the writer's version of
>> Stockholm Syndrome :) But no, really, in my early 20's I
>> suffered from years of writer's block. I came out the other
>> side a *much* better writer (and a prose writer instead of
>> a poet).
>
>That's a great feeling, isn't it? Sort of like realizing that you can
>walk on your feet instead of your hands. My Prose Moment came in my
>late teens, when my best friend and I were comparing poems. I read
>hers, and then I read mine again, and then I thought about it, and
>then I asked her: "My poems aren't very good, are they?" And she
>said "not really".
>
>It was a very liberating moment.
Heh. My experience was a little different. My poems were pretty good,
some were published, I garnered many encouraging rejection slips.
I can't really describe what happened; it was a lot of things at
once. But at some level I realized that what I wanted to say right
now was better-served by prose than by poetry, so I switched.
So, it's not exactly like walking on feet instead of hands, but,
oh, more like those Olympic atheletes who change events.
David Given
Joshua P. Hill <XXjos...@mindspring.com> writes:
[...]
> Astounding.
>
> My stepmother, a longtime teacher, gave up the profession because of
> the shift in attitude. The kids don't care, the parents fuss, and the
> administration backs the parents because they pay the bills.
I am reminded of Brother Mainoa's advice in _Grass_, which is an excellent
book that I have just reread. I can't quote the entire conversation from
memory, but the gist of it runs something like:
Occasionally you meet people who are wrong, catastrophically, universally,
imterminably wrong, and refuse to be corrected. You could try anyway;
you'll be right, but like arguing with a steam roller, you'll end up flat
right. In these circumstances the only thing you can do is agree politely
in a nice, respectful tone of voice, and then go on doing exactly what you
were doing before.
Certainly, when *my* parents, who are also teachers, meet someone like
this, that's what they do and it works.
--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+ "`Aplysia californica' is your taxonomic
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | nomenclature.
| Play: dgi...@iname.com | A slug, by any other name, is still a slug
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+ by nature." --- drushel on a.f.c
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
: In article <20001102202917...@ng-md1.aol.com>,
: Jaquandor <jaqu...@aol.comREMOVE> wrote:
:>
:>BTW, what's the lamest excuse you've ever heard for not writing from these
:>folks? I'm not talking about mere cat-vacuuming here, but real
:>honest-to-goodness BS.
: Lawrence Block claims to have run ego-boosting interventions on
: any number of would-be writers who say in effect, "If I write
: this, people won't like me."
The other day, I missed Lawrence Block's signing in San Mateo to attend
my writing group. My mom went in my place and got some of my books
signed, which was great.
She's never read him but found the whole thing wonderful. After
being a fan of his for so many years, I was sad to miss it, but I'm
glad she's finally sold on one of my favorite writers.
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
: <dei...@rockhopper.deirdre.org> wrote:
Well, there's a few ways. One issue is that gifted people, being talented,
are easily bored. I think this is one of the reasons they don't tend
to develop discipline. There's always another thing that, suddenly,
seems more interesting.
I'm half-assed good at a tremendous number of things, because I learned
just enough about them to know the subject well, but not enough that
I could actually DO it beyond a novice level.
While discipline can be imposed externally as a child, I think it's
probably more useful to awaken it from within. In order to do that,
you have to be able to point out that it took discipline to do X, so
they obviously *have* the skill of discipline. They just don't know how
to use it consciously.
So an example would be to find another thing they'd worked at a bit
harder and keep pointing out the other areas where they had been able
to use discipline. Using that as a lever, encourage them into the next
level with their writing.
Another is to teach something mindless and repetitive (spinning and
knitting are my two personal favorites, but there are many others) and
teach from a zen practice mindset. Knitting is different than writing
in that editing and rewriting really don't have a knitting counterpart.
But there is mistake-fixing and finishing, two things knitters agonize
over. I like knitting as an analogy as it is very visible and concrete.
Any of this kind of thing obviously requires a fair amount of contact
with the person as well as some level of trust.
Deirdre Saoirse Moen
: The only ones I know is to set oneself a task that one *has* to see all the way
: through, like raising a kid, and learn discipline and work that way.
About half the "problem teens" I knew that were gifted learned their
discipline by joining the military. Those that did have really excelled
in life. So that's another route, but you have to want to do it. I did,
but I had a problem: for my height, the entrance requirements said I
had to weigh <= 146 pounds. At 163 pounds, I couldn't join, even with
notes from two physicians that I was anorectic at the time (my natural
weight, when I was fully grown, turned out to be 230 pounds; I have
REALLY massive musculature).
One of my friends (who joined the military) was one I'd assumed would
amount to nothing. She's now a pediatrician, married, with kids and
lives a happy life. She got her act together long before I did.
: Recognizing the problem is the first step. Being stubborn as a pig helps a
: lot, if you can apply the stubbornness to the task at hand ("I *said* I was
: going to do this and I *am*, so there, even if it's a royal pain and I hate
: every minute, too bad, I'm gonna *do* it, that's all, nyah.") This is one
: reason why "persistence" is on my short list of needed attributes for writers.
Yes, that's why I'm still hanging in. I'm too stubborn to give up and
I know that success depends on improvement, thus I work at it. I rest
from time to time, but I never have quit.
: Perversity can help, too -- I picked my college largely because my high school
: councilor said it was "too hard" and I "wouldn't have any fun" and I'd "have to
: work all the time." I'd been coasting academically for years, and the idea of
: going somewhere that would *make* me stretch was too tempting to resist. And
: it worked. (See "set a task you can't get out of," above.)
I was spunky in high school. My HS counselor said that I couldn't attend
college during the school year. I went to the local university, looked up
the code, found the requisite laws, copied them. I went into the counselor's
office and said, "where exactly does it say this? Because what I see says
just the opposite."
As it happened, I transferred to a different high school and attended my
last year of high school part time and college full-time and everyone was
happy.
: I think this is basically another place where everybody has to find their own
: solution, though.
Agreed.