When are you an interesting writer?

entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
I'm not saying that writing should be more complicated language than speech. It could be the most simple of prose, but writing simple prose is very difficult. It isn't just there at your disposal. Structure has to be discovered in a chaotic whirl of thoughts and meaning.

Like ancient greek architecture. There's not much to it that meets the eye, just the pillars and bows and that stuff, it's simple, but it contains the all these careful considerations of proportion and geometry that it becomes almost divine.
 
shiels

shiels

_
luka said:
Well, I dunno, it's weird isn't it?
I write quite a lot. I write a lot on here and part of what determines whether I'm interesting on here is the people I'm having a conversation with. What happens on dissensus is, you turn up, and you talk to whoever a hanging around at the time. So you form these little ensembles. Which take you in one direction or another.
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This is good. Has there been a what is dissensus for thread yet? What is dissensus for now?
 
version

version

Well-known member
I don't write because I don't really have anything to say or any ideas of my own. I'm sometimes good at arranging things, but I don't see the point in that because they already exist and just rearranging someone else's work feels like a cop out. It's alright on a forum, but I think if I were to try to properly write something it'd be godawful.

I find music much easier than writing because there's less pressure for it to mean something or have any solid vision behind it. You can just throw shit at the wall and if it sounds good then it sounds good. There isn't the same pressure to justify or explain it.

I don't even know if I like doing anything creative. I feel like I'm going mad when I don't, but I hate it when I do, find it really stressful and put it off as much as possible. I feel the same with reading or listening to stuff or whatever though, I hate how long it all takes. If I could just have every book, film, album etc beamed into my head like Neo learning kung fu in The Matrix then I probably would.
 
entertainment

entertainment

Well-known member
but no I get what you're saying, Version. But are you talking purely creative writing or commentary, critique, essays and that stuff as well?
 
version

version

Well-known member
There's no pressure to actually say something when you're not working with language. You can make some abstract, fiddly music and it isn't a black mark against it if it doesn't have some overarching theme or meaning. You do the same with prose or poetry and people just think it's pretentious, vacuous, fraudulent.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
sadmanbarty said:
qualification when talking about anything aesthetic is a huge no no. never do it.

everything has to be the greatest thing that ever happened or worse than the holocaust. nothing inbetween
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i believe in that as an article of faith (when i was reviews editor at Spin for a year, i tried to make it so that review grades were either 10s and 9s or and 1s and 0s- ie. like in the UK music press - because if something is a 6 it might as well be a 0 really if you think about it - this didn't go down well with my employers, who favored the measured New Yorker-aspiring tone)

however in reality, the truth is there's lots of things in music or whatever that are neither amazing nor reprehensible... there's the aesthetic equivalent of mixed emotions in terms of response to them - movies or records that have some things going for them, but major failings or flaws, wonderful aspects but also off-putting elements

art, like life, is not necessarily black-and-white

so i quite like the ambivalent, conflicted, attracted-yet-repelled, weighing-it-up approach to criticism now

but perhaps i've just mellowed with age
 
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blissblogger

Well-known member
version said:
It's hard to work with something you don't find interesting yourself though.
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ah but i was just going to add, that you, the writer, being intensely interested in a subject is no guarantee that what you write about it will be interesting - either as prose, or indeed as a piece about the thing you're interested in that is intended to get others interested in it as well

it's very easy to get lost in the woods of research, lovely little facts you can't bear not to use, clogging it up with information information information

such that you lose the wood for the trees - burying the big thought that might hook the passerby not already invested in the subject
 
version

version

Well-known member
Part of the appeal of doing something physical is that it's very clear when you're good at it. There's forever an emperor's new clothes thing in my mind with anything artistic. Joyce is considered a master, but it could all be bollocks whereas you can't argue that Messi isn't a good footballer.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Id say it's about pursuits with a clear goal, rather than physicality per se. Eg dancing divides people massively
 
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