When are you an interesting writer?

You can sometimes be an interesting writer, can’t you? When? Under what conditions? I’m interested in the types of places you were in when you wrote things that you felt were meaningful or succeeded in some way. And it doesn’t have to be published stuff, it could be text messages or tweets.

I’m partly interested in what you think good writing is, but I’m more interested in what you think the conditions were, in your life and head and relationships… for you to write things that clicked or moved others, or yourself.

So it’s about quality, what you see as perceptive or compelling stuff. Not necessarily inspiration or productivity.

And it could be about validation, boredom, argument, being organised and disciplined, love, criticism, getting paid, answering a question, knowing your subject, imagined audience, no audience, revenge, loneliness, calm, logic, embarrassment etc

I know it’s a stupid question but I don’t want any “it depends” or modesty, thanks!
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
For me its-

-write quickly (this is important because you don't want your brain to figure out what's going on. Don't give it time)
-dont think at all about who the audience is or even if there is an audience
-deliberately adopt positions that you don't really believe. If I write what I whole heatedly believe it gets v boring v quickly

Oh and write when yr in a good mood so you can see the humour in things. Not in a bantz way, but in the sense of seeing the absurdity.
 

luka

Well-known member
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.

I do my poetry thing by the Thames. Write a poem for someone in a couple of minutes and I'm totally sure why I'm really good some days. I haven't quite worked it out, although usually I'm at my best when I've gone every day for a few days, or when I've gone back after taking a few days off.

The poetry I write for myself I don't write very much of. The last real thing I wrote, which is amazing, I wrote because I was under psychic attack and I needed to fight back. It was a desperate last ditch attempt made out of compulsion. The thing before that was an attempt to write about a bad trip. The thing before that just turned everything into itself a whole new way of writing, just poured out, possessed me.

I dunno really but you just have to write from where you are at that given time and not write from where you wish you were. People put too much emphasis of finding your voice, I don't know I necessarily believe in that. You just find any voice that will talk to you. See where it takes you.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I've never really written anything, in any case not enough to discern such pattern. A love letter here and there, fragments of essays never finished. The other day Barty had a sexual paroxysm over a post I did on here and even though it was very sarcastic, it was probably the most excitement ever elicited from words I've put together.

I do want to write something at some point, though. I like it a lot. Just putting together sentences is exciting.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
You have to write purely for yourself and never, ever think or care about an audience, isn't that right, Luke?
 
I like those bits about taking different perspectives and not concerning yourself with 'your voice'. There are voices, and if you do have one maybe it's something that restricts, your limit, rather than something precious to uncover.

I go to stranger places when I have to do something that bores me. I also think in conversation with clever people about something you both don't know too much about. Sometimes helps if you fancy them but sometimes that holds you back a lot too.
 

luka

Well-known member
You have to write purely for yourself and never, ever think or care about an audience, isn't that right, Luke?

No one here is just starting out, we're all big adults but when you are starting out its vital to remember that no one is looking over your shoulder. No can see you. There's no spies. No hidden camera. So you can find a limit and transgress it. Say the thing which makes you cringe, or that you assume would make other people cringe.
 
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luka

Well-known member
I've talked sometimes about how the page can become a kind of battlefield and force the enemy, an enemy, to externalise itself, and you can take it on then, and win. That's one kind of writing. Obviously there's lots of parallels with writing and psychoanalysis. Evading the censor. Words being a kind of cure.
 
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luka

Well-known member
And what is the unconscious? That seems to be the primary thing. The communication with the Not-I. That's what really makes writing magical
 

luka

Well-known member
There's the other kind of writing, where you try and find an elegant way to say what you already know, but that kind of writing is disgusting, preening, abhorrent. The New Yorker.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've talked sometimes about how the page can become a kind of battlefield and force the enemy, an enemy, to externalise itself, and you can take it on then, and win. That's one kind of writing. Obviously there's lots of parallels with writing and psychoanalysis. Evading the censor. Words being a kind of cure.

Embaressment is a big inhibiting factor. Well it was for me anyway. And writing as a discipline is partly about identifying these inhibitory forces and destroying them! What is it which limits my ability to speak? Why can't I go any further in this direction? What's stopping me?
 
Made me think of...

Land began to speak in his strange, choked-off voice (perhaps that ‘absurdly high pitched … tone … ancient demonists described as “silvery”’ that he would later report being taunted by),3 the disconcerted audience began to giggle; the demon voice wavered slightly until Land’s sense of mission overcame his momentary self-consciousness; and as the ‘performance’ continued the audience fell silent, eyeing each other uncertainly as if they had walked into a funeral by mistake. Embarrassment was regarded by Land as just one of the rudimentary inhibitions that had to be broken down in order to explore the unknown—in contrast to the forces of academic domestication, which normalised by fostering a sense of inadequacy and shame before the Masters, before the edifice of what is yet to be learnt—thus reversing the libidinal charge of the ‘unknown’ and turning it into an endless duty, an infinite labour.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
There's the other kind of writing, where you try and find an elegant way to say what you already know, but that kind of writing is disgusting, preening, abhorrent. The New Yorker.

I was about to get offended, but one of the reasons I carry on writing things is that I am a chaotic and instinctive thinker, so I usually have to think through writing. It clarifies what I'm trying to think, rather than what I'm trying to say. Of course, I also just enjoy playing around with words and sentences, I find it's a bit like doing a painting.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Embaressment is a big inhibiting factor. Well it was for me anyway. And writing as a discipline is partly about identifying these inhibitory forces and destroying them! What is it which limits my ability to speak? Why can't I go any further in this direction? What's stopping me?

I never, ever got embarrassed, but that's why I have written a lot of embarrassing bollocks.
 
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