He didn't write his first novel until he was 44. You have time.
I've given up any hope or ambition of becoming a writer. A consumer is all I will ever be.
i dont
Meanwhile, Herman Melville basically gave up writing fiction at 37
>>24925914I did it already, and it didn't amount to shit.
>>24925986Stendhal didn't think his works would amount to anything either. That's why he always finished with the epigraph: "To the happy few."
Huh I didn't know thatI assumed he started at 15-16 considering how passionate his novels are
>>24926020Growing up in Napoleonic Era France will do that to you.
>>24926013I doubt I'm not the next Stendhal, but thanks for the encouragement. By the way, if I only read one of his novels, which should it be?
>>24926028The Red and the Black of course, since you're an ambitious writer. You'll see yourself in Julien.
I haven't even started writing seriously but I recently listened to a podcast about what the institutional side of publishing is like and it seems that unless you got an invitation to the "salon" through doing the local equivalent of a creative writing MFA or through a friend who is either a publisher or a published author you're fucked. Especially if you started writing later on in life, like in your post-university years because the competitions and programs that let you enter the aforementioned salon tend to start in high school and assume that you're willing to risk doing a fucking creative writing MFA as your career of choice instead of just writing on the side. Basically the world of literature is less a meritocracy where talent alone matters and is more of a bourgeois aristocracy.
>>24925914You have time you have a lot of time, and you shouldn’t worry. If you do not have time you have none at all, and you shouldn’t worry.
>>24926050As an addendum, I wasn't an idealist to begin with and I assumed that connections matter a lot, but it was sort of surprising how much of a walled garden publishing is. Most authors I think of highly wouldn't have gotten anywhere in a system like this.
>>24926050>>24926060There are about a thousand YouTube videos about authors' personal stories about trying to get trad published.Yes, you read a lot about what agents are looking for and it's 90% "people of color, trans, queer, marginalized, blah blah"So for straight, White male authors, I think you can still get in if you catch the right trend at the right time
>>24926060Wanting to be published by zeitgeist-captured publishing houses sounds ill advised; unless you want to write zeitgeist-y trash. Best to do your own thing for a while and carve out your own niche like Vollmann or Murray. Seems those are the only good kind of white male authors who float to the top nowadays. the longue duree or something
>>24926078I come from a central european country so that's not really a problem yet like it is in the USA or the west in general, but still, the sociological profile of someone who would be able to reach the other end of this takeshi's castle of red tape with a decent chance of success is so incredibly specific that I honestly can't imagine the red tape being accidental rather than deliberate. And yeah, the political eggshells are a very real thing still, obviously even if you do manage to get published you're going to have to self-police a lot, which is kind of contrary to the spirit of artistic work. But I suppose maybe you wouldn't have to self-police if you belonged to that incredibly specific sociological niche, because the ideological standards are basically the ideology of that class.>>24926123Well, yeah, but getting published and getting some traction is like, just step one and two of many, right? If you don't get trad published, if they smell you trying to circumvent their system, they're just going to pretend like you don't exist, critics won't write about you, or if they do, it will be exclusively dismissive, you're not going to be taught in academia or receive any prizes and scholarships, etc. basically even if you circumvent all this shit you would be still fated to fail because the literary establishment is going to put you on a blacklist for doing such a thing, there is no way to success with their unanimous objection holding you down.
>>24926215So I guess what I'm saying is that the academicization of serious literature, poetry included, is probably one of the top 3 reasons why contemporary literature is so ass. No person with ideas and experiences worthy of molding into a work of art is going to come out on the other end of all this bourgeois shit designed to neuter every last creative thought and instinct that you might have happened to possess going in.
>>24926215You have to let go of the idea that you'll ever be taught in academia etc.. Part of being an artist is living an unlikely life. Just get your work out there and move on; maybe it reaches the right people and maybe it won't. As long as you can sustain yourself you can keep going. Ask if what you actually really want is to be part of the in-crowd- in which case, there's far easier and better ways for getting there. Start with a scandal, stendhal wrote I think
>>24925918The collection you've built consuming can be deemed a work of art I guess, though that disregards the mass subsidization you've probably given corporations over your lifetime of income
>>24926293I download ebooks and delete them after reading.
I'm 47
>>24925914writing is just a cope for external validation anyways.
>>24925914Rousseau didn't get famous until his forties either
>>24925930Meanwhile Rimbaud quit literature with 21
>>24927199dubs tell me it's over
>>24927199Be the man procrastinators make 4chan threads about
