/lit/ - Literature

>>8813499
I'm the original writer of that post and I've had the exact same problem. It was written for a specific context (because an anon wanted to know how improve their prose I think) but it could probably apply beyond that. As I see it, the only way of truly practicing the kind of dedication you need to master a field or a skill is to obliterate the egotistical reason you have for doing so.

When I first got into the frame of mind you describe, being blown from one area of interest to another without ever settling, my reasons were purely egotistical. I wanted to be a jack of all trades, so that I'd be admirable to people and appear to be some kind of genius. What I've learned is that this is never enough to convince you to spend two hours every night reading Shakespeare for the rest of your life. It might do so for a couple of days, maybe a week, but it isn't enough to change your life's structure.

At the end of the day, that's what my post was about: saying that all the truly great masters of their craft (whether it be painting, writing, music etc) could spend huge amounts of time dedicated to their art, because they weren't motivated by the same things as the modern creator. They used their work as a medium of, for lack of a better word, worship, and the result of this was a complete selflessness in their training. Maybe that's a little idealistic, but broadly I think it's historically true. If it wasn't God, it was Nature. It's late where I am and I can't quite express the reasons for the change, but around the 20th century, egotism becomes inseparable from the personality of the artist. What I was arguing for was a substitution of the objects of worship of the past, with idols, artists you respect and adore.

But that doesn't mean you have to shut yourself off from everything else. I read widely, and pretty attentively, but when it comes to the poet I chose as the one I was going to dedicate myself to, my engagement with him is completely different. I never read his work on the fly, on public transport or any time I might be distracted. I make a time, and I sit and close off all my devices, and I read a couple of poems. And it's almost like meditation, the objective is to push away all intrusive thoughts and concentrate just on the work and the presence of the artist who made it in the words themselves. Of course, just as in meditation, thoughts do intrude and there's a progression to be made once you start doing this. It isn't easy from the very beginning.

So my advice would be this: Feel free to pursue all of the interests you want to. I certainly do. But unless you have just that one person--if music is your passion, your favorite musician; if literature, favorite writer--with whom your artistic relationship is just that little different, that little more dedicated than to the rest, then finding the motivation to dedicate enough time to become good, truly good at something, is profoundly difficult.