/lit/ - Literature

Fortunately the story continues to exist and may be read over again as many times as you need.

>>21643560
thank you, anon.

>>21643546
You don't grasp things by simply reading more or having it explained to you. Natural understanding, as in all disciplines, is an unconscious process. Ponder more the things that fascinate you. That's the only way to get better.

>>21643546
Well Barthelme's whole thing was 'having fun with language', just starting with some basic conceit (a big balloon appears over the city) and seeing what interesting images and twists and ideas get generated by following the autonomous flow of free-association and narrative escalation. Any 'themes' are more like elements in that mix than they are the secret meaning behind it all, the guiding masterplan.

I think you would benefit from also focusing on having fun writing and paying attention to the small-scale surprises at the level of sentence and image, rather than trying to think about your place as an Artist within Literary History, about 'wanting to be a writer', about the unique message you have to impart -- that mindset's a total neurotic narcissistic energy-sink, and I know because I've been there. Just find a way to generate words on a page that surprise and entertain you ('entertain' in the broadest sense). That's what Barthelme does.

>>21643546
>On...

>>21643546
Don't bother with it. An idiot is born every minute and it must continue like this. That's why videogames and films exist.

>>21643546
Stop trying to emulate Barthelme's style, retard.

>>21643546
>post-modern
Pray that death finds you before I do you cancerous winged rat.

It seems to me that your post describes some of the process of learning, which is something you'll have to do in order to become good so it seems.you're on the right track. Unless you think you're a literary prodigy who should already be great at age 19 in which case Id say you're foolish. Just keep at it and keep improving op.

>>21644336
I'm interested in using language in odd, unusual, but also intriguing and funny ways, and Barthelme does that well. Sebald comes to mind. Pynchon does too. For example:
>All these fatigued brain cells between herself and the truth.
It's great stuff.
I'd been having fun writing and reading fun works, and it's been so enjoyable lately that I feel like I could get lost just playing with words, but I was wrecked by this short story. I feel guilty for acting like I have any right to write when I'm so... dumb.
But you're right, anon. It's a waste of time. I don't want to "be" a "great writer" or anything like that—I just want to write. And I want to write enjoyable works that involve using language in enjoyable ways. Thank you. I think I've gotta slow down for a while.
Thank you for the interesting image.
>>21644337
"On" as in "upon." I supposed it was an awkward construction at the time of writing, too, but I didn't want to go back and edit it because it felt somehow insincere to edit something like a 4chan post. It should be "Upon reading Barthelme's 'Balloon'"
>>21644523
I enjoy it too much not to bother with it. But also, I don't think reading post-modern literature makes one not-an-idiot
>>21644790
I'm not! I'm just ashamed the story went over my head; that I could only appreciate it in a shallow, two-dimensional sense.
>>21644846
Thank you, anon. I'm certainly not a prodigy. Far from it. Part of me feels bad about this because most of the writers (and artists) I like tend to have started really really early (Coleridge wrote some mind-bending poetry at 16; Joyce wrote an really good poem at the age of 9), and that frustrates me, but I have to ignore the feeling.

>>21644931
Just read "The Expedition." I'm liking this narrative style. In 2019 and 2020 I had submerged myself deep in the world of old photographs and illustration. I've been interested in collage recently, and I've also been obsessed with Sebald. It's pretty damn awesome to see all those come together to form something like this. It's an odd work, written by an odd narrator. Perhaps a bit unsettling. Making the odd mundane.
I feel like this started at a thematic centre ("the find") and spiralled outwards [?].

>>21644931
>most of the writers (and artists) I like tend to have started really really early
And there is plenty of all time greats that started later in life, comparatively. I'm not saying that just to be a contrarian btw, it's just a fact that I find encouraging. I've personally always related to 'late bloomers' more and think of them more when I begin to beat myself up by gauging where I'm at creatively at my current point in life. Life experience is a critical component of good writing and the longer we live the more life experience we receive, so it kind of seems inevitable that we'll improve. What do you write?

forgive the blogpost
>>21645036
>And there is plenty of all time greats that started later in life
You're right. I'm just insecure.
The earliest piece I remember writing was in kindergarten or first grade. I was 4 or 5. It was in response to a prompt that I don't remember. I think I described a white rabbit in blue clothing on skis in the snow. And I ended it with something along the lines of "Just imagine! Wouldn't that be cute?" I've maintained some sort of a journal ever since I was seven. In the fourth grade I took to writing fiction about myself and my cousins and my elder sister going on adventures, saving friends from vegan giants (the only danger they posed was that they'd keep you captive as "pets"), defeating Greek Gods, escaping boarding schools on blimps, etc.
I've thrown most of those works out. Out of embarrassment. They were written as screenplays, not in prose, and the dialogue was incredibly children's film-ish.
I also wrote stories where most of the protagonists were self-inserts who served as insignificant observers (rarely movers) to the narrative.
A lot of these stories were illustrated, I remember. I'd draw and write as I went, rarely going back to edit the plot. It was thrilling. I never showed anybody, not even the friends that I wrote about. I suppose my parents saw this stuff. Embarrassing.
Between the ages of 11 and 17 I also wrote and illustrated comics. I trashed most of the later work.
Between 14 and 18 I wrote a lot of poetry; from ugly adolescent whining in ninth grade to stupid, fun, sometimes vulgar little quatrains while in 12th grade. I have most of the quatrains saved to my phone. They'd come to me in bursts of inspiration and I'd write them in about less than a minute. Usually in iambic tetrameter. AABA-type stuff, but not always. I began and left incomplete two "ballads," one meant to be a surreal narrative that was meant for children wanting to expand their vocabulary. I remember submitting two poems just for the hell of it to Poetry when I was in high school. One of these I think is still one of my favourite works. It was written after my grandfather died in 2021. I was rejected 8 months later, of course.
After my grandfather's death in the January of 2021 and I continued writing nonsensical poetry. The last two poems I wrote were written in December 2021 and September 2022 respectively.
In May 2021 I began keeping a private online notebook where I kept my entries short. I think this notebook's been my life for the past two years. In October 2021 I began growing restless. I wanted to write a screenplay of some sort. A long narrative. In December 2021 I finally decided that I wanted to write a novel. Playing with language appealed to me so much more. To me, art's always been a struggle against the flatness of the page. I began writing multiple short stories and "humorous essays" that really weren't very humorous, and regrettably deleted most of them. [1]

>>21645254
In Jan 2022 I finally sat down, began a .docx file, and began drafting what would be one of many temporarily-abandoned (only to be returned to and then abandoned once (or twice or thrice) again) novels. On a midnight in Aug 2022 while almost crying I finally managed to complete something: a 300-word short story written over three hours. I consider it my best work yet. And I enjoyed those three hours.
I haven't written anything since then, apart from multiple 1,000-word drafts for the first paragraph of the first chapter of the novel idea (can I apologize for calling these ideas? Something in me feels an odd sort of apprehension at the use of the term) that I've decided I'm sticking to until it's finished. The bulk of my writing has been in my notebook. And working within the confines of those small entries (of which there are now 2,600) is tough. I've written extensively detailed outlines for multiple projects. I've began and left unfinished multiple short stories that have vaguely suicidal protagonists that I'm not entirely sure aren't just fictional proxies for myself. I've written incomplete short stories. I've written 2,000-word e-mails to people who will never read them. I've written ugly confessions that resemble suicide notes (I'm not suicidal, just to be clear).
Just the usual adolescent male stuff, I guess.
The attached image is the various files related to the projects I've began and kept aside.
It's embarrassing saying all this, but this is as anonymous as it gets, I suppose.

>>21645254
>>21645259
You seen very ambitious and organized. I am not so much but I can still relate to a lot of what you've said. Do you like film at all?

>>21645566
Anon, I have extremely pedestrian taste in film. It's guys like Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorcese, Satyajit Ray, Miyazaki, Takahata, Richard Williams, Satoshi Kon and Katsuhiro Otomo that I'm interested in.
I wish I could speak with any sort of authority or claritt about film, but I'm afraid my opinions are plain boring. I'm interested in Lynch but haven't watched any of his works; only a few interviews. I enjoyed the Cohen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I enjoy the cinematography of Wes Anderson's work. I loved Atlanta (which isn't a film, I suppose, but oh well).
I enjoy watching video essays ABOUT film. I don't know what that says about me. I've watched a lot of those.

>>21645698
>I enjoy watching video essays ABOUT film. I don't know what that says about me. I've watched a lot of those.
I think I know what you mean. I love reading interviews even if I don't know anything about the person being interviewed and have no interest in them. And documentaries. I recently watched a documentary about Harmony Korine and his movies and it left me more inspired than I've been in a very long time and I've never even done anything related to film. Do you intend to try for publication in the future? There was an anon that used to post info for his zine (Detroit lit zine, I think it was called) and submitting to that could be a good way to get some feedback. Or is there already somewhere online where your stuff can be read?

>>21643546
>I constantly find myself referring to dictionaries, thesauruses, and grammar usage guides while reading and writing

I stopped reading there.

You're not meant for writing. There's three parts to making art. For everyone who wants to make art in whatever form it may be, listen carefully.

The first part is having an idea, a thought, an 'experience'. If I asked you to describe what the color red looks like, how would you do it? You can't refer to other things like "The color of a strawberry" or "A certain wavelength or light", I want you to describe the pure *experience* of the color red. If you had to explain it to a blind man and all. That first part is basically the intangible 'concept' that our brain understands and generates.

The second part is the rules of the specific art you're trying to create. For novels and literature, it's all the relevant rules of grammar and all the other things that dictate what 'good language' is.

The last part is actually *making* the art itself. You have to have that experience in your head, that no one is able to experience but you and that we have conceptualized into words, and use all of the rules to shape that intangible experience into something real that other people can use to get as close to experiencing your own experience as they can through your application of the rules of your chosen art.

Now you know all of this, I can actually make my point. In order for someone to actually make art, they need to master all three of those elements. When they do and by virtue of completing the third element, they'll have produced a piece of art. Now given how good you are at the individual elements, the piece of art will be better or worse. Here's the deal. Many people want to make a good piece of art, be it a painting or a novel, but they lack one of the parts. Many people hold the belief that if they can master and memorize the rules and simply applying the rules, that somehow a masterful work of art will come out of it. That's false. People go to college, read, analyze and do all sorts of things to master the rules, but don't actually either apply or have an idea they want to express. Because that's what art is. Like I have explained, art is the overarching term for having that intangible experience in your head to all the way of having someone else experience that same thing you had in your head.

Now, I quoted you at the beginning of this post. That's because you're one of those people who think that just knowing the rules will make you write a good piece of art. It won't. You can delve into books and think and analyze all you want, but if there's not an experience or thing you want to express, you'll never produce a good piece of art.

TL;DR: You don't want to write a good piece of art, you want to understand things. Don't write novels. Go be an academic who understands things, not an artist who expresses themselves.

1/?

>>21646997
cont.

Besides, people who are talented at doing things just *do* the things they're talented at. That's why it's talent. They don't have to work to grasp the nature of what it is they're doing. They just have to apply it all, which is difficult if you're talented. Like they say, talent and hard work beats just having talent or something.

Anyway, if you're deadset on being a novelist, then that means you don't have any talent. It should come easy to you. That gives you a choice. Do you want to keep going and walk that path of hardship and get good? Then make that decision, but you'll have to practice and practice and practice. Or, you can decide to look for what you're good at and do that naturally. You have to ask yourself the question,

>What do I do in my daily life that doesn't take me any effort, yet could be considered being succesful or 'better' than others?

I've already spoiled it a little for you, but you want to understand and know the underlying reasons why things exists. An artist doesn't give three flying fucks about *why* things are the way they are, they just have this infinite well of experiences in their brain that needs out.
Just look at you saying, "I just read Barthelme's short story "The Balloon," and I didn't understand it at all." That's your analytical brain doing the work, not an artists brain trying to understand what someone else's experience is.

I'm being overly harsh here, but somehow my brain tells me that I should point you to the direction you really should be going, instead of toiling around and wasting your time being something you're not.

That's it. I can just keep writing like this if you give me enough reason to. Tell me what you think.

>>21643546
Are you sure you read it?

>>21646997
>>21647017
Is there more to this post? I'm rather interested.

>>21647085
I can keep writing. Give me a minute to let the cat downstairs.

Do you have a specific question you could focus my mind with?

>>21643546
If any of the things you've written are as laborious and ungratifying to read as this post, I can see why you consider yourself a failure.

>>21647098
Also, I'm sorry I went so harsh on you.

>>21643546
Don't listen to >>21647126; he reads at a lower level

a fatwa on whoever memed "reddit spacing" into existence

>>21646997
I talked about using dictionaries, thesauruses, and usage guides because I wanted to highlight one of my many insecurities. I don't think I would be a better writer if I knew all the "rules." I'm just saying that self-doubt has such a tight, neurotic grasp on me that I can't go a minute without double-checking everything I do or write. I don't know that good literature involves breaking the rules. I can tell you there's enjoyable and unenjoyable literature.
I do want to write. Not a day goes by where I don't write. I'm not saying I have talent; I just don't want to be branded as insincere, even if anonymously. But I think that someone who wants to exhale should know how to inhale, and I was expressing my shame at being unable to grasp that essence. I was ashamed at being unable to experience the experience that Barthelme had designed (I say art is about designing human experience). I have thoughts and ideas that I want to express. Obviously I don't think a series of grammatically correct sentences is good art. I have thoughts and ideas and sensations that I want other human beings to experience.
I'm sorry. I don't want to sound like I'm trying to absolve myself of all wrongdoing. I just feel misunderstood.
The second part of your post is right. I don't have talent, and I'm painfully aware, and this lack of talent makes me feel immense guilt when I sit down to write and I begin tripping over my own awkward constructions. I then go back to re-reading Aeolus or Itheca (from Ulysses), where there are examples of some of the most insanely good prose I've ever read in my life. And that usually gets me going again.
But please don't get me wrong, anon. I don't want a writer's life, I don't want to be a great writer, and I don't want money. I just want to write really good, enjoyable, sensitive literature. I want to write works that are accessible, that are heartfelt, that are beautiful, funny, and charming. I'm bursting at the seams with stuff I want to say, anon, but I'm just afraid of expressing any of it in a manner that undermines what I'm saying.

You're not being too harsh. I get exactly what you're saying.
(By the way, I'm not >>21647085, but I'd like to hear more too)

>>21647126
Oh well

>>21646919
I do intend on trying to get published, anon. My work isn't online, not that I know of. Some of my poetry might be floating around on old forums.
I love documentaries. Especially behind-the-scenes stuff. Just great.

>>21647876
>I don't know that good literature involves breaking the rules.
following*
Forgive me. I've just woken up, and the way this post is written reflects that

>>21643546
>got filtered by a post-modern short story and have lost all confidence in myself.
You could always take a small break and reread the story again. No need to demoralize yourself over something so trivial

>>21647954
I suppose, yes.

>>21644337
i dont get it

>>21643546
The balloon is a Chinese spying device.

>>21644931
>Pynchon
based:
>The eyes closed. Cammed each night out of that safe furrow the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered? What voices overheard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost?

>>21644820
what's wrong with post-modernism?

>>21647876
I think you're either suffering or being in the throes of your cognitive functions. You're an INFP. If you don't know what that means, research Jung's cognitive functions. In short, every human being's brain is configured to take in information in a certain way, and then synthesize how to deal with that information and provide a direction to go in. These respectively are extraversion (the objective external 'truths' you take in) and introversion (the direction you can internally assert).
You're an introverted feeler. Meaning, you can internally assert what you want (which explains the "I'm bursting at the seams with stuff I want to say") and don't need something else to tell you what to feel. The problem is your extraversion. An INFP has introverted feeling and extraverted intuiting as their respective main and auxiliary function. Meaning, you're an introvert who knows what he wants, but your extraverted intuiting is making you 'insecure'. You can see all the options of what people might feel and think and respond to what you might write down. that's why you're trying to make sure what you want to say (your Fi) will be received well (seeing that people might not receive it as you intend: Ne).

I haven't eaten for a while, so I don't have as much energy right now to give you an assertive answer, but I thought to give *any* answer to what you wrote me. Tell me what you think.

I'm an INFJ, meaning I have introverted intuiting and extraverted feeling as my functions. Something something being able to read people very well and putting my finger right on the spot. I don't suspect that I'm wrong with you being an INFP.

>>21649580
You've nailed it. I do get INFP as a result every time I take the Myers-Briggs test. What the hell, anon. If you're this perceptive, I might as well take your advice from earlier and give up writing (I'm joking; I will not)!
I have reread "The Balloon" and two other short works of Barthelme's—I have a better idea of the sort of fiction he writes now. All I had to do was slow down and spend time with it. I'm not sure how I forgot such a simple truth as >>21643560

>>21649836
I'm glad I could help. That's what INFJ's do. Now you go be a good INFP and do you Fi Ne thingy, however that works.
Just remember, you're not insecure, you're just seeing all the possibilities. Just lean more on your Fi and you'll get there. Use your introversion to give you that direction. Your extraversion is just there to interface you with reality.

>>21643546
>For about over a year
>My ambition's not uncoloured by various sorts of shame and fear
You need to work on percision and clarity.

>>21650346
ah. I'll admit: both those sentences I wrote that way on purpose because I enjoy how odd they sounded. After that I realized I sound like a douche and I tried to avoid any constructions that weren't "minimalist," so to speak.

>>21650298
I'm thinking the best way is to just force myself to do it. Thanks.

>>21649123
absolutely nothing but some diwmits confuse it with the french theory of the 70's

>>21651171
what's that?

>>21646997
>>21647017
>An artist doesn't give three flying fucks about *why* things are the way they are
Complete bullshit that outs you as a pseud. Almost every truly great writer has been a voracious reader and a terminally curious spirit. The artist is more than just phenomenologist and art is more than a singular representation of the artist’s experience. Your view of the artist is a product of our times, where science and art are unjustly stripped apart and placed diametric to each other. It’s a highly decadent, secular, and particular (and not to mention utterly exhausted) view of art; one where the artist is reduced from the shaman that he is to a much narrower and yet now narcissistic archetypal role. The truth is there’s nothing “special” about art, at least not in the individual sense that you expound. Art can be characterised simply as human creation, or rather participation, in beauty; and beauty is that which is conducive to aesthetic emotion, that emotion, as Joyce says, where the mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing; in this sublime moment we infinitesimally step out of the world of becoming. This is a process that everyone certainly has access to and can and should definitely be learned and improved upon even by those who don’t identify foremost as artist, and your insistence on the inability for art of all but the Special Person who has Talent betrays your own insecure need to affirm your identity.
>>21649580
>>21650298
>You're an INFP
>That’s what INFJ’s do
Figures that you’re a Myers-Briggs midwit.

Also this is a cringe thread. You read a short story and you didn’t immediately get the symbolism in it. (Is that what you think being a writer is? lol) And so your penis stops working, you lose your nerve, start beating yourself up, and blogposting your miseries and failures. What do you want out of this thread? You sound like a little bitch, the type of person who’s too self-obsessed to ever create anything meaningful, the eternal demoralised navelgazing zoomer.

>>21652157
>Is that what you think being a writer is?
Not at all, anon. I just suddenly felt like a bad reader, which is an aspect of being a good writer. Or so I'm told. There's that platitude associated with writing: good writers are also good readers. I just felt embarrassed for utterly and completely missing the point on the first read.
>And so your penis stops working, you lose your nerve, start beating yourself up, and blogposting your miseries and failures.
I'm sorry. I realize I'm taking this too hard. It's been rough for the past six months, and something as minor as not getting a short story served as the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. (Sorry about all the clichés that I'm resorting to.)
>What do you want out of this thread?
Validation. In the sense that I want to know whether or not it's normal to feel this way. Whether other people have had the same experiences, I suppose.
I don't want validation in the sense that I'm looking for people to comfort me or tell me I'm going to be "great." Please don't get me wrong. I'm well aware my chances of even writing a "good" work are slim, and I'm not a sore loser. I'm going to keep at it regardless, because I love it. I've been enjoying it so much lately. I'll cut myself off here.

>>21652194
>In the sense that I want to know whether or not it's normal to feel this way. Whether other people have had the same experiences
Nah you’re special. It’s just you.

Honestly, you just sound quite young and depressive. I was like that at your age as well, which wasn’t very long at all mind you, but at some point (hopefully, some people never do) you reach a point where you stop worrying about your “chances” and learn to embrace the suck, to use my own cliché. There’s a beauty in not knowing, in fact that is the essence of what makes art what it is, and I’m sorry to get too mystical on you. That unknowing is where you draw the spirit required to capture your mind’s lightning in a bottle (cliché again but w/e I’ve been up all night). If you’re unable to break out of your need to know, your need to know your chances, which is just your fear of death really, then this delivering beauty turns itself into the terror of sense. You fail to see the greater picture surrounding you and become all too aware of the veritable bath of sensation you’re submerged in at all times. You become aware of your nose and its dominion over your vision. Nobody is more intimate with this reality than the artist anon. Learn to love it.
https://youtu.be/VKcAYMb5uk4

>>21652238
>which wasn’t very long at all
Wasn’t very long ago at all*

>>21652238
>Nah you’re special. It’s just you.
All is lost. Just kidding.
>capture your mind’s lightning in a bottle
I have sort of a similar metaphor that involves catching specific raindrops. Yours is cooler. I haven't heard that one before. Don't know what that says about me.
My fear is not of death, I don't think. Mine is a fear of the slowness of the life of a "failure." I sometimes get so embarrassed if I think someone's seen me doing something like picking my nose that the next time I have to enter the same room as them I stand there frozen before the door. I think that if I am seen falling from what little grace I possess I will be unable to face anybody. Physically. I will stand before the doorways of my life forever.
I have to get rid of that. That feeling. I have to be unafraid of (metaphorically...) farting (... and perhaps literally too) around people.
I think I'm going to have to start screaming "WHAT DOES THIS MEAN" and submerging myself deeper in the world of language. There's a lot that will pass me by if I don't. There's still moments at night where while drifting off into sleep I rise with a jolt upon remembering a turn of phrase, a connection, a resonance, a tenderness in characterization that I completely missed in a novel. Sometimes I've had moments where I didn't get a short story and only a week later did I suddenly find myself feeling the exact same feeling that the author must've been feeling (did I say feeling?) when they wrote the piece.
>"The horror."
Gotta slow down. Or I'm going to be waking up like that every day for the rest of my life.

>>21650346
>You need to work on your percision
>percision
lol

Anons, is there any writer similar in style or in humor to Barthelme?

>>21652757
is this you OP? After I said >>21650298?

If so, then I've gotten a taste of what it is to use Fi. That 'submerging yourself in the world of language' is your Fi working. I wish I could do that. Go INFPs.

>>21652757
Do you not get what the balloon is yet? I was all but talking about it.

>>21652117
When I listen to you, I'm hearing someone who's trying to sound like what a good artist naturally sounds like. Or in other words, you know how 'beautiful' (in your own words) an artists expression can be, and you're trying to mimic that. I think you're the one who's actually lacking any kind of artistic ability. Just like I said, people who are *good* at what they do, don't question what they're doing. They just do it. So does an artist. If you're a person who doesn't but wants to possess such ease and confidence, then that difference and message of not being that is hurtful. That's why you're resorting to making art 'accessible' to everyone. You had wished you had the natural ability to be an artist, but you don't. You're coping.
You're not an artist, anon. Some people are good at some things, and other people are good at other things. Have you heard that somewhere before? Exactly. Myer-Briggs or the cognitive functions. There's a reason a basketball player does what he does, because he has the functions (and hopefully the physical stature) to be a basketball player. A lawyer needs different functions. A doctor needs different functions and so on. It's okay if you don't possess the functions to make 'beautiful' art, but don't minimize art to be 'accessible' so that everyone who can't make art gets to make art. It hurts, I know. I'll never have a big dick and women will never swoon over me and want me, but that doesn't mean that women are worthless. That just means that that's not my arena to fight in.
If I listen to you, art isn't your arena. Academics or something related to science or whatever would suit you better. That's why you're pulling art into the direction of being something like science. You *need* science, not art. But you *want* art, and because you don't have the capacity for art, you have to conflate the two so that your natural abilities can be used for art. Art is not a science (pun not intended). That's the whole point of art. It's the propagation of person experience. But I've already told you about this.

Me telling you all of this doesn't matter, because you're not a feeler. When I perceived OP's situation, it worked and he took it as I said it, because he's an introverted feeler. I gave him what he already felt. You on the other hand, you're an introverted thinker. You have to find 'the truth'. Go do science, art isn't for you.

If I'm right, you'll probably start debating about what I said in this post to be wrong, and want to 'seek the truth' with me where I have to defend what I say and you rebutting it and on and on until we've come to a consensus we'll never reach, because finding the truth is irrelevant for you. For you, it's the search that stimulates you. If I haven't convinced you that you're not an artist, but a scientist, then consider the fact that an artist already 'knows' what needs to be expressed, while you are trying to 'search' for it. An artist expresses, a scientist uncovers the truth.

>>21654560
What can I say anon. You're just not very intelligent. Which is especially funny considering the authoritarian tone you began your original post with. But even someone like you is capable of creating worthwhile art, so give it your best shot.
>I think you're the one who's actually lacking any kind of artistic ability
Missed my point entirely of course hehe.
>Some people are good at some things, and other people are good at other things
Still don't get it. It's not a "thing" we're talking about.
>don't minimize art to be 'accessible' so that everyone who can't make art gets to make art
You're minimising art to make it something that's yours. Art will never belong to you. It's bigger than a "thing." And I never disagreed that some people are naturally shit at art and some are great.
>I'll never have a big dick and women will never swoon over me and want me
We know. No wonder you need an identity so bad.
>Art is not a science (pun not intended)
Art is not a science, it is the science. The science of being.
>you're not a feeler
More midwit depth psychology.
>you'll probably start debating
Kind of like you're doing huh.
>An artist expresses, a scientist uncovers the truth.
Already proved this dichotomy false. This is the death of art.

>>21654560
All this novel of yours really proves to anyone capable of syllogism is that you can't write worth a damn either btw my little triptranny.

This is a shitty thread full of shitty insecurity and equally shitty “advice.” Best thing OP can do is keep learning and doing more stuff.

>>21654893
>>21654901

Thanks for the discourse, gentlemen.

>>21646997
>>21647017
>>21649580
>>21654560
holy mother of midwit

>>21654908
>>21654954
now for the non meme answer, this anon gets it
just keep learning and experiencing the world, you're 20 for God's sake, you'll be fine
disregard the insecure pseud, you're on the right track