/lit/ - Literature

>>21930058
30s sounds about right. You still need to have written a shitload before your 30s tho.

>>21930058
Why would Faulkner have said that when he published his best work in his early 30s?

>>21930058
just write if you want to write jeez man come the fuck on already

>>21930147

It's the 21st century. You're worth nothing if you're not the best at something.

To me a writer is someone who writes, and not someone who publishes so I strongly disagree. It’s probably best to publish around 35, but the best writers will have been writing for a long time at that point. Faulkner himself started writing as early as 17.

>>21930169
According to Wikipedia, he wrote poems and short stories as early as 17 and wrote his first novel at 28, which seems to me about an age a lot of the greats started.

>>21930060
What do you mean “need to”?

>>21930165
Why is that? Who are you to judge what gives someone worth? What are you the best at anon?

>>21930165
Extremely underage post

I wonder what he meant by that because 35 seems not so late to start publishing, but there are almost no notable writers that started after 25.

>>21930221
Faulkner didn’t publish his first novel until like 28 and he wasn’t writing his good novels until he was 30. I think it’s probably rare for someone to become a good writer if they genuinely never try to write before the age of 25 but it’s not unheard of for notable writers to go unpublished until their late 20s

>>21930240
Late 20s is very young so anyone over 30 would find what you just said rather depressing. But my point was exactly about when a writer starts and not when a writer published. That’s a depressing thing to realize if you came to it late.

>>21930058
it looks pretty late, even accounting for a century or two ago when lifespans were a bit shorter
https://booksonthewall.com/blog/ages-101-famous-writers-first-publication/
there are more websites with similar lists

>>21930295
Are these only counting novels as publications or is this literally just whenever they published anything at all?

>>21930295
Age of first publication is really irrelevant. All it means is that at that age someone agreed to distribute your work.

>>21930058
if you were already not a top tier writer by the age 12 it's too late

>>21930301
It looks to me like it’s only counting novels and serious poetry collections.

>>21930058
Melville finished Moby Dick at 31

>>21930278
I think the problem is that the average person needs like 8-10 years or so of reading/writing to realistically develop a good base to start writing worthwhile material and it’s just hard to replicate the amount of free time conducive to that sort of thing once you enter your 30s. I think in theory it would be perfectly possible for someone to write something good if he was starting at 30, it would just be hard for the average person to be able to power through a late start like that.

>>21930058
>He didn't start writing in his 30s
>He didn't start writing in his early 20s
>He wasn't writing in Highschool
>Nor primary school
>Wasn't creatively inclined enough to write during his kindergarten years
>Hasn't written so much as contemporary poetry as a toddler
>Didn't write a novella in his infant years
>Wasn't formulating complex 100,000,000 word books in his mothers womb
>NEVER wrote a single multi-story international best seller TV adapted series while he was swimming around in his dads balls
If you didn't so much as author an entire ensemble library of books while you were but a nonexistent unthought conceptualizing in the grand cosmos, you'll never ever make it.
Obviously I'm being sarcastic, you could be fucking 200 years old and only just pick up writing, age doesn't matter at all. Your dedication to learning does.

>>21930189
He has a point though. The internet makes you compete directly with everyone everywhere. It's frustrating.

>>21930872
So compete, you are bound to win sometime

>>21930058
What ever age you are now. Stop looking for excuses to postpone. I know that the idea of doing the work only to find out that you are not good at something or that you don't enjoy the process of doing a thing you have romanticized is a tough hurtle to overcome but you owe it to yourself to over come it so that you can get on with either doing what you love or finding out you don't love it as much as you thought or enough to pursue getting better at it and eliminate it from your possible paths. You only have so many years alive, and you don't know how many you have left. Get writing if you think its something you want to do.

>>21930343
>he recognizes a theoretical period of time where he wasn't a writer
Ngmi

>>21930343
History seems to suggest that it does indeed matter.

I became a serious reader at 26, started writing at 28, and I’m trying to get published for the first time at 30. I often feel like it was over before it ever even started, but what choice do I have other than to keep going?

I became a serious reader at 26, started writing at 28, and am trying to get published for the first time now at 30. I’ve looked for examples of people who started as late as I did and there almost none, arguably none. There are many who publish after 30, but almost always they’re steeped in literature and writing some things much earlier than I was. So I often feel like it was over for me before I even started, but what choice do I have other than to keep trying?

>>21930058
>What's the best age to become a writer
Whatever age you are now
>Faulkner said...
Faulkner was talking about publishing a defining piece and he was born in a different era with fortunate connections.

>>21931093
Burroughs’ first writing attempt was some shitty unpublishable novel he co-authored with Kerouac at 32, and he only started pursuing literature seriously after he killed his wife some years later. Wasn’t published until 40. Went on to become one of the big names of 20th century literature in USA.
Then again, most of us aren’t eternal trust fund fuckups doing whatever they like.

>>21931128
Wikipedia says Burroughs worked as a reporter and journalist while in college but I think there are writers who don’t come to it until late but nonetheless can write some decent stuff because they had interesting lives. I’m not one of those people as much as I wish I was. I had a normal student and professional working life. I lost about 5 years to depression.

>>21930058
There's no best age. Obviously, you'll improve as you read more and get more life experience. But you should start as soon as you get the itch and the imaginary people in your head become too loud. I started writing anime/video game fan fiction when I was in middle school. By high school, I was writing my own stories, and by sixteen I finished my first novel. It was heavily inspired by comics/manga since I wasn't reading many proper books at the time, so it was juvenile, but I took those skills onto my next work.

I don’t really aspire to write novels, but I do wish I had been reading and writing poems far earlier than I was. There are so many examples of poets who had success in their 30s, but none who didn’t pick up poetry as a youth.

I think the ideal age is actually younger today because I think the demand for novels was more mature back then it is now. The most popular books are children’s and young adult fiction, while a lot of the books that win prizes and which aren’t just overt allegory for progressive oppression narratives are just relatively juvenile stories. The age of the mature adult demanding mature novels came and went, and the time of the novel as an art piece has more or less been gone since c. 2000.

>>21931328
Oh, to explain why the ideal age is younger then: the older the author, the less likely he or she will want to write more fantastical and juvenile stories, but that’s what the culture wants and values.

>>21931328
>>21931333
You’re omitting the fact that most books are now written, published, and read by women. Their emotional and intellectual development stops at 16.

>>21931146

>>21931146

Start a substack, find an audience. Self-publish, which isn't lame because books don't need a budget like film or music do. If you get an audience a traditional publisher will scoop you up anyway.

You also aren't starting from 0. I've seen 0. It's my father who can barely read and proudly has not finished a book of any kind since high school. You likely have written tens of thousands of words in your life already, whether it be in school or posting on the internet. That's writing. It's certainly not a serious writing practice but it's not nothing. Why do you think journos became authors so much? Because it's all just writing.

The one exception might be technical writing but you weren't doing that. A good writer is form and has no medium just a specialty. Every single famous writer has written at least some of the following: poetry, short story, novella, and novels. Many have also written essays, screenplays, plays, creative nonfiction, and journalism. Writing is writing. You aren't starting at 0.

Beyond that, success isn't determined by you for the most part. Try to find an audience (because nobody reading your stuff sucks), which there are ample ways to do so now unlike even twenty years ago. If your fantasy is that you can go away to a cabin for a few months and walk out with something that will shut down the whole world then you're going to be disappointed.

And also try to provide value with your work. My library has a ton of events for other writers, poetry walks, readings, classes, writing groups, etc. Ditto for some local schools. We have a community that's pretty large and you meet all kinds of interesting people who love the same thing you love and are interested in what you have to say.

Good luck.

>>21931339
Well, there is a demand for novels among men but it’s just all genre fiction and young adult. That’s really my point. In painting, there’s gallery art and there’s commercial art. The gallery art equivalent of the novel is dead, at least for men. The commercial art equivalent of the novel exists but all the demand is for the sort of thing that Faulkner himself never aspired to write. There are many reasons. That women dominate literary fiction might be one.

>>21931366
My plan was to quit my job and focus 100% on writing for a year at least, trying to get something published before I turn 31. I’ve managed to save up enough to do that. Do people even read fiction on Substack?

>>21931368
why do npcs can't writte commercial for manly men for 35 year old manly intelectuals?

Even anime fags literally praise evangelion, and that's around the same niche as faulkner kind of mitwitery.

Not an issue of the market you can't write something that is interesting to npcs.

Just remake ullyses as furry porn or some shit, FAG.

>>21931384
Undecipherable gibbering.

>>21931392
nice way to call me an ESL, fag.

>>21931366
I don’t even know if I want to write novels anymore. I actually fell deep into poetry at about 25, a year before I fell deep into fiction. Since then, I’ve admired most Virgil, who wrote his Eclogues somewhere between 29 and 31, and Dante, who wrote La Vita Nuova in his early 30s and La Divina Comedia in his late 30s. But both of these poets had been writing poems since they were very young, and frankly, poetry is even more dead than the novel is, which is depressing.

>>21931384
The so-called NPCs prefer a 9th grade reading level. That’s why. The times and technology demand that these things move to animation and film. Evangelion could never have been Evangelion if it was a novel. It could only have been great as an anime.

>>21931396
become a rapper and write some dandies and trochaics, bro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lexLAjh8fPA

I always love retards telling me that poetrhy is dead.

>>21931401
Are we gonna start talking about 9 year old prose?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r_LWmw4gok

Do I need to actually bring popular toddler shit?

Why do you assume kids lyrics are a literary after thought?
Do I need to bring Dr. seuss?

My point is that don't blame the market, you need to provide high quality under a package that appeal to the masses.

Ironically the average peasant during shakespeare times was an iliterate sailor.
And yet shakespeare wrote for literal prostitutes and drunk sailors in London red area.

You can do better.

>>21931416
Rap is not poetry, no matter how badly you’d like it to be.

>>21931422
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_31_UDs7Iac

damn crackas do be like... damn... you can't make some rhymes to the old bard.
It's like you can't do that shit, bro.

crackies do be like You can't put the old bard to some beat and do sum good shit, bro.
white nerds do be like.... I hate blacks therefore rap is not poetrhy.

>>21931416
I think it’s ridiculous to compare writing for a market saturated with digital pornography, video games, and anime to Elizabethan England.

>>21931439
why do white nerds love to claim old fags didn't loved those old cartoon porn when there's literal hentai drawings on roman pottery and vesubian bathrooms?

do you think elizabethan fags were angels when they were literally fucking preteen hookers and having siphylis outbreaks?

>>21931438
This is called music and not poetry and it is terrible even as music. It’s not poetry. If I recite a novel to techno music, am I novelist? It’s ridiculous.

>>21931447
> Some cheeky Romans drew boobs on a pot, therefore, it was exactly the same as today where we have constant digital hardcore pornography at our fingertips 24/7

>>21930058
Just like everything else in life you begin early. Every writer worth his salt, from every culture worthwhile began at a young age, even if they published late.

>>21931448
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6L9bUouDr8

nigga, just make some rhymes about megaman 2 existentialism.

stop being a retard because it's not the 19 century and you can't write spingler book after WWI.

Just write megaman fighting hitler and then having a hegelian debate about why he need to kill jews.

Have fun, dunno.

>>21931454
>retard don't know about the literal slave teen public orgies they had on the colliseum

Have you seen the divine comedy 14 century paintings of hell?

>>21931461
> Oh, you miss and classic art and literature? Just rap and make porn!

>>21931466
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCaaJwyUOcY

And so, the uppidity uppidasty uppidastly, the snob of the ultimate snobbery of the realm of maximum classical snobbery.

Lost media ruins he swept, he swept to the lost media.

The great greatness of the mental picture he so deeply and inherently desired, of the lost sunken city of Fux, of Bach, of Vilvadi, of Cervantes.

Oh he, may, he darly.
He dandy and candy.

Those dirty grones are having fun?
But It's not like muh Melbourne, muh Byrone, muh Bronte sisters.

Dear old bloom, how far hallen we, for as such the blasioness of arts and saint patronage of culture... THAT FLAME, of my dreams, my muse... has been lost.

Everything is lost, I sweept for eternity.
Said the smug snob imbecile.

>>21930183
>mfw I just turned 29
it's ogre

>>21931522
When did you start reading and writing though? This whole thread suggests that’s far more important than when you first publish.

Regardless, you have about a year if you want to do something before you turn 30 and I would suggest you do. Once you turn 30 it’s like a switch flips and you consider things differently…probably until you’re 31 and start considering them like you did at 29 again.

>>21931366
Good post anon.

>>21931394
ESL implies that you somewhat learned how to communicate in english. That was just retardation.

>>21930188
not the anon but you need obviously practice to be a good writer

>>21931543
I started reading seriously (as in classics) in high school. I've been writing since then as well, but most of what I've written is complete garbage. Only my most recent works have gotten any positive response the few times I posted them here. But they're just dumb short stories, nothing as substantial as a novel.

I also got married and just recently had a kid so my priorities have changed. I have to work to support them now.

>>21930188
If you start writing at 30 you're ngmi. Your best ideas come during your teenage years and your early 20s. But your writing skill develops much later. You need your early ideas for those later years.

>>21931601
As a 30 year old who started writing at 30, that’s more or less how it seems. I’ll probably rope soon.

>>21931594
Bolaño started writing novels precisely because he wanted to make some money for his family. You have the perfect background and motivation. If I were you, I would just kick it into high gear. Dedicate your early mornings, late nights, and some weekends to writing.

>>21931620
Don't be ridiculous. Just do a google search for writers who started late and you'll find dozens of names. Here's one list for you with a geezer as old as 66

https://bookstr.com/article/10-hugely-successful-authors-who-got-their-start-later-in-life/