This is my "Dear Diary" one again,
First of all, everyone I see that's the same age as me still registers with me as being older. Well, not everyone, peers and friends don't count, but if it's a stranger usually if they look like they're my age I think they're older. Forcing myself to be friendly and talk to people lately, just random people in random occurrences. Gives me a lot of random crushes on people.
I wrote an email to one of my favorite writers today, Dan Kennedy of McSweeney's fame (probably not fame), and he already got back to me. He said:
"Thanks! My only tips: do it as diligently as a bad habit, worry about what your readers get out of it more than you worry about what you're getting out of it."
So that's a good point. Stop writing for myself. Different authors are constantly conflicting. I was reading a psychology text book again today, and one of the more interesting points is that people can be saying the exact same thing and have different meanings. So, I have to try to picture this little funnel on the outside of my skull pouring into an imaginary brain hole, where the extension distills whatever it is that's poured through.
Other interesting thing is that all knowledge is superfluous. We don't need to know anything, other than some basic laws which are common sensical more often than not. I got a couple more lameass self help books today that I'm reading, but more and more I'm finding the tones of the author offending. It's like they're writing to that guy from your high school that goes to the mall with his older aunts and they try to set him up with nieces of their childhood friends. You know the one I'm talking about.
So the point to learning has to be learning for learnings sake, which makes me want to slow down and reassess how I learn. Considering that writers (authors) say to read everything twice if you even want to pretend to understand it, which might only apply to fiction writing, I think I'll read everything twice the first time. Writing is a quantitative experience but reading is a qualitative one, is what I think I'm getting at. You're going to write the same thing whether you struggle for twenty minutes to come up with it or if you just let it get out. Or, if you just get it out, it might snowball and become this ephemeral burst of rational-minded-reflexive-wisdom instead of this ugly preplanned prepackaged bullshit. But, I'm just defending and rationalizing the way I do it as opposed to the way other more experienced people do.
Anyway, I'm writing for my audience now I think. I'm going to go scare the shit out of myself in public situations that I should be attuned to by now.
First of all, everyone I see that's the same age as me still registers with me as being older. Well, not everyone, peers and friends don't count, but if it's a stranger usually if they look like they're my age I think they're older. Forcing myself to be friendly and talk to people lately, just random people in random occurrences. Gives me a lot of random crushes on people.
I wrote an email to one of my favorite writers today, Dan Kennedy of McSweeney's fame (probably not fame), and he already got back to me. He said:
"Thanks! My only tips: do it as diligently as a bad habit, worry about what your readers get out of it more than you worry about what you're getting out of it."
So that's a good point. Stop writing for myself. Different authors are constantly conflicting. I was reading a psychology text book again today, and one of the more interesting points is that people can be saying the exact same thing and have different meanings. So, I have to try to picture this little funnel on the outside of my skull pouring into an imaginary brain hole, where the extension distills whatever it is that's poured through.
Other interesting thing is that all knowledge is superfluous. We don't need to know anything, other than some basic laws which are common sensical more often than not. I got a couple more lameass self help books today that I'm reading, but more and more I'm finding the tones of the author offending. It's like they're writing to that guy from your high school that goes to the mall with his older aunts and they try to set him up with nieces of their childhood friends. You know the one I'm talking about.
So the point to learning has to be learning for learnings sake, which makes me want to slow down and reassess how I learn. Considering that writers (authors) say to read everything twice if you even want to pretend to understand it, which might only apply to fiction writing, I think I'll read everything twice the first time. Writing is a quantitative experience but reading is a qualitative one, is what I think I'm getting at. You're going to write the same thing whether you struggle for twenty minutes to come up with it or if you just let it get out. Or, if you just get it out, it might snowball and become this ephemeral burst of rational-minded-reflexive-wisdom instead of this ugly preplanned prepackaged bullshit. But, I'm just defending and rationalizing the way I do it as opposed to the way other more experienced people do.
Anyway, I'm writing for my audience now I think. I'm going to go scare the shit out of myself in public situations that I should be attuned to by now.
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