Love the writing hate the writers

[Minnow]

Okay, so recently I've noticed a weird trend. Maybe it's just me (probably, actually) but whenever I talk to someone who is or claims to be a writer or author or novelist or whatever, I end up getting really pissed off.

I love writing, personally. I love working with characters and story and prose and meanings and everything, but every time I've met someone who claims to also enjoy those things isn't the connectorizing I imagine it to be. Instead they're all stuck up, maybe not obviously, but I can tell that they're either taking themselves way too seriously or not seriously enough. (ie, taking it so seriously they think that they can write amazing and talking about how they're 'novelists' when they haven't even finished anything that could be called a novel; or taking it so unseriously that they aren't respecting the actual stories and just like the idea of being a writer)

I should probably just get used to people being superficial, but I just wish I knew why things are like this so often. I know people exist that love the writing for what it is and are humble about it, instead of just liking to be thought of as a writer.

bleh I dunno

 

[ultraviolet]

as someone who's studying writing at university, I can say that lots of people are actually incredibly snotty about their writing irl! I met one guy last year who had a big epic fantasy and a couple of screenplays on the go and was completely convinced he was an excellent writer. He stopped talking to me after I got a distinction for my writing portfolio and he got a pass. Then there was a guy in my editing unit who said he'd been published, I asked him what it was called and he said '... oh, well not in Australia, ehehe' and looked really shifty. Then there's at least a dozen girls who are happy to scoff and mention that Twilight 'isn't literature!!1!' at every opportunity. There's also a guy in a grammar class who's writing a novel and iirc changed his last name to 'Nightingale' because it sounded more author-y.

the fact is that it's not something endemic to writing; if you end up going to uni you'll find there are snobs in every area. There was a girl in my highschool art class who stole one of the other girls' sketches, got away with it and is incredibly snobby to me even though I see her about three times a week.

don't feel too bad, though! this doesn't mean that there aren't people who can be humble writers, in fact, they're probably the other people who are mumbling to themselves about the snobs. in any case, it's important that you write for your own reasons, and especially not because you feel like you have to measure up to other people who are being snobs.

 

[Zhu Que]

It's an arts thing in general. Same type of things happens with musicians; you get those who are fantastic players but are consumed by an awfully augmented ego and have no time for those they see as inferior to themselves, and then players who simply play for the love of the music, taking their success with a large dose of humility. Same goes for writting, I would suspect.

Ah, such is life...

 

[Loffyglu]

I feel like I've been pretty lucky with the writers I've met so far, actually; at my school's animé club, there are some girls I know with their own story ideas (...okay, so it's drawing comics and not writing prose; still, there's the characterization and plotbuilding and all that involved) and just do it because they love telling stories; they don't think that highly of their work, nor are they writing just because authors are such speshul peepul. Which is definitely what I think writing should be about; you have a story you would love to tell, so you get to work and write for writing's sake.

...Idiots like what you're describing do exist everywhere, though; as Zhu Que put it, they're everywhere in the arts, unfortunately. I dearly wish some people would just relax about this whole writing thing; it's not about being a famous novelist or thinking your story is the greatest fucking thing since Shakespeare, it's about a love of writing and/or storytelling. Some writers may be morons, but hey, that just means you can be one less moron among the writers! |D

 

[Tailsy]

Meh. If you want to succeed as a writer, thinking everything you write is shit is really not going to help you in the long run. I don't think there's a problem with being confident about your work, as long as you can still accept criticism.

It's good to be driven.

 

[Loffyglu]

Meh. If you want to succeed as a writer, thinking everything you write is shit is really not going to help you in the long run. I don't think there's a problem with being confident about your work, as long as you can still accept criticism.

It's good to be driven.

I'm nowhere near a mind-reader, of course, but I feel like the Minnow wasn't really referring to people who are just confident; confidence in yourself and your work is good, after all~ It seemed more aimed at people who think they're such amazing writers that everything they do is already perfect and they don't need criticism at all. That, and people who are just writing because writers are famous/well-liked/what have you. But again, I don't claim to read minds, so... :V

 

[Tailsy]

Why on earth would you want to be a writer so you could be famous? How many authors ever become internationally renowned? That's a pretty stupid profession to choose if you just want to be famous.

Besides, all this stuff about ~just loving writing~ kind of gets on my nerves. Whoopee sparkles, I love writing too!! Who in their right mind is going to decide they want to write for a living if they don't actually enjoy writing? You're hardly going to get far doing that. I've never met a person who claims to enjoy writing who actually doesn't.

I just think this is kind of silly, deciding that people 'aren't real writers' or whatever because they do it for fun or because they think they're awesome. I don't take my writing all that seriously, to be honest; I like writing dumb fanfic because I have fun doing it and I like to write things that appeal to others. I don't really like writing original fiction because I dislike world-building and I find it hard to craft characters from scratch. But I'd still call myself a writer, because that's my favourite hobby.

If someone is a jerk, stop talking to them. \o/ whoa, problem solved!