On the one hand, all that stuff about people maybe not being meant to be writers is toxic bilge, because there's really no way of finding out other than writing, outside of the extreme cases of people who are clearly visibly not up to handling sharp objects and so on. I'd sooner have a thousand obnoxious no-talents churn out their rubbish than one real talent be put off by well-poisoning like this.
On the other hand, I'm right with her on that "aim low" thing, though I think that's a really poor way for the NaNoWriMo people to phrase that. I think that for most people, most of the time, it is easier to learn two write by trying less ambitious things and moving on to more ambitious things later; writing has a lot of different subskills, which not everyone can learn in the same way or at the same rate, and there's a lot to be said for exercises involving working to improve at a specific skill. I would encourage people to start with what works for them, but not by aiming to write 50,000 words of novel intending for it to be crap. I would encourage to aim as high as you can, but try to figure out whow high you can reasonably aim first, and if what you're writing is a calibration exercise for this, be honest with yourself about that. The vast majority of people who don't calibrate get nowhere, and the the few who do succeed turn into producers of endless masses of bilge like Anne Rice.
It's not trivialising anyone's vocation to take a first step, or a second or a third, so long as you acknowledge that it is a first step or second or third.
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Date: 2003-10-22 11:13 am (UTC)On the other hand, I'm right with her on that "aim low" thing, though I think that's a really poor way for the NaNoWriMo people to phrase that. I think that for most people, most of the time, it is easier to learn two write by trying less ambitious things and moving on to more ambitious things later; writing has a lot of different subskills, which not everyone can learn in the same way or at the same rate, and there's a lot to be said for exercises involving working to improve at a specific skill. I would encourage people to start with what works for them, but not by aiming to write 50,000 words of novel intending for it to be crap. I would encourage to aim as high as you can, but try to figure out whow high you can reasonably aim first, and if what you're writing is a calibration exercise for this, be honest with yourself about that. The vast majority of people who don't calibrate get nowhere, and the the few who do succeed turn into producers of endless masses of bilge like Anne Rice.
It's not trivialising anyone's vocation to take a first step, or a second or a third, so long as you acknowledge that it is a first step or second or third.