When did you realize that what you write about matters a hell of a lot less than how you write it?
form > substance
>>25624641Day one. You can accurately judge a person, excepting exceptional circumstances, by their gait.
>>25624641Good luck getting a single person to read your beautiful heckin prose about nothing
>>25624641when i started trying to write. your writing sucks unless you yourself enjoyed producing every word of it, and for that you need to find, first and most importantly, a voice and, second, a subject that gives that voice plenty of compatible material to work with.
>>25624651Many people read Heidegger
the honest answer is probably when i was getting sick of scrolling shit all day and then i read ecclesiastes. its not even that we're recycling shakespeare because shakespeare was recycling other peoples shit too when he was writing, rather that there are only so many things that are in themselves interesting to read about. thus i realized that art isnt about arbitrarily shunting myself into a particular socially defined category but rather making something so compelling in terms of style (and doing what i can with the substance) that even if im making something never before seen in terms of a combination of elements, the style encourages readers to look deeper into it. writing has been very fun ever since
>>25624647>excepting exceptional circumstancesBravo!
>>25624657Exceptional!
>>25624641Le style c'est l'homme même.
One could say>that girl is hotor>She possessed the delicate, almost translucent beauty of a morning in Combray, with something of the porcelain fragility of a figure in an old Florentine fresco. Yet, simultaneously, there was warmth in her loveliness, a certain softness that kept her from seeming unreal altogether. To look at her was to feel that curious ache of remembrance, as though one had encountered her before, perhaps in some half-forgotten summer of childhood or in the distant strains of an enchanted melody. Her eyes, deep and heavy-lidded, held the shifting, iridescent colors of a Venetian lagoon, with a wistfulness that made her seem perpetually absorbed in some private recollection or inner fantasy. Even when she looked directly at you, there was the faint impression that some part of her remained elsewhere, lingering among the tender ruins of a cherished past. Her skin was of a pale, luminous alabaster, like the petals of a water lily opening in the first light of dawn, with delicate violet veins just visible beneath its surface, lending her complexion an almost aristocratic delicacy. She was not a beauty who commanded attention through any deliberate effort. Rather, she seemed to haunt the imagination, leaving behind, long after she had departed, the faint and strangely intimate impression of elegance, melancholy, and a loveliness one could admire endlessly but never quite possess.
>>25624641Take the vocabularypill, or failing that, the cyanide pill
>>25624641It really, crucially, depends on your aim.Is your aim to convey information or to attract attention? The latter markets are flooded with competition, the former scarcely has an audience at all.
>>25624722but is the pleasure of that excerpt (proust?) not just as much pleasure at the content of what he's saying? it seems to communicate much more content than simply 'she's hot'. the distinction between style and content seems kind of useless when applied to actual literature.
>>25624733one could say>I went whaling for a while.or>CHAPTER I.>LOOMINGS.>Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.etc
>>25624641Yeah, that's what happens with almost everything in life.
When I read Henry James
>>25624647Except the unexcepted.
>>25624996Excellent!
>>25624996Unexpect the expected.
>>25624641Everything i write is polemics because I'm an enormous asshole
I shall partake in NNN, just that it will be no porn and no masturbation. This caveat exists solely because I think I might get laid in a couple weeks. Girl from my class said she wanted to study together before the exam at my dorm.
>>25624641every great thinker is a great stylist (though the opposite may not be true!)
>>25625257Hmm, this is true...
>>25625257>>25625258Yeah good point. Can’t think of an exceptionOpposites that aren’t true:Evelyn WaughI will say Cormac McCarthy even though I think he isn’t a great stylistThere are also limited styles that are perfect in their kind though do disclose more limited intelligence: Hemingway
>>25624652this is what i was working towards a while and finally found it and it’s greati have tons of scraps and discarded material but it doesn’t matter it’s just fun even if i never put together a final work
>>25624722Either works depending on the voice of a character. The former is not bad as long as it fits in the greater context of the voice and character you’re writing. The latter could be a terrible misfire in that respect too, and risk being purple filler prose if it’s not conveying information about the character, like he’s a dreamer idealist lost in fantasy.
>>25625257Darwin - great thinker not stylists
>>25625291funny example because he's fun to read but not a great mind.
>>25624641Pseuds won't like to hear it but substance trumps style and they are not the same
>>25625341He’s a great mind. If you want to put philosopher/artists > scientists them I’m not opposed
>>25624722Both are bad
>>25625407Everything truth about evolution was known since antiquity or much after darwin, nothing through him. He was politically relevant for the Enlightenment climate and is deified purely for this reason. Now go and read Aristotle instead.
>>25625391I don’t think so. Bad style disqualifies substance. Why mencius moldbug is unreadable for example. If he could think he would've figured out how to write
>>25624641
