"don't waste your spitle, and time on fruitless efforts to become great, if you were meant to be great you would have been, and since you aren't, you weren't."

First of all, no effort to become great is fruitless. Mediocrity happens by default -- that some people choose to give up without having tried is nothing to admire. To not write a novel -- or, in fact, do anything -- because you think it might not be great, or it's been done before, or others might not approve, is not noble self-restraint, but just plain old fear.

There's not a writer on earth who hasn't been accused by someone of wasting their time or their talent with writing, regardless of their subject matter or talent. We're pretty used to hearing it. But the truth is, if it's in you, nothing anyone else has to say makes any difference.

And I can guarantee you that no one who ever did anything great or memorable ever decided, early on, "Well, if I was going to be great, I would have been great before I started, but since I wasn't, I'm not, so I won't try." That's complete nonsense.

I also believe discipline is more important than talent. A talented chess player will not become a Grand Master unless he's willing to lose a few games and learn from his mistakes. A natural athlete is not going to win the Super Bowl unless he learns how to play the game. Great writers are not born that way. You can be born with talent, but it takes dedication and practice to hone that talent into something useful.

Anyway. I hope you're just trolling and not merely a discouraged writer, because you sound very sad and bitter, and I think that's too bad.

I will say, however, that I find the irony of a poorly-spelled rant full of run-on sentences and no punctuation telling bad writers to "keep it to themselves" very amusing.
-------------------------
You're back into the bog.
[ Parent ]