![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
The Importance of Being Prolific
Once again, Hacker News is discussing an oddly artsy article: The Importance of Being Prolific, which discusses the differences between prolific and non-prolific artists in various mediums (filmakers, novelists, etc). Pretty good read.
Some random related thoughts: while it's certainly not unheard of for a famous writer to publish only one or two books in their lifetime (To Kill a Mockingbird is the canonical example, but there's also Wuthering Heights and Invisible Man), as far as I know this is not the case for visual art—for a visual artist to be considered famous/well-regarded, they almost always need to have a large body of work. Part of this is probably due to the nature of the mediums—a piece of art is quicker to digest than a whole novel—but I still find this rather interesting.
Also, it's interesting to consider how the age of an artist factors into their work. I'm mainly thinking of music here—when you look at the romantic era of music, all the famous composers either (a) died young, or (b) produced their best work while they were young. (I remember when my piano teacher first told me this, I didn't believe her, so I went home and looked up all my favorite romantic composers—and, yup, nearly all of 'em kicked the bucket early.) Other eras of music have favored older composers, but it seems youthfulness was inextricably linked to the sound of romanticism.
Some random related thoughts: while it's certainly not unheard of for a famous writer to publish only one or two books in their lifetime (To Kill a Mockingbird is the canonical example, but there's also Wuthering Heights and Invisible Man), as far as I know this is not the case for visual art—for a visual artist to be considered famous/well-regarded, they almost always need to have a large body of work. Part of this is probably due to the nature of the mediums—a piece of art is quicker to digest than a whole novel—but I still find this rather interesting.
Also, it's interesting to consider how the age of an artist factors into their work. I'm mainly thinking of music here—when you look at the romantic era of music, all the famous composers either (a) died young, or (b) produced their best work while they were young. (I remember when my piano teacher first told me this, I didn't believe her, so I went home and looked up all my favorite romantic composers—and, yup, nearly all of 'em kicked the bucket early.) Other eras of music have favored older composers, but it seems youthfulness was inextricably linked to the sound of romanticism.
no subject
I've resorted to various forms of trickery, since then, to force myself to actually finish stuff sometimes, both origfic and fanfic—and I (quite tentatively) think that I'm becoming a better writer for it, just because I'm forcing myself to regularly wrestle with larger, story-structure-related issues that I hadn't been confronting in years. (mostly it's just made me aware of how much stuff I haven't tried, and how much experimentation I still need to do, and so much to improve so little time, oi.)
but yeah, re: words vs. works, I guess it sort of depends on what the writer wants or needs to focus on—I don't think the time I spent writing random unfinished scenes was a waste, and I learned things, but focusing more on finished works seems to be benefiting me for the time being.
and re: essay-ing on creative process... hm. there was a time when I basically thought reading/talking about writing was mostly navel-gazing bullshit, and the only way you could really learn or improve on anything of value was just sitting down and writing. so I guess this meta-writing talk still feels weird and new to me, and while I'm enjoying it, I'm still undecided as to how much it's impacting my own work, so I suppose the jury's still out for me on that one.