prodigy.

[thelizardgirl]

no, not the ISP.
i was reading eto's blog today, and i just wanted to say that i feel your pain...
i went to a creative and performing arts high school, and all of us were seriously planning to be well-established in our respective arts by the time we were graduated. i wanted to have a novel published by the time i was 18...but now it's too late. no one cares about 21 year olds. we're just your typical grown-ups now. and it's depressing.
and kind of angering, too...we weren't going to have "real" jobs and work 9 to 5 schedules. we were artists! actors! writers! we were gonna live forever!
it's painfully sobering. depressing knowing that i'm sitting here at my damn full time secretary job typing this while four unfinished plays lie at home because i'm too tired after work to work on them. the real world wasn't made for artists. that's why we all needed to "make it" before we got thrust out into the real world.
is it too late? am i now ::shudder:: too old?

[ZOMBIE USER 5255]

Tis not too late for us, Skizzy... There are still the majority of authors who are older than us early 20-year-olds. As my friend Pauy mentioned, the problem with being a minor-aged writer is they might publish your book solely on merit... Such as "Well, the kid's young and it's decent, so I'll publish it." We can't give up the fight just because of age. We have to go out there and show the world what we are. We do not need their routines, their minimum wage and their W2 forms. We need our computers, our pens, our creations... For though we may never have the six digit income of someone who hits balls with a stick all day and gets on sports cards, we shall contribute much to the Hidden America, the ones who dream the impossible in their studies and basements, who yearn for the extra-ordinary.

....Wow, I feel pep-talky today. ^^;; Sorry about that...

[thelizardgirl]

::wipes a tear from her eye::

it is true, eto. it is true. to infinity, and beyond!

er...sorry, that just slipped in.

[Risawn]

hmm, i wrote my first book in kindergarten. My mom wanted to get it published because she thought it was just too cute. Well, I thought about it too, and in my teen years I decided to publish another version of that book. It was basically a bunch of pictures of animals really, a childrens book. I think it was a good idea and I probably could have sold it, although I don't know if I could have gotten rich off it.

I never did publish it. I might eventually, however. But i do know the feeling. At times I've wanted to be famous. But in a way I'm glad I'm not.

I actually didn't know I liked to write until I turned 18, so by that time it was too late (I could vote)

[Lano Sei]

I won't be allowed to vote for almost a year and a half... there's hope. Only problem is actually finishing a story. You see, when ever I write a story I seem to get to about chapter seven. At that point I look back on the story to be reminded of something. I begin to read the story and I find that, what at somepoint I would have thought magnificent, SUCKS ARSE. No matter how much sprucing up I do and no matter how many times I fix it, it'll turn out even crappier and I'll end up wasting it.

[ZOMBIE USER 5255]

*laughs* That's why I don't go back and edit too much.. XD;;; I dunno. For some reason, when I write, sometimes I forget I wrote it like that... I surprise myself with what I've put, so I always find myself half-way content with it. It's the plot that suffers.

[Lano Sei]

Another thing I do when I write is sit with a dictionary in my hand and check every third word to make sure that it's the perfect word to use in a certain place or if it means what I think it means. My eye always seems to wander and I end up using words like <i>gorp</i>. Take this paragraph for example:
<b>A young boy of but seventeen summers trudged through the vast sands of the desert, delirious, shivering and weary. His bag he had left behind several miles back. He had emptied it of the foods, mostly gorp of sorts, which he found in it. His canteen was dry and filling up with sand a few hundred feet away from whence he stood. The boy was quivering in the cold even as the tepid draft struck him. He knew the little power he had left would not carry him much further but it was not in him to submit.</b>
I mean, who the hell knows what gorp means?! (<i>a snack consisting of high-calorie food [as rasins and nuts]</i>)

[thelizardgirl]

sometimes i think that mothers are a writer's worst enemy...i was reading over some of my really old stuff, and bligher, was it crap. but of course my mother was all "you should get it published! it's fantastic!"
damn mothers filling our heads with false hopes.

[Flurf]

hi everyone, i'm back. ^^;;

you guys are truly fortunate to possess the creative energy to come up with the ideas for all these stories, the talent to phrase and express them via words and pictures, and the persistence to actually write them out and get them exposed to the world. i hope that you all never lose sight of your goals and keep trying to get published, on behalf of those of us who can't even get their ideas formulated enough past step 1.

goodness, i haven't written a fictional short story since high school...