I'm 21 y.o., homeless, bright, w/out an automobile. I think I have a betterthanmost literary potential and i'm musically inclined and talented. I was sitting in the lounge of a casino this afternoon giving my future potentialities odds: 13:1 against being overwhelmingly successful, 5:1 against being moderately sucessful, 3:1 against being totally destitute, 2:3 against being totally mediocre. My plan is to visit spain over the winter break and then move there after graduation. Do you think that I'll be successful or should I save myself the trouble and join the merchant marines and deign to accept my ultimate station as an asshole?
― b. michael, Sunday, 22 August 2004 07:39 (twenty-one years ago)
Do you really imagine that we have the information to answer this? However, 21 seems far too early to think about giving up on what you want to do.
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 22 August 2004 08:37 (twenty-one years ago)
Hey I'm 21, w/out an automobile too!
― Fred (Fred), Sunday, 22 August 2004 09:11 (twenty-one years ago)
When I was a senior in college I was afraid I was going to end up destitute too. I still am. But I'm not yet. Don't be a sucker. Follow your dreams.
― hd thoreau, Sunday, 22 August 2004 12:20 (twenty-one years ago)
Since this is ILB and here we talk about books, I'll suggest that you read some Richard Bach and Paulo Coelho.
― Fred (Fred), Sunday, 22 August 2004 15:20 (twenty-one years ago)
You're a lazy retarded wimp. Go join the coalition, serve in Iraq, and hopefully you'll get a bullet in your worthless brain within a few days.
― Rog, Sunday, 22 August 2004 16:06 (twenty-one years ago)
The only possible way to be a successful writer is to write, write some more and continue writing until your brain cramps. It also helps to have something to say, but if you don't find the act of writing endlessly interesting, you're better off getting out of the game right now.
Having no car is irrelevant to the outcome. Having little or no money is relevant, because you have to keep body and soul together, no matter what. The absence of money will most likely lead to a situation where your energy for writing will be sapped and your time for writing fragmented. This can be overcome, but it isn't an easy row to hoe.
My own study of the problem suggests two possible paths for your consideration.
If you burn with ambition and are irrationally driven to put your writing above every other aim in your life, then your life direction is already set; you'll live and die a writer, whether or not you succeed at it, whether or not you join the merchant marine, no matter your mediocrity or talent.
If you are more like a normal human with diffuse aims and variable ambitions, you are better off looking for a job somehow connected to writing, editing or publishing in some form - journalism, advertising, bookstore clerk, chief cook and bottle washer for a small press - any blessed job you can beg your way into. Then hang on, keep writing, and keep looking for breaks. If you have a decent modicum of talent some breaks will fall your way. You may even make a modest success of it, raise 2.3 kids, get a divorce and live the dream.
Good luck.
― Aimless The Unlogged, Sunday, 22 August 2004 16:19 (twenty-one years ago)
you can still accept your ultimate station, go to Spain and write - just ask Hemingway - and he'd no doubt say screw the odds
― sandy mc, Monday, 23 August 2004 08:29 (twenty-one years ago)
Spain's nice at this time of year. At any time of year in fact. When you say homeless, I'm thinking not really. Give your mom a call, tell her sorry you were sick on the dog.
Good luck. I've computed your success ratio: 19:2. Good odds.
― MikeyG (MikeyG), Monday, 23 August 2004 10:05 (twenty-one years ago)
Join the merchant marine. Write. The two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, books about the merchant marine are a damn sight more interesting than books about pretentious scribblers and their equally pretentious scribbling friends.
Take heart from Hemingway's life. From Orwell's, too.
― SRH (Skrik), Monday, 23 August 2004 15:38 (twenty-one years ago)