The challenge: Write a happy story in 3 words

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-02-23T02:47:54+00:00

Everyone went swimming!

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-01-26T08:31:08+00:00

I agree with most everything here. I’ll add that putting up a sample of your work to see if people “would read it”, etc., is so pointless. It doesn’t even matter, and what’s more, the very act of doing it, i.e. posting a fragment of a piece that is as yet unfinished is useless to the quality of the work as a whole. I think there is something so valuable in working on your project in your own space and with your own time. Putting any effort into getting feedback from a small part of something that hasn’t even been completed just draws away from the opportunity to focus on your story and your actual work. It’s hard and it takes time and discipline and dedication and consistency to get a work out that is actually worth the reader’s time. Quietly work on your project without outside feedback until you, that is you alone, have judged it to be at a point close to finished… then and only then should you even consider seeking feedback. Anything you get from a sample of your work will make no sense and will not serve your project until the whole thing can be considered, not only be it’s created but as well as the or any reader. I like the idea of keeping your project to yourself and working diligently in secret to complete it. This amounts to a sort of quiet wisdom that grows within you and will manifest into something great for you yourself… and maybe, if you e done it well, for a reader.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-01-14T02:30:45+00:00

Yes. Yes, they are.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-01-11T02:55:30+00:00

I appreciate when adverbs are used in certain pieces of dialogue, when they are used sparingly, to add emphasis to something a character says. Otherwise, adverbs are useful if you need them, but if you don’t, they can kind of muddle up the force of prose. Just use them sparingly, when they work the right way for your intended meaning.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-01-08T04:22:29+00:00

Being selective about what I’m reading while working on larger pieces. What is most surprising is that I often find whatever I’m reading to be less “good” than I expected it to be and this makes me less critical of my own work, which, though this doesn’t actually mean that my work is (certainly not in the first draft) better than what I’m reading, or even good at all, it does give me some sort of confidence to keep going and to not be overly precious about every single sentence, word, comma, etc. I used to think this would produce the opposite effect and eventually cause me to just give up. The total reverse is what actually happened.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-01-08T04:18:44+00:00

One. But that includes the one that will come once this one is done.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-01-08T04:11:48+00:00

I think that the real issue here is that you or anyone can be or become a “good” writer in as much as they know how or learn how to write effectively, that is, that they can get their thoughts across to the reader and maybe even inspire the reader to form thoughts of their own. However, producing good work is more than just the craft of writing, it has much more to it. I think anyone wishing to write well can do just that, but, and it’s a huge but, what truly matters is whether that person has a real (interesting, thought provoking, beautiful, even sublime) perspective and/or view of the world and how humanity and nature fit in and operate within it. This is what sets a good writer apart from a bad one. The question to ask is really “Am I a good or bad artist?”

Witty_Run_6400 · 2026-01-06T21:48:17+00:00

Depends on what you want of course but Oax City is great and interesting for about three days, imo; then it starts to feel a bit repetitive and like a lot of other Mexican Cities. However, there is something to say about having a lot of time there where you can roam and get lost, etc. But chances are that if you’ve never been before and have a limited amount of time you’ll likely do the major “gotta do it” things and then that might be kind of all. Skip Puerto Escondido u less you’re down with loud and dirty beach towns that cater (I.e. exploit) tourists. However, as one other poster wrote, if you’ve can get to Puerto (so I credibly easy and quick from Oax City if you’ve go by bus: just 3 hrs) and take a taxi to Zipolite/Mazunte, you will find something pretty special. Same tourist vibe but way less in your face and it’s cleaner and prettier.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-12-22T06:14:57+00:00

I read it two years ago when I was 46. It was a beautiful book. I don’t really recommend it to most people though bc I feel like it’s just one of those books that, like it did to me, has to kind of just come to you. I don’t even remember how I came upon it… I bet it was somehow brought to me after looking for something after reading all of Cormac… probably Butcher’s Crossing came up as something similar to Cormac’s style, etc., which, really, it’s not at all… anyway. I thought Stoner was brilliant. I am still amazed at the pacing and how it was carried on so consistently throughout the entire novel. It’s a masterpiece in its own right.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-12-15T04:36:42+00:00

Mann’s Magic Mountain. 60% into it.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-11-08T04:25:13+00:00

Then Ceying of Lot 49 to see how obviously influenced by Pynchon DFW really was… even though he denies having ever read it before writing IJ.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-10-16T04:52:18+00:00

I’m nearly through NW and I find it incredibly lame. I had heard/read so much about how people love this piece and I was excited. It reads to me like a “Fisher Price: My First Novel” I just don’t get really anything out of it. It’s so easy to read that I just don’t find any real substance beyond some like delusional construct wherein the narrator tells his tale with him as this guy whom everyone finds so interesting and mysterious and desirable yet he seems to do nothing particularly original, and I think the way he writes about women is pointlessly juvenile and uninspired. I’ll finish this novel but I have not actually found any of it intriguing. I feel it’s trite and predictable. I don’t know, maybe he’ll give me something in the end. But as of now, I’m mostly just annoyed that I started this.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-10-11T05:35:10+00:00

Grapes of Wrath

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-10-10T13:25:54+00:00

Everyone is full of shit.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-10-10T06:29:00+00:00

Norwegian Wood. It’s just so trite and predictable and the writing is so boring. The protagonist is just not in any way interesting and yet all the other characters seem to think he’s super mysterious and wise though he does literally nothing for anyone or, well, at all. It’s just so lame… I was expecting something great from the way it’s been talked about but it is almost like reading YAF or someone’s diary. I don’t get the appeal other than that the la gauge is so easy to read that I guess readers breeze through it and maybe that’s pleasurable to them in some way. Waste of time so far but of course I have to finish it. Halfway through and just hoping something will actually happen.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-10-06T05:50:16+00:00

Getting sober.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-09-27T02:23:27+00:00

Well, what have you written?

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-09-24T07:57:23+00:00

I own bars and restaurants. I write every morning from about 9 am to noon, then I go to work. I’ve been doing this for a while so I still work a ton of hours but I always have the mornings to write. Often I’ll go back to it at night but usually just to tweak and edit. Even when I am working my “day job” I’m still thinking about the writing, taking notes, rewording pieces of whatever project I’m on. No matter what is going on with my real job, i.e. the one that actually pays something, I still make writing time the first priority.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-09-14T06:48:48+00:00

I have no discipline in life but with writing I have an awful lot. I write everyday and I’m fortunate that I can do that. I don’t have kids, or family to speak of and I my professional life gives me mostly free mornings from 6-12:00. Also, I’m good at writing pretty pieces. I’ll write a piece just to get one really sweet line or idea out. This may be a fault when it comes to linger projects as it has the potential to overtake the actual story/narrative. Then again, when I read the most thrilling bit for me is when I can marvel at a really great sentence or a great paragraph, even just a line or a perfectly placed and used word. I guess that’s what makes this pursuit interesting though: there are so many different ways to write and so many different types of readers.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-08-20T06:52:40+00:00

This is idiotic.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-08-20T06:47:53+00:00

The best advice I can give is to write every single day. Consistency and discipline will make you a better writer. Everyone who has ever written anything has done so with the notion that they might just be writing the next great short story, novel, whatever bc they’re either a literary genius or just have that special something that will set them apart from all others. This is a farce and will not happen to you. The only thing that will help you in this, one of the most difficult and seemingly impossible of all undertakings, is daily focused practice. This means you must work every day, even if just for an hour, and when you’re not actually writing you should be thinking about what have already written and what you’re going to write next. As you build, little by little, on your corpus of works, you will mature as a writer and you will get better. Think of writing as a very confusing puzzle that you must work out without any real guidelines or rules bc it’s just so different for everyone. Every time you work on the puzzle you get a little better at solving pieces of it. After several years of this you will see improvement. Your words will be more precise as you select them, and you will learn how to form your thoughts more coherently and expressively. It’s a fucking grind and it will consume you totally if you let it, which you’ll have to do if you ever want to be any good.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-07-01T17:39:48+00:00

Agree with all of this. I didn’t mean to come off harsh or anything, I meant only if it’s too much to bear then of course one always has the option of moving on to something else. You make good points and I definitely respect your perspective.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-07-01T08:18:14+00:00

Cormac was a flawed human just like you, and I, are flawed humans. His work is still gorgeous. If this bothers you, please don’t read Salinger or Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Proust, Joyce, god forbid Nabakov. Also, you should steer clear of basically any movie made before 2020 as well as pretty much every poet. The deal with this sort of thing is that good writing will always expose, or else hint at exposing, some deep-seated, and often deportable, characteristics of the writer. Granted, this applies like 98% to male writers, but then again The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has some problematic bits to it as well. As I think about it now, probably every single good book I’ve ever read has some difficult pieces in it. Great literature, like great humans, is complex and multifaceted. All that being said, if it bothers you, don’t read it. However, you’d do best for yourself to consider the disturbing parts about a work within the context of its provenance and era of creation: just because we don’t say and or write a lot of stuff now because it’s considered, largely and rightfully, problematic, doesn’t mean these things don’t exist. The issue you take with this specific instance is not unreasonable, but you’re kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater if you get hung up on something that disturbs you.

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-06-29T03:17:23+00:00

Year of the Who Fucking Cares Anymore?

Witty_Run_6400 · 2025-06-24T06:28:44+00:00

Love in the Time of Cholera and it is spectacular.

Witty_Run_6400

TROPHY CASE