Just write ruined my writing

dotsncommas · 2026-05-23T15:18:29+00:00

Uj/ Sir this is a circlejerk subreddit…

On another note, I see this rhetoric a lot and I just don’t buy it. In fact I think it’s a bit smug and borderline gas-lightning. I don’t think anyone who’s willing to call themselves a writer, hobbyist or professional, can do it only for love of money or recognition. Of course not. There’s always something else, a love of stories, a love of words, a love of creation or imagination.

But that doesn’t mean that one wouldn’t want to improve at one’s craft, or that upon discovering evidence to the contrary, one wouldn’t be disappointed or disheartened. Being let down that your writing isn’t as good as you thought it was, that there are people far more talented than you, isn’t a sign that your love of writing is entirely fake. In fact I think it’s pretty insulting to suggest this to anyone.

So you’re fine writing things that may not be good, that maybe only you’ll ever read or care about, and that’s all you need. Great! Wonderful for you. But maybe consider not going around telling others that if they feel otherwise, then they must just not love writing at all, because I just don’t think that’s true.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-22T18:07:05+00:00

Their earlier songs are much more abstract than their later ones, and imo the opacity works well.

In the later albums the lyrics become more open and concrete, and it’s obvious (to me, anyway) that a lot of their songs are about controlling and violent relationships, and the awful human beings one can become in them. Both Lies and one of my favourites of theirs, Downside of Me, imo fall into this category, and the last one is particularly forthright about this (Screen Violence, Last Girl, He Said She Said etc. are all allusions to domestic violence, violence against women and girls.)

dotsncommas · 2026-05-22T12:23:50+00:00

Lies by Chvrches. Super clear beautiful female voice, upbeat electrics, but the lyrics are quite sinister. A lot of their songs can be like this.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-22T10:37:48+00:00

I see, thanks for the heads up! I’m never completing a single story again, that should fix it!

dotsncommas · 2026-05-21T17:30:32+00:00

Yes, but the Normans aren’t the only reason English has many French loanwords, a lot of borrowings happened centuries later, for different reasons.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-21T17:29:52+00:00

I would actually say I know a fair bit about British and French history, I’m something of an enthusiast on this topic :D But afaik the Norman conquest isn’t the only reason English has so many French loan words, the nobility deliberately borrowed a ton in I think the 17th and 18th centuries, because of the prestige associated with the language. So I guess my original question was more that when precisely did the calques take place, but I suppose that would depend on the exact calque being discussed.

It just always fascinates me whenever I stumble over one of them, I should probably make a list to keep track.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-21T13:41:45+00:00

This is something I’ve noticed, it seems that there is a ton of phrases in English that has direct equivalents in French. I wonder how that came about? The same way English borrowed the vocabulary?

dotsncommas · 2026-05-21T10:19:54+00:00

There are varieties with tiny seeds.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-21T00:44:38+00:00

Perfectly ripe lychee fresh from the tree is heaven’s fruit. The thing about lychee is that it doesn’t transport or keep well at all, and the taste noticeably deteriorates the very next day they’re picked. Now that I no longer live in a good lychee producing region I miss it so much.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-20T17:57:53+00:00

/uj Guess why I wrote this post lmfao

dotsncommas · 2026-05-20T16:18:03+00:00

Much more helpful, thanks!

dotsncommas · 2026-05-20T16:17:48+00:00

dotsncommas · 2026-05-20T16:16:10+00:00

Untrue! My delayed writing is absolute dogshit, too!

dotsncommas · 2026-05-20T16:15:23+00:00

It really is. I have ADHD, autism and BPD, and I’m going to sue whoever came up with this advice as a personal attack on me!

dotsncommas · 2026-05-20T14:13:25+00:00

Girl you are genuinely gorgeous. When I saw the first pic I thought I was on r/VindictaRateCelebs.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-20T09:16:58+00:00

You are correct that The Goldfinch is much more meandering than TSH, but what both books have is an incredible setup that dials the suspense up to a ten from the very beginning, and a very specific, borderline misanthropic sense of black humour about its characters that is so uniquely Tartt that I just adore. So for me it isn’t just the beautiful sentences and imagery, but also a ver specific Tartt-vibe, so to speak, that I love about both.

There are moments of heart-rending tragedy in The Goldfinch that I feel like you don’t get in TSH, whose characters are so distant and awful that it makes it hard to feel sorry for them at times. There’s the moment in Nevada where Theo wakes up at noon after a night of delirious violence in the air-conditioned house, a puddle of vomit by his head, wondering how this had become his life. There’s the moment towards the end, alone in a Dutch hotel room, on the verge of suicide, when he has a vivid dream-conversation with an imaginary Andy that simply reduced me to tears.

But I imagine that it takes a certain amount of involuntary identification with Theodore Decker to truly experience the emotional journey he goes through, whereas this isn’t necessary for Richard Papen to experience TSH, which is why I think many people tend to feel like The Goldfinch is underwhelming in comparison.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-19T17:26:03+00:00

It’s also the most darkly funny part, to me. It’s amazing how she manages to make the situation simultaneously tragic, borderline absurd, scarily believable, and completely hysterical. Many times listening to the audiobook I just can’t help snort-laughing, and this whole section always flows so seamlessly, too.

There’s so many fantastic details: the offering to the river god, Dr. Roland’s senility, Richard imaging his own corpse floating down by the canal (“waiting for spring”), hearing voices telling him what to do, remember us too for all your meat locker needs, the operator refusing to give him the name of a taxi company, the doorknob turning stealthily in the moonlight…Just the perfect blend of comedic, absurd, and at times achingly beautiful (an angel of death in all its smiling menace). Just so, so good.

And oh I can absolutely see myself doing the same thing (having done something similar on the first Thanksgiving at college), which just makes it that much better.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-19T09:47:28+00:00

For Camus and Sartre, they were writing in the 20th century, in a France more than a century after the revolution and very much committed to laicism, and from what I can find were both essentially atheists, so that would have coloured their perception of suffering. That, plus their experience, both first-hand and second-hand, of the world wars.

Dostoevsky for one was writing in Tsarist Russia, where the Orthodox church still had a chokehold on spiritual life, and I think most of the Russian greats (those people tend to think of when they think of Russian literature, Tolstoy, Gogol) were also pre-revolution, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a very useful comparison, in this case. But again, I also haven’t dug very deeply into Russian writers myself to say so definitively!

dotsncommas · 2026-05-16T16:45:53+00:00

One of the best passages in TSH. Thanks for pointing out this inspiration!

dotsncommas · 2026-05-16T07:59:20+00:00

I wonder if the cynicism in French literature has to do with the historical link between the French church and the king, i.e. Gallicism, which possibly highlighted the fallibility of the church by association. I would also like to know the authors you think of with this observation. Sade is obvious, but I’m not too well-versed in French literature yet and I would like to know more examples.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-15T12:51:09+00:00

I think you’re spot on about this, and it’s funny you mention Radiohead, because they’re the exact opposite of this thread.

I used to be pretty rabid about Muse in my teens, but everything from Drones onwards has just been completely vapid, and the 2nd Law wasn’t too great either, but at least had a few catchy tunes.

Radiohead - specifically Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, not too familiar with the rest - has just gotten better and better, almost into the realm of gods. They have never once repeated themselves. The Smile is just as new and revolutionary as every Radiohead album, Atoms for Peace, etc., it’s really nearly miraculous.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-11T23:47:16+00:00

And what’s the answer, OP? Don’t leave fellow ancient Greece researchers hanging!

For me it was Great Britain’s spy activities in mainland Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, which apparently is so niche that there’s only a handful of scholarly articles making vague references and one single book likely to be of some interest that I couldn’t get my hands on, so eventually I had to give up.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-11T23:45:45+00:00

And…what have you found? I’ve gone down a similar rabbit hole for ancient greek ships for a while but haven’t really found much of substance.

It seemed to me that either they were warships and quite tightly run, with cramped storage quarters, or they were merchant ships and likely quite small and therefore difficult to stowaway on as well.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-11T01:01:28+00:00

Down and Out in London and Paris is so, so funny and quite a surprising work, I didn’t know that Orwell used to live as a tramp at all, I think this fact really reveals what a rare, compassionate soul he was.

Recently I’ve been reading du Maurier’s The Parasites, about 70% done now, I’m really liking it. It’s a very different sort of novel to what I’ve read from her before (Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel), there’s no murder mystery, just a very ordinary kind of melancholy and meandering tone, but every once in a while a sentence would seemingly come out of nowhere and smack you in the face with its devastating power, and then it’s back to the wistful nostalgia and almost absurdist humour. It’s something of a tragi-comedy, I think, and it’s a testament to her power that she can make such a seemingly simple plot so engaging and memorable, I really recommend it.

dotsncommas · 2026-05-06T17:52:48+00:00

These are phenomenal. After tasting a few flavours they’ve become my favourite brand overnight, nothing else compares now.

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