Sorry went off on a tangent.
I'm terrible with that shit, I meant just to make the point that since I've only started I haven't experienced writers block, and I thought this correlated with the way my mind works and literally creates character outlines, plot, scenes, environment, and how I can reconnect to it.
Didn't mean to sidetrack, I'm still going to respond to foreverafter's quote though. Sorry if that's a minor inconvenience
Reading is by no means bad. It is great that you've read that much. This might sound weird, but it sounds like you've read "enough" for the time being. You have been stockpiling literature in your brain for decades by the sound of it. I would recommend you stop reading, for a while, and start writing an absolute fuck ton of words. Like spend a month or two writing for hours, every day. The fact that you don't watch television is hugely beneficial to your potential as a writer. Television is, for the most part, utter shit. People waste so much time on television and Facebook. I haven't had a television, with an aerial, for over five years. I watch a few select shows that I download. No commercials. No free-to-air brain rot. At the moment, I'm taking a 6 month break from film and television. Focusing entirely on reading, writing and University. Literature is such a competitive industry that - in order to be published - you need to make major sacrifices. I've got to stop taking drugs, too.
Thanks for the encouragement, means a great deal.
To me, psychedelics are very helpful if you've done them, learned from them and what perspective they allow you to embrace the world with, and taken a break. As Allan Watts once said "Once you get the answer, hang up the phone." They're not really conducive to writing and my trip reports are always jangled on account of this, so I've reverted to a tape recorder
(a good way to catch ideas on the fly or interview people, they have free apps on the phone now - sticking with the writers block subject. Play back your taperecorder and start punching those keys).
Drugs improve my ability to write, and increase my versatility as a writer, but they don't - generally - improve my ability to actually produce finished and polished bodies of work. Amphetamines and opiates are exceptions to the rule, somewhat. I used to be convinced that psychedelics gave me special artistic "abilities". And maybe they do. I come up with amazing ideas when I'm tripping, and I can write in different styles, etc. Mushrooms and marijuana, in particular, allow me to depart from my normal way of thinking. The problem is, I'm not focused enough to produce publishable work or lengthy pieces of writing - like a novel or a feature length screenplay. Amphetamines make me too focused. I don't have room to breathe, creatively. I've tried to write on every drug. Tried to find a shortcut, so I can cheat my way past all the hard work and fast-track my career.
So far everything I've written has been mostly sober, but a lot of what I've written in the past has been whilst ripped to the tits. I agree, they certainly can be a deterrent. I wrote that critique of your story last night sober.
I also finished the rough draft of my short story, sober. Interestingly enough the concept came from a deep methoxetamine philosophically crazed experience that happened not all that long ago.
The outline of my novel I wrote whilst in horrid benzo withdrawal, taking grams of neurontin and after 5 quick drinks I just sat down and spilled my guts. On this occasion, the booze and everything else was the catalyst allowing me to drop all anxiety and just do the damned thing. I think it's different for everyone, and it's hard to generalize because their will always be that one exception to the rule. Poe, for one.
You mentioned Hunter S Thompson, and a number of other writer's who used drugs excessively throughout their careers. I used to love Hunter and Philip K Dick and William Burroughs. I still do, but - once upon a time - I thought they were the best writers out there. These days, I don't think they are. I recognize how their work has suffered from drug use. Hunter could have been a greater writer than he was, if he gave up the drugs. I truly believe that. A lot of highly drug-influenced writers have a chaotic quality to their novels. Even when they're not writing about drugs, you can feel the presence of the drugs in their words. Philip K Dick is a great example of this. Most of his novels are incomplete. I used to think that he didn't care about polishing his work, now I'm starting to think that the element he is missing stems from his sober mind.
Sometimes I like to write stories from different angles. I come at them from the psychedelic angle, and the amphetamine angle, and the opiate angle, and the dissociative angle. The "angle" I have most neglected is the most important one. The sober angle. No altered state of consciousness. Just me.
I agree about Hunter, he could have been a hell of a lot better in his later years, but he didn't want it. I respect him for doing what he wanted to do and getting away with it. "If you're going to be crazy, you'd better get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up." His main problem was booze though hands down. Just like Hemingway, all drunks. Do you distinguish between alcohol and other drugs? PM the answer as not to clutter the thread any more I feel bad enough already with these abhorring tangents I go on.
Burroughs however didn't take drugs in his later years only methadone which I doubt had any affect at all. Again, you're more of an avid critic I feel, but some of Burroughs best stuff came during the 80's when he was reading his stuff at punk rock clubs. "The place of dead roads" and it's prequel, "cities of the red night" are so imaginative and what fun to hear him read them aloud! I highly suggest downloading "The best of William Burroughs" audio collection.
I take writing very seriously, and I've improved a lot over the past five - or so - years. Nothing I have contributed to this site is an indication of where I am as a writer, because I tend to save the work that I deem to have serious potential for fear of exposing myself via bluelight as a drug user. I believe I am capable of producing a publishable novel now. In order to do so, however, I need to get sober. I have sacrificed everything else in my life except for drugs. I keep delaying it. It feels like I'm faced with a choice. I can either: continue to get high, or get published. It's a difficult decision. A couple of years ago, I would have insisted that I would never stop the drugs for a prolonged period of time. But, things change.
I can tell and I'm very fortunate to find myself involved in this forum with you around, along with everyone else I've been reading about and conversing with.
I've come to the conclusion that I simply can't do anything else. I HAVE to write, and I've waited long enough. I start college majoring in English for the first time this fall. I'm deadly serious. Been writing all day.
I'll reluctantly settle for a job in journalism in order to eat, should it come to that, but I'm not going to write rubbish. It's not in me. I have friends who are tattoo artists that share the same principle, offer them 700 dollars and if they know its going to look like shit on you, they won't do it. It's a mutual sentiment, bad for the artist, bad for the recipient of said tattoo. Same with writing. Bryon Gyson said that writing is 50 years behind painting, which could be true. I've spent enough time in various tattoo shops to come to know some really skilled paintings/tattoos etc. They say it all without words. I'm a ball of irony because I can't ever seem to shut my word hole, yet know that nothing can truly be accurately portrayed through words. I digress, again.
