Hacker News Reader

That's the point of the article though. They're saying that instead of trying to grit your teeth and push through something you hate to satisfy an arbitrary goal, you should find the thing that you're crazy for enjoying so much and pursue that, because doing it is what the vast majority of your life will actually be spent on

I get the point, but this is fantasy thinking. The vast majority of people will actually never find that thing despite trying their entire life to find it, and for those that do find it, it will likely be a thing society doesn't care about. Obsession is a gift in my opinion, many people don't have it, and im envious of the clarity of purpose those that do have it seem to enjoy.

The primary reason Bill Gates is a billionaire is because he was born at the perfect time for someone to be obsessed with how computers work. What would he have done if he was born 100 years earlier?

> What would he have done if he was born 100 years earlier?

Introducing the Microsoft Slide Rule

That reminds me of another wolf, Gene Wolfe. He wrote some of the most complex and critically praised science fiction to date, and most of his famous works were done in his free time while working as an industrial engineer. Or for that matter, a certain patent clerk who wrote some really fine physics papers.

Other examples: Baruch Spinoza, lensmaker by day, philosopher by night. Philip Glass: moving man, plumber, cab driver, and avant-garde composer. E. E. "Doc" Smith: food engineer and science fiction writer. Franz Kafka: administrator in an insurance company, and writer of history's weirdest books. Wallace Stevens: insurance company executive and poet. William Carlos Williams: doctor and poet. And these are just off the top of my head.

This is messing with my head. I love Spinoza and Kafka and couldn't imagine them as anything else but being full-time thinkers and writers.

Who told you they weren't? Are you only a programmer or a thinker about programming while at keys?

i think by full time they meant sitting around in some dingy room, smoking cigarettes and positing/thinking rather than filling most of their days with other activities that have nothing to do with this craft (and i would say to posit well, you need life experiences and they did exactly what they needed to do to become legendary)

'Another county heard from.'

Thanks for dropping by. No need to hurry back.

Thanks for that substantive contribution.

Personally, the line between 'administrator in an insurance company' and Kafka's works fits neatly within my mental model of the world.

Which makes me wonder what he called the kind of experience a person has when dealing with an insurance company: the word "Kafkaesque" didn't exist yet.

"Inspiration", perhaps.

Bukowski: pickle factory for a while then 13ish years at the united states postal service

and a lot of his work revolves around working at the post office and pickle factory

Anthony Trollope worked at the post office, Andy Weir was a programmer until he hit it big with The Martian.

Robert Frost was an insurance guy or something

Just took a look at Wikipedia. No mention of insurance, but he did write much of his early work while farming during the day. As did Robert Burns.

Was thinking of T.S. Eliot, worked at Lloyds but in banking not insurance.

No, Frost was a teacher and a farmer to make money.[1] Tom Clancy was an insurance agent.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Frost

Was thinking of T.S. Eliot

Wallace Stevens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens

Wilfred Owen: soldier and poet (whose poetry was ignored/neglected until the 1960s)

TIL Kafka worked in insurance... wild!

There's a short video of two guys parodying what Brandon Sanderson's writing problem is like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZVAPGE-YE

I think there are plenty of successful authors who don't have the same obsession as Sanderson and Wolff, but they are obsessed in different ways. And I think that's the key: if there's something that you enjoy doing and can find some aspect that you can really obsess over—it doesn't have to be the same as everyone else (probably better if not)—then you might be able to make that work as a fulfilling career.

The best advice about writing for a living I ever got was in a book I read as a young aspiring writer. It was to the effect of "Most people who say they want to write actually want to 'be a writer'. If you can be happy doing anything else for a living, do that instead. Only write if you feel like you'll go crazy if you don't."

I got that advice too, but now I feel like they say that about every profession

I'm not a writer, but I do write, and I also read this advice when younger then promptly ignored it. I think it was from Bukowski.

It sounded, and still sounds, like "Only run if running bursts from the soles of your feet and you feel like you'll go crazy if you don't." Well, no. It might be good advice for a professional athlete -- I wouldn't know -- but you can run whenever you damn well feel like it as an amateur. So too for writing.

As the OP said, that advice is for people who wish to write for a living, i.e. wannabe professional wroters.

The vast majority of the most-successful people in any field, by whatever definition of "success" that field has, are people who would do it even if they weren't successful. You can't fake it. The old saying that "hard work trumps anything else" is an almost-cruel thing to say to kids who don't know any better: A person swimming downstream will exert the same calories as one swimming upstream, do the same work, but end up swimming ten times further.

This may be a place where writing for magazines for instance is a good thing.

Standup comics try out new material on tour, and then save up the bits that work for big gigs and specials. Creative writing isn't that different from joke writing. Write yourself a bunch of short stories, try things out, see what sticks, novelize the good ones. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik was a short story. There are some famous books out there that were originally done as serials.

Do more, but find ways to shed the unsuccessful attempts, or otherwise give yourself permission to fail. If you're not failing occasionally you aren't reaching far enough.

Writing is interesting, though, because there's also a steady stream of writers regurgitating the "I don't like writing, I like having written" line too.

George RR Martin possibly the most famous/contemporary example, but here's a page tracing back recorded instances of it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/10/18/on-writing/

I think this applies to many creative activities, or even general problem-solving tasks as well. I don't like going through the frustrations of the puzzle-solving process in programming, but it sure increases the accomplishment of having debugged the issue and finished the program, later on.

Interestingly enough, i know some people who love programming. They make side projects, contribute to open source etc. But they kind of hate it as a job.

One problem with programming as a job is that you have to work on the project (and with the tools) that your employer or customer wants you to.

On side projects, open source etc, you get to work on projects (and with tools) that you care about and/or want to use or work on.

This kind of thing probably applies in some other jobs, but not all. Music, writing, visual arts and design, and construction at least seem like something where the particular target or process may be a vital part of the interest and satisfaction.

Paul Graham wrote a nice article about this.

https://www.paulgraham.com/genius.html

In my life, I knew a guy who was obsessed with the Beatles. You couldn't get him to shut up about it. People hated listening to him but he didn't care, he just wanted to talk about the Beatles. Now imagine if he was obsessed with software development - he could change the world.

My first thought when I read this, and it may very well be misinformed, was that she is probably using a team of ghostwriters. Many novelists at that level are. Your name just becomes a brand at a certain point.

People always say that about productive writers

And then you have guys like Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who wrote a single, and quite short, book, and it is vastly better than all the crap those writing multiple books per year can produce.

> Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

The appeal of short form names like these is clear considering his full formal name and title is

Don Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, Baron of Montechiaro, Baron of La Torretta, and Grandee of Spain of the first class.

I didnt vote for him

It's why Lampart is such a good book - he knew what he was describing.

Asimov was the same apparently, as is Stephen King, its what they do.

it is so exhausting to talk to some people who obviously don't like what they have to do for a living and then expect others to also hate what they do.

I get that it must suck to do some bullshit job you don't want to just so you don't starve, but I studied for the thing I wanted to do, found a job doing what I wanted to, and now someone is paying me relatively well to do the thing I would do on my own time. Then I get called wage slave and capitalism boot licker just because I found someone to pay for my hobby.