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Great channel, glad I discovered it

This is the best advice I've heard about poetry in many years.

So I wasn't wrong about Kaur.

Just finished the book, I loved your interpretation, your students are lucky!

Beginner novelists need to do 1,000 words every time they write during drafting, no question. If you cant hit that number then you need to fill the creative well more. 1,000 words of drafting is practically nothing. Tons of your beginner material will be cut, so dont be precious about it! Make a mess on the page and slowly develop your ability to tighten the material.

True. A bigger enemy are the 'publish fast' types, but this is true as well. You're wrong about certainty, though. Certainty is for cowards, and what you describe sounds like publishing for art's sake, rather than all these external rewards, but you're saying that's bad.

What's wrong with writing both commercial fiction and high literary fiction? Does a desire to be successful in the marketplace with something palatable to a group that does not develop higher levels of consciousness preclude the formation of more challenging elevated works? I don't think so, I enjoy both light faire and heavy hitting works. I don't weigh them equally, but they exist.

How expensive is it? I would think it would be well worth the money!

I honestly had no idea you covered Mishima extensively. Thanks for this! Having said that, however, I think you're missing a large point that he makes early in your vid, and I say this bc of your later emphasis on "negative comments." Mishima criticizes art that creates a "strange confidence" in weak people, but he also criticizes those weak people, those who "cannot even admonish someone smoking on the train." You tell me: What author - or ANYONE - do you know who has confronted a stranger on a subway for their behavior? You think Gilles Deleuze would have done so? You think Obama would? Mishima is saying we should ALL be Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse. And the fact that most are NOT is due in no small part to weak literature. So, if Mishima is critical of people who don't physically stand up for ideals, please explain how you think he would take issue with those who defend ideas spoken in public discourse. Sure, there are plenty of keyboard warriors out there, but every negative comment is not a troll. I often learn more from comments than I do from the original vid/post that preceded the comment. And I bet you have too. Despite your overall message of positivity, you seem to lack faith in human intelligence to be able to separate trolling from valid criticism. Resist, my brother, resist. Anybody who puts something out there to be absorbed should be prepared for reactions - both good and bad. If your message doesn't create a reaction, then your audience consists exclusively of those same weak people that Mishima is criticizing. (edit for spelling)

This has nothing to do with the video, but thanks for getting me into Cormac McCarthy.

Great energy :)

Let's go Ian :)

I liked what you framed up here with Mishima's quotes and your added points. I do find it hard to trust writers who have not been punched in the face or lashed out in a fit of rage yet attempt to write about it in their books. Good writing should be based on experiences and having been out on the front lines seeing it for yourself. If you want to know bright light you have to know, at least been subject to deep darkness, and as you say, live to share it.

Dear Ian i'm from Argentina like Javier down here and i have to agree with him. In English Literature Magical Realism and "Fantastique" are mixed up. It's not your fault it's just how it's labeled. They are actually different genres. Borges like Cortazar, Felisberto Hernandez, Bioy Casares and others wrote "Fantastique". The main difference it's that "Fantastique" is not in the realism spectre. The fantastic appears not like a normal stuff (GG Marquez style) but like a disturbance of reality. I do agree that Magical Realism could be a minor subgenre of the Fantastique genre. Love your videos.

Oh man I'm glad I found this channel

Yeah!😊

I just can’t agree about “The Catcher in The Rye” being over rated. There’s a LOT of people who hate it, teachers and students alike. I’d go as far as to say it’s one of THE most hated classics. I agree it’s not the very best literature has to offer, and I honestly don’t think it needs to be taught in schools. But even still, it resonated with me hard growing up and I’d give it a solid 7/10. I think a better term would be “polarizing” you either love it or you hate it. (edit: On the other hand, I HEAVILY agree with Call of the Wild. I first read it in grade school and it’s what got me into classic literature) (edit 2: Checked your channel out, saw you were a David Lynch fan. I’m subscribing)

Good writing always is instinctively, and your own strength in what kind comes out over time eventually, as you keep on craft and being avid reader helps tremendously because you start recognizing good bad mediocre to superlative absorbing writing and that helps you recognize your own writing also, if you do not enjoy what you write how do you expect others to? That’s all there is to so called craft like Stephen king never wavered from psycho thrillers and so on

People say Wallace can't write? Really?

I’m sure you get this question a lot, but what happened to your cat’s tail?

You made me read that deadly book and thanks for that 🙌

Have you listened to "the art of darkness" podcast? they did a biography of McCarthy with Aaron Gwyn, they even mentioned and recommended your channel!

You are my writing cheerleader Ian, thanks :)

The Judge fully understands the nature of the world. The thing is, he hates it. He hates the world and therefore longs to defile its laws and rejoice in its savagery.

Ian is on fire. Art without transcendence, god and a higher purpose is just aesthetics or event worse, a nihilistic provocation. It's that simple.

I don't have the same ambition to transform people's lives, but I don't complain about lack of success either. I chose this dying field and have accepted its limited reach. Instead of transforming people, I just want create the deep pleasure in readers that my favorite writers did for me.

And on the general content of the video i think that yours and epochs are both of them very good. Greetings.

Dear Ian love your videos but i disagree in something. It think that using the category of left wing in american politics it's wrong. The majority of the Democratic Party it's actually a center right party. AOC, Bernie Sanders and the Squad are left wing yes, but the majority of the party aint. The support of a genocidal state like Israel is the proof.

I was 35, newly married, and writing when I screamed at my wife for interrupting me a fourth time to ask me what I wanted on a pizza- I knew that I could not serve both masters. Thank you for putting into words, what I slowly had to figure out on my own, at the expense of several people close to me.

Regarding the idea of emphasizing the benefits of a book rather than what it is about, consider this: Product Headline 1: "My Workout Routine". Product Headline 2 (same item): "Get Jacked in 6 weeks without going to the gym every day". Which sounds more intriguing? Like, if my transformative book about dragon-slaying in the New York subway system helps the reader reach literary Nirvana without meditating every day, that's probably worth stating! A dragon in New York might cause intrigue. A clear description of desirable benefits certainly will. And I guess one can always describe both the content and the benefits.

Bro can keep on ignoring me, which equals bullying me. However, I take it as a compliment. I was familiar with Cormac before you, but have gone deeper becasue of you. I would never have even tought about wanting a pen for Christmas, but you got me to do that. You can keep on ignoring me. But you need to see beyond your (woke?) glasses, and see that I am a very young dude trying to write. Looking up to you! I am sitting here smoking my pipe, writing and looking back at ''Golden P''. My girlfriend is asleep. If you do not wan't to see me as an ally, thats fine. If your ''revolution'' is completely free from any ''madladery''. Thats fine. However, I wan't to express, once again, my deep admiration for your work. Your shit work that is, because what is this? What are you doing bro? Go and write something! Not making videos!

Mishima was such a chad. Got up in the afternoon, smoked sixty cigarettes a day, ate out wherever he felt like eating and rummaged through his fridge when he was still hungry.

A good example of this kind of book, which transforms the thinking and lives of people, is: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. Albeit, that's kind of a self-help book. But very funny and engaging. Of course, I am not plugging it here, just giving it as an example.

I understand why you insist on the 10.000. I'm a musician and that load of practice is extremely common among my peers. I actually can't even imagine how much more than 10.000 hours I've spent practicing music.

"the path of least revision" --

Do you have any references regarding revision for a writer who favors an archeological approach to story? By that I mean my first draft tends to be very focused on the throughline, the core of the story, from start to finish. I'll gloss over parts that don't call my attention immediately, my order of events tends to be ineffective, but by the end, every major structural point/pivotal scene is found. It tends to be very unconsciously written. In the second draft I find more thoughtful and clear plot events to latch the story onto, find the parts where an internal story logic manifests itself and draw clearer and stronger connections. (Then ofc I tackle every page multidimensionally day by day). I resonated a lot with your video on Murakami's revision process, so I was looking for more if you had any ideas. Thanks, great video as always.

Always good stuff. Thanks for your time and energy. I guess I'll google booktalk?

I think it’d be wise to mention that Mishima wrote under a PEN NAME, and that he was also a fan of Oscar Wilde (who was a part of the art for art sake movement in the 19th century).

Reject all of this. Instead, grab a compass and straight edge and go through Euclid’s Elements.

Just signed up for your course! Love your content. Looking forward to it

Nice channel, cheers. Jackie Brown is underrated and has very little violence. One of my favs. I would go even further with Lynch: I consider him the greatest artist (cap. A) of our times, our Picasso. It's the breadth of his art work, not just the films. This is how he will be judged in the future, you know, as THE Renaissance man. They're chalk and cheese.

Lol lol dude I love listening to you! 😂

My god, you're so well read and intelligent and eloquent... This is so disheartening.

Here for the DFW drops! Would you consider a video on his course syllabi/reading lists?

Them living in poverty and he demands his pregnant wife to work while he writes lmao he was awful

I LOVE Robert Aickman's so called "Strange Stories" for this very reason: He was a MASTER, the BEST at writing eerie, strange stories coming from the unconscious (no splatter, no horror, just the ambivalence between the possibly supernatural and the abyss of the psyche). He is a category for himself and therein better than Poe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and all the Dark Fantasy and ghost story writers. I still have images from his stories in my mind, that I will never forget, from "The Same Dog", "The Trains", "The Hospice", "Ringing The Changes"... Whoever loves to read strange, uncanny stories: Aickman. They leave you with a sort of rattled, unnerved feeling while at the same time give you the pleasant shivers of old haunted stories. He is little known, unjustfully so. His protagonists are mostly small case studies from the English middle class. But I never got Lynch. I don't want to diminish him, maybe I don't get him (just btw, I love that and how he played John Ford in The Fabelmans). His absurdness, his strangeness stays on the surface, is artificial to me. Too obvious. The nearest he came to creating what everyone attributes to him is in The Rabbits, but even there I can smell the calculation behind every detail. I think bringing this kind of stuff to the screen is way harder than writing it. The best movie in this regard for me is "Don't Look Now" from 1973.

Judge should be Anthony Carrigan. I think a movie adaptation will not really work, because 1) the violence is so all over the place it would become like a hooligan film and rely too much on gore and shock. 2) the outstanding pieces of violence in the book that give it meaning will be too harsh for a mainstream audience (baby head slush). 3) the dialogue is quite minimal and characters almost random as they fall constantly. 4) the whole point of the book, all of its endless desolation and hopelessness just doesn't translate. Cinema is there to elevate, this story is fundamentally depressing. There is no cinematic purpose.

Came to say Bret Easton Ellis was better than David Foster Wallace, and that Wallace was a virtue signaller.

All seems a little elitist to me, but, then, I don't allow any other writer to tell me how I should approach my love of writing. Sadly, the market is overly-saturated since anyone can write and publish their own book without having to go through the rigmarole of traditional publishing.