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I've been sort of idly tweeting about this reading bunnytrail/yak shave for a while now. I oughta do an overview blog post of all the stuff I've looked at and what I've learned/failed to learn from them.
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The thing about fiction is that there’s no point writing a *bad* story. By contrast, there is often a point to writing bad non-fiction. If you have interesting enough things to say, it doesn’t matter if you say them badly. This is not true of fiction.
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If I knew I was writing a Catch-22 it’d be worth a decade of effort. Writing 10 dreck novels would likely be less fulfilling for me than flipping burgers for 10 years. Some authors manage to be both good and prolific, but unlike nonfiction there’s no strong correlation.
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I suspect fiction writing is naturally a guild economy, while non-fiction writing is naturally a free market. So when the internet killed distribution scarcity and tastemaker gatekeeping, nonfiction exploded but fiction remained basically the same.
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Fan fiction communities in relation to “published” fiction markets (text, screen) are a joke, compared to nonfiction social media vs old media. Non-fiction new media (blogs, newsletters) have pretty much brought all but the costliest investigative non-fiction to its knees.
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The only reason to publish non-fiction in old media now is street-cred in circles that don’t actually read much. But there’s reasons besides market access and cred to participate in the fiction guilds. They actually possess IP that’s still mostly shared via apprenticeship.
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In fields with a good “beginner game” how seriously you can take someone is a function of raw number of pots they’ve made. If they’ve made more pots the chances are good that they’ve made more *good* pots. A 200-pot person should be taken twice as seriously as a 100 pot person.
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Nonfiction, math, programming are like that. More words written = likely better writer More problems/proofs done = better mathematician More lines of code = better programmer More pots = better potter
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Fields that are NOT like that More startups != better entrepreneur More novels != better fiction writer More acting credits != better actor More movies != better director More bills passed != better politician More arrests != better detective
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Replying to
The first category appears to be more granular (you can do multiple per day), and has an intrinsic measure of quality (you got a proof or you didn't). The latter is lumpy achievements (10 would be prolific) with popularity as a measure of success.
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