I dreamed of being Hemingway​,​ but ended up a pulp fiction writer

New York Post By Christopher Farnsworth August 14, 2016

The book sat on the shelf of the third-grade classroom. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was a second-grader, and I’d been herded into the room along with the rest of my class for some reason I don’t remember anymore.

But I still remember the book. The title was “The Freckled Shark.” There was a huge man in a torn shirt holding what could only be described as a ray-gun, against the background of some kind of animal skin.

I was always ready to read about another superhero or spaceman. But the man on the cover didn’t exactly look like a good guy. And his name, in big letters above his head, didn’t sound like a good guy’s name either: Doc Savage.

Modal Trigger

“To the world at large, Doc Savage is a strange, mysterious figure . . . he is a man of superhuman strength and protean genius . . . In his most exotic adventure, the Man of Bronze encounters the insane money lust of Señor Steel, president-dictator of Blanca Grande (a very unfortunate South American republic); decodes the awful secret of Matacumbe; and sinks — for what may be the last time — into the muddy horror of the primitive jungle.”

For a brief moment, I didn’t know if this Doc Savage was an actual person or not. (In my defense, I was 7 years old.) I didn’t know then that the book was a reprint of an old pulp-magazine story from the 1930s. Or anything about the pulps, which were filled with lurid, sensational stories written fast and cheap by a small army of house authors. I didn’t know then that heroes like Doc Savage and the Shadow were the forerunners of my beloved Superman and Batman. This was the pre-Google era, so information came only in fragments, on paper.

All I knew was that it sounded much more interesting — more alive, more vital, more real — than anything else I’d read up to that point. I begged the teacher to let me take the book home.

She agreed, as long as I returned it first thing in the morning. So I read the entire novel that night. And I decided, deep down, that was the world I wanted to live in: a life filled with adventurers, mad scientists, strange creatures, weird plagues and mysterious plots.

What "good advice" do you think is actually bad advice?

Reddit rated best comments...

"Live like you're dying". If I did that everyday I might actually have died already.
"Eat everything that is on your plate." 

"Don't give up on your dreams". ...Sometimes your dreams are stupid.

"Hang in there". Quitting is completely underrated. And elegantly exiting a broken venture early is a very important life skill.

"Video games taught me that if you're encountering enemies, you're going in the right direction."

"If you're in your 20s or early 30s quit your job and travel!"

'Mistakes People Make In Their 30s'

Quora users discussed lessons they learned in the thread: "What is the biggest mistake you made in your 30s and what did you learn from it?"

Here are some of the best responses:

They don't spend enough time with their aging parents.

Entrepreneur and blogger James Altucher, who is now 46, writes about a particularly difficult memory for him: "When I was 34 I hung up the phone on my dad in an argument and never returned his calls. Six months later he had a stroke and died.

They put their career ahead of family and friends.

"Don't just work. Make memories. The older you get, the harder it is to make meaningful relationships. Foster those while you're young," writes Microsoft product designer Michael Dorian Bach, who is now in his late 30s.

They miss the chance to have kids.

CEO coach Alison Whitmire shares a personal story about how she took getting pregnant for granted in her 30s and chose to pursue a new career opportunity instead of trying to have a child. Years later, after a failed pregnancy and then a failed marriage, she remarried and had a baby at 43. She realizes now that no one is ever adequately prepared to have a child, and if you want one, it's best to do so before it's too late.

Charles Murray's List... (yes that Charles Murray)

It's more than kind of refreshing to come across a couple of big thinkers, respected, who show some interest, at least in writing, about religion. Even if, as I suspect with Malcolm Gladwell, it might only be as a ripe source material.

The other is Charles Murray, who has written a book called "The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead", from which he plums a Wall Street Journal piece, giving me an opportunity to partake ;)

I particularly liked #4 in a list of "Advice for a Happy Life".

4. Take Religion Seriously

Don't bother to read this one if you're already satisfyingly engaged with a religious tradition.

Now that we're alone, here's where a lot of you stand when it comes to religion: It isn't for you. You don't mind if other people are devout, but you don't get it. Smart people don't believe that stuff anymore.

I can be sure that is what many of you think because your generation of high-IQ, college-educated young people, like mine 50 years ago, has been as thoroughly socialized to be secular as your counterparts in preceding generations were socialized to be devout. Some of you grew up with parents who weren't religious, and you've never given religion a thought. Others of you followed the religion of your parents as children but left religion behind as you were socialized by college.

By socialized, I don't mean that you studied theology under professors who persuaded you that Thomas Aquinas was wrong. You didn't study theology at all. None of the professors you admired were religious. When the topic of religion came up, they treated it dismissively or as a subject of humor. You went along with the zeitgeist.

I am describing my own religious life from the time I went to Harvard until my late 40s. At that point, my wife, prompted by the birth of our first child, had found a religious tradition in which she was comfortable, Quakerism, and had been attending Quaker meetings for several years. I began keeping her company and started reading on religion. I still describe myself as an agnostic, but my unbelief is getting shaky.

"7 Totally Epic Rules For Writing on the Internet"

"Rule number 6 is so incredibly true, it hurts."

6. Recognize that your career depends on people like Miley Cyrus moving their rear-ends in ways that give you an opportunity to engage in criticism and commentary regarding the relative benefits of their gyrations. Pay dutiful homage to all such rear-ends.

For the 6 un-copied rules link , and, for my personal favorite ...

"Write About What You Know"

Ricky Gervais Tells A Story About How He Learned To Write

Elmore Leonard 1925 - 2013

Ace posted a link to an article on writing by Elmore Leonard.

(This is a nice article about him from the Guardian)

Elmore Leonard was elderly and passed away and I know nothing about him other than that he wrote "Fire in the Hole" which I've never read but was turned into the first season of the television show "Justified" which I liked a whole lot. After that show came out I noticed his name quite a bit but I still hadn't read anything that he'd written.

  Until I read this.