Dear reader, Olivia Rodrigo and Guts received six Grammy nominations today, and I wrote an essay about it for Time. It’s my favorite piece of nonfiction that I’ve written this year: I avoided most of the critical coverage leading up to the September release of
This was such a wonderful read! It made me realize so so so much about myself, in all honesty. I enjoyed slowly analyzing the lines, because they touched me so much. 😭🙏
Just read it, and completely agree with what you said about hoping your future self cringes at everything you're writing right now. Valuing experiences for the growth they endorse rather than for self-satisfaction is such great message for young writers. Printing this out and adding it to my Favorite Essays folder :)
Hi! Another fellow Kuang here👋🏼 really resonates with your post about this, it’s like work is not as special or amazing if your older! Might I suggest The Artists Way by Julia Cameron? It really helped my creative block and feelings that I peaked as a musical composer 💖💖💖✍🏽📝🎼🎶
i can relate a lot to how you feel. i’m turning 16 in a couple of weeks and thinking of pursuing classical music in college and beyond but i already know i’ve started too late and i’ll never be a child prodigy. it’s awful but we have to grow and learn.
When you asked about favorite creative works that deal with prodigies, the first thing which came to mind is the fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Here's a quote (from the Sorting Hat speaking to Harry):
"You know - you aren't letting yourself think it, but in some quiet corner of your mind you know just exactly what you aren't thinking - you know that by far the simplest explanation for this unverbalisable fear of yours is just the fear of losing your fantasy of greatness, of disappointing the people who believe in you, of turning out to be pretty much ordinary, of flashing and fading like so many other child prodigies... So you will risk becoming a Dark Lord, because the alternative, to you, is certain failure, and that failure means the loss of everything."
(The full exchange between the Sorting Hat and Harry is here: https://hpmor.com/chapter/10 and btw AFAIK the fanfic writer has nothing against trans people)
Another child prodigy who comes to mind is Chen Changsheng in Ze Tian Ji by Mao Ni. Everyone, including his peers, praise him for his brilliance (he's already one of the best doctors around at the age of 14) and for being so mature and unlike a teenager. What most people (including his best friends) don't know is that he became such a great doctor at a young age because he has an illness which will kill him by the age of 20. He doesn't have a long life of glorious achievement ahead of him. He doesn't even want to be mature for his age, it's something his fast-approaching mortality forced upon him.
This was such a wonderful read! It made me realize so so so much about myself, in all honesty. I enjoyed slowly analyzing the lines, because they touched me so much. 😭🙏
I hear this Kuang chick is really broad minded
Just read it, and completely agree with what you said about hoping your future self cringes at everything you're writing right now. Valuing experiences for the growth they endorse rather than for self-satisfaction is such great message for young writers. Printing this out and adding it to my Favorite Essays folder :)
Hi! Another fellow Kuang here👋🏼 really resonates with your post about this, it’s like work is not as special or amazing if your older! Might I suggest The Artists Way by Julia Cameron? It really helped my creative block and feelings that I peaked as a musical composer 💖💖💖✍🏽📝🎼🎶
i can relate a lot to how you feel. i’m turning 16 in a couple of weeks and thinking of pursuing classical music in college and beyond but i already know i’ve started too late and i’ll never be a child prodigy. it’s awful but we have to grow and learn.
When you asked about favorite creative works that deal with prodigies, the first thing which came to mind is the fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Here's a quote (from the Sorting Hat speaking to Harry):
"You know - you aren't letting yourself think it, but in some quiet corner of your mind you know just exactly what you aren't thinking - you know that by far the simplest explanation for this unverbalisable fear of yours is just the fear of losing your fantasy of greatness, of disappointing the people who believe in you, of turning out to be pretty much ordinary, of flashing and fading like so many other child prodigies... So you will risk becoming a Dark Lord, because the alternative, to you, is certain failure, and that failure means the loss of everything."
(The full exchange between the Sorting Hat and Harry is here: https://hpmor.com/chapter/10 and btw AFAIK the fanfic writer has nothing against trans people)
Another child prodigy who comes to mind is Chen Changsheng in Ze Tian Ji by Mao Ni. Everyone, including his peers, praise him for his brilliance (he's already one of the best doctors around at the age of 14) and for being so mature and unlike a teenager. What most people (including his best friends) don't know is that he became such a great doctor at a young age because he has an illness which will kill him by the age of 20. He doesn't have a long life of glorious achievement ahead of him. He doesn't even want to be mature for his age, it's something his fast-approaching mortality forced upon him.