[quote=@Vilageidiotx] This is definitely one of the biggest keys. If you are going to get serious about writing, try to become a large scale consumer of knowledge. Everything you do not know is a weakness, and everything you learn is a self-improvement. When you read, try to read like you are an English teacher, finding what you like and what you don't like about everything from the way the subject matter is presented to the way the words are arranged. If somebody seems like they would like to gush about some topic they know, ask questions and seriously think about what they say. Doesn't matter if it is astrophysics or the finer point of bagging groceries. And don't avoid learning about shit you already know. Different perspectives are what give you a three dimensional idea of how the subject works. [/quote] This reminds me of a post that showed up on my Facebook of all places. I'll share it here for shits it giggles (seeing as how I had to scan through the mountain of unrefined bullshit that is everything else). [quote] 50 years ago, I started a long period of absolutely voracious reading that lasted about 12 or 15 years, from preteen to young man. I was unfettered by social media and all the information it would have given me about what to read or not read. I was in a Catholic school system that did not particularly value reading as a past time, so I was free of its constraints, in large measure. I was lucky to be in a high school that had teachers who despised each others politics, ethics and sexual norms, thereby presenting me with a wealth of conflicting values, ideas and sources. Hence, I read without a value meter, without a guide. I read Ursula K. Le Guin and George Lincoln Rockwell, Ferlinghetti and Poe, JFK’s profiles, Plato’s republic and Barry Goldwater’s conscience, all given juvenile equal weight. I read about catchers in rye and women on wuthering heights. I absorbed the bizarre lessons of individuality of Howard Roark and Alan Watts. I read the Douay-Rheims Bible end to end without trying to make sense of it one summer when I was way too young to separate the poetic from the puerile-erotic, or the fact from fiction. I read about the joy of sex before I’d had any, and the history of Vietnam before I was threatened with a visit. I read Asimov and Huxley, the former as inevitable reality, the latter as fiction. I could not read enough Ginsberg, even though I failed to understand until many years later. I read pornography as poetry, and poetry as an instruction manual. I read everything I could, without labels, warnings, peer guidance or teacher demands. I was handed a book by someone I trusted and I read it. I was handed a book by someone I suspected, and I read it. It was a huge jumble of conflicting ideas, some that I held quite comfortably, side by side no matter how incongruous they were. I do not know if this kind of pre-intellectual, non-judgmental discovery is still encouraged or allowed. I was fortunate that either no one gave a shit and noticed what I was up to, or perhaps they noticed and just let me be. I was lucky to live in a bubble for a precious decade or so. [/quote]