... and then he said: "I want to be a writer."

Cool, now go back there.

I'm serious. If you wonder if a selected group considers your statements more valuable than average or especially insightful you can find that out within a few months on that platform. You'll have a competition in the tens of thousands and an audience in the hundreds of thousands both largely with a university background.

Cool, now go back there.

Nope.

You need to be more specific, the key is setting a schedule with incremental or routine goals and tasks to complete, here is a schedule I took from Ray Bradbury’s advice mainly

>Commit to reading a classic short story everyday for the foreseeable future, most take no more than a half hour to complete, the occasional long story like “The Dead,” no more than two hours.
>Commit to completing one short story every week for a year straight
>Revise your stories periodically, say on a bi-weekly or monthly basis reread your stuff and try to improve it, if you do this ad Infinitum until you can’t come up with any revisions, you’ll be getting somewhere
>consider giving yourself a daily word count that you must meet at minimum. Hemingway was notoriously slow going and he still said he usually wrote 500 words every day. That’s a little more than a page.

it's actually a run-on sentence, not a comma splice

how would you subtly promote your own novel on reddit?

Bradbury actually has quite a bit of good writing advice.
I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but I've only been able to even call myself a writer for 2 years or so. Although, it's something I've done for most of my life. I also think I rush the process, and it leads me to stagnation. So, I'm wondering if the above regimen would actually make a difference in my writing. I just don't quite have the chops yet to write an entire novel; at least aspiring to the level of competency I wish to obtain. I've got the discipline, just need the guidance.

Read The Art of Dramatic Writing and stop winging it.

stop coming to this website if you want a clear enough mind to recognize your own thoughts

Well, I wouldn't but I guess you would have to work towards Reddit celebrity status. Meaning you'd have to write in a beautiful, topical and insightful manner on many threads until people became familiar with you and at some point you could signal that you're published. It really depends on talent, the correct demographical frequency and your understanding of the community mechanics. This sounds somewhat random but it really isn't, there are no barriers it's just a question of your own capacity. I used to write on politics and my stuff has been read by millions of people which was the initial point of my post. This gave me the confidence to speak on these matters without credentialsi, it will show you if people think you have substance.

Good advice, I already do this.
Basically, talk to yourself and read aloud.

>into a working paid writer
if you want this, stop trying to write some literary enlightening bullshit that you think is some important art and create popcorn genre fiction. realize you are making a product for mass consumption and be okay with it or don't plan on ever being a paid working writer

Why short stories in particular? I mean if you want to write novels, wouldn't it be better to actually read novels? The only benefit of short stories is that you can read a lot of them in a short amount of time.

>but I've only been able to even call myself a writer for 2 years or so
Unless you're being paid for it or getting somewhere with it, you're a hobbyist. I've been writing for years and I'm currently compiling shorts to edit and send off as a collection. Still don't call myself a writer. Same way I'm not a musician when I practice scales and play along to songs on my guitar.

You take yourself too seriously