Prologue - 8

(Part 1) Becoming a Writer Without Talent

001_The Man Who Wrote Just One Novel - 17
002_Genre, Commerciality, Popularity - 21
003_Minor's Star - 26
004_Golden Spoon, Green Spoon, and Writing Spoon - 31
005_Shape of the Growth Curve - 35
006_People who want to become writers and work with them - 40

(Part 2) Writing Without Talent: The Basics

007_One Well-Written Title, I Don't Envy the Ten Main Characters - 47
008_Reasons for Writing a Business Plan - 51
009_Reasons for Not Writing According to the Plan - 56
010_Assert, Ask, Show - 61
011_The Author Who Doesn't Know the Subject - 65
012_Why Super Mario Bros. 1 is Fun - 69
013_If you talk too much, you can't work. If you have too much work, you can't go home. If you go home, you can't talk. - 75
014_〈Interstellar〉 is like 〈Armageddon〉 - 79
015_Juggling Writing - 85

(Part 3) Writing Without Talent: Applications

016_Imitation is My Power - 93
017_The moment you look into the abyss, it feels awkward and uncomfortable - 97
018_The Loudest One Wins - 100
019_A Story About Quantity - 106
020_The manuscript is not long enough - 111
021_Two Different People - 117
022_A person who doesn't know what he doesn't know - 120
023_The person who is the same front and back - 125
024_Don't feed the cats? - 128
025_Horror and Comedy Are the Same - 132
026_The Genre's Roundabout Nature - 139
027_Let's eat first - 142
028_The Temptation of Short Sentences and Pure Korean - 146

(Part 4) Surviving Without Talent

029_1st Place Once vs. 3rd Place Four Times - 153
030_Dunacea: Convergent Evolution - 158
031_The Ultimate Question About Life, Art, and All Fun - 162
032_The Disease That Leads to Failure to Finish - 168
033_When Writing Isn't Fun, But You Have to Write - 173
034_〈The Frog School〉 and Corporal Punishment of Students - 177
035_Happy Writing Life - 181
036_Creator's Guide to Criticism - 186
037_Action, Stamina, and Creative Desire - 191
038_Daily Workload Calculation Method - 195
039_There Are Too Many Writing Guides - 199
040_What Writers Need Most - 202
041_The Next Most Necessary Thing for a Writer - 207
042_Roll until it comes out and you'll get a guaranteed gacha - 210

Epilogue - 214

Author's Note

There are many untalented writers.
First of all, it's me.
Conversely, there are many people who have talent but fail to become writers.
Many people mistakenly believe that being talented and being a writer are two different things.
If you're a writer, you do it, and if you're not, you don't.

One of the reasons I was able to become a writer despite having no talent was because this was all I had.
I had far less talent to be a member of society than I did to be a writer.
He was a person born with the stats that made him a writer, even though he was not capable of being a writer in absolute terms.

More than anything, I wanted to write.
So I wrote.
Even though I wasn't good at writing, I had to keep writing.
Because writing was the most fun.

Some people say that writing is like possessing a god, and that if you can't write, you'll get sick like a god, but I haven't written in such a grand and fateful way.
But I kept on scheming to keep writing, slacking off in other things, and just looking for opportunities to write.

Because I had no talent, my performance was slow.
It took me quite a long time to debut.
For me, being a writer is not a goal in life, but a way of life, and I had to constantly tell myself that the activity of making work is more important than the title of writer, even though I was not producing any results.

It's often said that the law of the jungle is the law of the jungle.
I am definitely weak when it comes to talent.
However, there are few idioms that go against the laws of nature as much as the law of the jungle.
In the first place, if an elephant and a lion fight, the elephant will win.
But elephants don't eat lions.
Ants are weaker than wolves.
But the last ones to taste the wolf's carcass are the ants.
If survival of the fittest were the universal law of the world, all weak animals should have gone extinct. But was that really the case? This four-character idiom is completely detached from the truth or providence of the world.

Survival of the fittest is much more appropriate than law of the jungle to explain the natural world.
It's not a question of being weak or strong, it's a question of adapting or not adapting.
It's a question of whether you survive or not.
As a writer, I was obviously weak, but I decided to survive somehow, and I did survive.
I'm not sure how much longer I can survive, but I have the will to keep writing, whether my work gets published or not.

I am an untalented writer.
The point you should note here is not that I am 'talentless', but that I am a 'writer'.
yes.
I am a writer, talented or not.
And that means, in a way, my advice might be more useful to more people than the advice of talented writers.
There are more untalented people in the world than talented people.
So wouldn't the advice of someone who is untalented be more applicable to more people than the advice of someone who is full of talent?

Talent is definitely one of the most important factors in becoming a writer.
Some people even say that that's all there is to it.
But I don't think so.
First of all, I am living proof that you can become a writer without any talent.
I believe that while talent is necessary for someone to become a writer, a chair and an environment are just as important, perhaps even more so.

I am not only a talented writer, but also a professor who teaches genre fiction to students at a university.
I wonder if some people laughed when they heard that I was standing on the podium.
Hong Ji-woon? A kid who took nearly ten years to debut? He's never sold many books, has he? Why, when there are so many talented writers? I don't know if such a person actually exists.
Because I've never seen anyone talk like that in front of me before.
But the question still remains.
Because the part of me that hates myself asked myself that question.

But I also thought this way.
I have some experience and advice to offer, even though I am not a talented writer.
And I've always been concerned about that as a talentless writer.
For someone who is always wondering and wondering what seeds of potential are planted within themselves, rather than just waiting for the day when they will succeed if they already have talent, there is a greater need for untalented writers like me.

This is also the reason why I decided to write “Surviving as a Talentless Writer.”
This book is an essay that organizes my past struggles to survive as a talentless writer and aspiring writer.
You could say it's a collection of small talk I have with students for 10 minutes before I start class and take attendance.

This book will contain a variety of forms of advice.
Instead, I don't plan on including many creative tips.
This book is far from being a formula, a correct answer, or a royal road to becoming a writer.
Instead, you can observe the struggles of becoming a writer.
I'm trying to write down things that can serve as clues to the strategy, like the survivor's notes that players find in horror games.
Because of this, there will be conflicting and contradictory content in this book.
That's what a clue is in the first place.

Let me say this again: the conclusion of this book is not survival of the fittest, but survival of the fittest.
Just as a cheetah's survival by being faster on foot doesn't mean it's a failure or a lie for a hedgehog to have quills on its back, my survival strategy is merely a result of adapting to the environment I face, and is far from a set of rules I must follow.
You must take hints from this book and devise your own survival strategy tailored to the environment you face.

In that sense, I would like to say that this book is more of a work theory than a composition theory.
Surviving as a talentless writer.
That's really more of a karma thing than a law.
Okay, so let me start telling you how I survived.

- Hong Ji-woon