I have discussed this idea with friends who are writers / artists. Call me a cynic, but while many writers / artists aspire to collective shared knowledge, the reality of both the writing and art market is that unique knowledge is an important differentiator and an asset to their careers. If you do find a fascinating, rare 19th century travel journal in some online archive the last thing you are going to do is share it with others like you until you're sure that you're not going to use it as material yourself. The exception to this being other writers completed work (ie long-form articles, books), but that probably doesn't need a focus on writers / artists per se and a more general "aesthete" HN might work better...
That's not my experience at all. I am trying to start a new career as a fiction writer, and writers are very interested in sharing knowledge. I say this for both professional, published authors and wannabes like me.
I was part of a long creative writing course (about 9 months), and our class of 20 formed a bond of helping each other A LOT. Sharing tips, beta reading, posting about prizes, open calls for literary magazines, etc.
In this class, we decided to start inviting published authors to share tips for beginners. We got mostly positive responses. Professional writers would spend about 2 hours with us (online) sharing tips and answering questions. All of them were very transparent about how they write and gave useful tips on how to get published. They said things that would be impossible to learn without talking to a professional author.
So I call you a cynic, as you asked me to, and a wrong one at that.
To understand this more fully you’d need to appreciate two things.
One is that while there are a lot of things that people will share with you (they often want to share their expertise/craft and be good humans), there are a number of things they won’t share with you.
Two is that when you are starting out you are in a position where almost all information from an experienced artisan is helpful. That can mean you may easily miss what they are not telling you.
This is not to say they are misleading you or hold ill will because the information they withhold from the conversation would not be useful to you anyway, as you are not in a position to use it or be a threat to them.
Or, the alternative, is that yours (apparently) and gp’s point of view is not that common as you think it is. So it is not me that have to understand things, it is you that are wrong.
Also, the mentioned example seems very implausible. What makes an author unique is not what source they used for inspiration. Two writers will get the exact same “19th century travel journal” and write to completely different stories inspired by it. In different genres most likely.
I don’t think our points are opposed. I can’t speak for the parent but I am not saying people don’t like you, won’t help you or that they resent you or guard their secrets. They can like you and not tell you important points they’d like to keep secret.
I am saying that if you went in asking certain direct questions about the author’s work you wouldn’t get the same reception.
I agree with your point about the outcome of discovering a journal in a broad sense but think reading parent’s example accurately requires a lot of context of being in the industry, presence at the right events, and knowledge of the zeitgeist. There is still competition.
I think they are opposed. Writers hiding research secrets because they don't want to help the competition seems to be as useless as wannabe founders hiding their idea for a business because they are afraid someone will steal them. It is much more likely that this secrecy is hurting more than helping them, as they don't have some feedback on how to improve the idea.
Also, the existence of secrets among humans due to competition seems to be a moot point. Bringing the discussion to the original point, if said competition prevents the existence of a writers' HN, I believe that is completely false. HN is good for entrepreneurs. The fact that they don't share their sales leads here doesn't matter at all for the existence and quality of HN.
Totally disagree with your first point. It is only valid if you have infinite money and all the best connections and perfect trust. Show me where that exists and I’ll buy it.
Hiding the right secrets in an early company is critical, whether they are technological that you are hiding from competitors or business plan endgames that you are hiding from customers (but perhaps you aren’t aware of them and only the VC sees it). There is a big difference between some person thinking they have a great idea but won’t tell anyone, and determining where you draw the line on sharing product, go-to-market, etc. People who raise enough money have the “that’s the secret part” point of the conversation. The conversation goes better if they communicate that in a way most people don’t notice, though, and so at that point they frequently redirect, deflect or defer.
I think we see the audience of HN differently — from my perception it is predominantly aspirational entrepreneurs, not actual entrepreneurs that make up the majority of engagement here. While no doubt the percentage of entrepreneurs is higher here than just about anywhere else, entrepreneurs have less time and there are just far fewer of them. What I believe is predominant here though, whether entrepreneur or not, is engineer/developer roles.
Regarding your point on competition I think we understand the two cultures of engineers and writers differently. Writing has less constraint, and in my experience that means it is more reliant on ego expression. It can be humbling but a person can also make a great career being a terrible writer. Engineers make things that function. If you are a terrible engineer, your work will rapidly disappoint probably a lot of people, and either you improve, you hide somewhere adjacent, or you leave the profession.
I think HN works for a variety of reasons including the general humility of engineers, the general lack of desire for the spotlight, and the frequency of dramatic and immediate improvement of workflows due to new tools. I don’t know which of these and other reasons are critical but I am skeptical writing has enough of them. Maybe with a new generation of writers.
This is not how fiction writing works, specifically. The hugest fans of fiction writers are other fiction writers. There is a desire by writers to see every other writer succeed just because they love seeing others' work. In my subfield, multiple award-winning authors have rescinded their candidacy for internationally-recognized awards simply because they want other authors they're a fan of to get the spotlight instead.
Yes I think that's fair especially about writing technique if that was the OP's original analogy, and in particular about new writers as you point out.
What I was referring to specifically was inspiration and knowledge of niche events that become the details that bring prose / art alive. These immediately lose their effect if they are reused which is why my friends who are professional writers dedicate an enormous amount of time to research in the hope that these details may jump out to them.
In a lot of contemporary art, a curator's view of work is often hung around a particular piece of research and that must be unique to warrant the attention of the public - my original point was that that research just can't be shared until the work is revealed.
However, maybe to your point, there is a lot of value in a more technical literary HN which encourages meta discussion on the process of writing rather than the content.
I've never saw a software engineer hoard some knowledge for a competitive edge. I guess it's blue/red ocean market difference multiplied by the fact that average engineer can feel pretty successful with his career, whereas an average writer is anything but.
Even in writing, the right combination of execution and being in the right place at the right time is everything, and ideas/knowledge/concepts are like sand at the beach. But yeah like all art "markets" it's massively unevenly distributed, so you'll find way more people who are cynical about it.
