Why is having standards bad?

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Hey everybody, first post here. I have a problem that I can't figure out.

I'm an aspie (obviously) and I've been writing for about fifteen years now. I'm not published, but I've been told I'm good enough that I could be if I wanted to. I'm on a writing forum where lots of new writers come and ask questions about how to write better. I want them to succeed, so I always give them the best advice I can, and that usually involves "set standards for yourself, put effort into your work, don't cut corners, actually think things out, etc." But then the other members flood the board with "Just do whatever you want! Ignore the haters! Have fun! There are no rules!" And it freaking pisses me off, especially when I try to play damage control, explaining why they shouldn't be doing all this other stuff and the other members act like I have a stick up my butt for it. It's like, "fun" and "effort" are polar opposites, and you have to be some kind of literary Nazi to try and put them together.

All I want is for people to do things right. Why is that such a bad thing?

I to an extent agree with everyone else. Have fun is more important than what you suggested.

Art should have no boundaries. The mind should explore any avenue it wants to especially when it comes to creativity. Take Hunter S. Thompson for example. He didn't have a clue how to structure a book when he first started off but most people think his first books were his best.

I'm not really sure what you're even trying to say but also having "fun" sounds like a pretty naf way to look at it.

Take care ya'll

You're right, writing should be fun, but that fun should come from knowing that you've created something worth reading. Otherwise it's like taking a stick figure painting into an art museum and asking them to hang it up because "I had fun painting it!" The argument I got into last night had to do with people writing stories that took place in world's that mimicked western medieval times. They said they wanted a world right out of Game of Thrones, but also wanted to take away everything that offended them like sexism, racism, that kind of stuff. I tried to tell them that taking away those things without coming up with a reason why their world lacks those things, as well as keeping everything else that made medieval times what they were, would create a sort of cultural paradox where the characters would be constantly contradicting themselves without even realizing it.

But no, now I'm Book Hitler who doesn't want anyone to have any fun and must have a really small penis too.

Kind of sound like it, if someone loves Twilight let them without complaining.

It’s good to strike a good balance. At times quantity is better than quality in art. But when you want to publish stuff you obviously need some standards.

I think I'm pretty compassionate with what you're saying with respect to 'if they want to succeed'. It does take a lot of work, very little fiction really flies unless it's well informed (unless you're writing for the type of audience you mentioned in the later case).

I'd suppose it probably depends on whether the person wants commercial success and then what kind of commercial success, ie. would they want to be a Twilight writer or would they hate themselves if their work came out like that? Its tough not to compare this sort of thing to music, where the musician's musicians or producer's producers out there create mind-blowing stuff, incredibly listenable by many people's standards as well, but the talent in it is lost on a great many people who aren't musicians and a lot of people who just write much poppier stuff pull in much bigger crowds.

That seems to be the challenge - figuring out what kind of person you're dealing with when you write the post, trying to determine what they want to do with their writing, and maybe reserving the advice you'd give for people who want to go in the direction that your advice is geared for. Then if people try giving you flack about being a curmudgeon or having too high of standards just point out to them that the person said x, y, and z suggesting that this was the appropriate advice for them.

having fun is great. - if they don't see the fun in writing as well as they can, and improve, then let them have their fun little hobby.

I draw for a living. I know other people who do that, but I don't get along well with most of them because... well, I draw for a living, not (only) for fun, that means I need to have standards, I need to improve and I feel happy to charge 30% more than those other people, and unlike them, I can't complain about having not enough work or income.
Having standards goes a long way. But the kind of fun you're having is different than the one they are aiming for. Yours (I'm guessing) and mine have something to do with taking pride in the result as well as enjoying it (sometimes it's a painful enjoyment), -while the others only enjoy it before it gets too hard...

art shouldn't have rules? - no, art always had rules, and great art makes its own rules- but it still has rules!

I don't even know what you personally mean by standards. Your standards are subjective.

This is easy. Writing is merely a hobby to them or they won't or can't get paid for their work.

I think that, at least in the U.S., colleges lower standards since they get more tuition money that way so you'll pretty much be guaranteed to get an art degree as long as you show up. Telling a student that art is "subjective" is simply used as a way to prevent them from getting discouraged and dropping out of the program.

If you want to truly be a serious artist of any kind, standards are something you can't ignore.

One major reason I don't make a Deviantart account is that an overwhelming amount of users are hobbyists and that's just not my crowd at all.

Just to think of my life's work being lost in a sea of casual manga fan art is soul chilling.

^you're not being forced to associate with them.

what are you, then?

Standards imply that you're working on making a quality product. I think that most people who write either don't want to be commercially successful or don't think they can be, so they give up and throw away things like standards. There are plenty of people I've read who clearly want to get better and do lots of work but they still have horrible writing. It's strange how most people seem to be stuck in a holding pattern writing the same way they did years ago. For them it's pretty much a way to escape instead of a way to do more work. I'm assuming they have jobs or other commitments where they are already drained of all their effort, so someone telling them to get better is a burden.
I think the best way to go about it is to not mind what other people do. Some will take your words to heart and say nothing in response because they didn't feel the need to, and others will ignore what you said because it wasn't what they wanted to hear. It seems like people really want to be told exactly what they already believe most of the time. Anything that breaks that pattern is something I think most people ignore.

I think the meaning is to be found in the context, which is something that has been addressed in various posts, in various ways. Getting things right will perhaps depend on the targeted readership demographic, what platform it is to be promoted on, whether it’s a standard narrative or something very experimental, to posit a few considerations. I have never read of the likes of Beckett, Joyce, Tolstoy or Woolf articulating how writing was ‘fun’ for them...but that could be an oversight on my part.

I imagine the people who suggest that there are no rules are confusing the absence of rules (no guides) with breaking the rules (informed innovation/overcoming of existing guides). It would take a stellar talent to write successfully from a place of ignorance (at its most basic, I refer to success as respected peer-group approval/retrospective validation but not necessarily sales figures).

I think there is a parting of the waters when it comes to the shaping of words: writing as a process (or form) - ‘have fun! Or not! Lose the rules! Find the rules!’, which may be for the writer’s eyes only (one would hope in many cases) and writing as - for want of a better word - gift, i.e. something for the hearts and minds of others.

So, having standards is not bad - if they’re high, they’re just not good when they’re low, and your detractors appear to fall into the latter camp, blissfully unaware that one can’t escape the framework ‘standards’ because no writer is an island...