[campbellmorgan]

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...

[soneca]

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.

[svnt]

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.

[campbellmorgan]

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.

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

> So I call you a cynic, as you asked me to, and a wrong one at that.

Cynics would rather be wrong.

[sodality2]

Is this any different for those in the typical HN fields - software engineering, IT, etc?

[golergka]

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.