/lit/ - Literature

>>16482419
It's because THIS work is special. I've written short stories, poems, novels, in the past, and shared them with people, and they've liked it.

But they haven't mattered like THIS work does. This work, I envision as my masterpiece. This work, this story, and what follows from it, is the summit of all I have ever dreamed of. I dream of it being a masterpiece, and truly one of the great works of art of the 21st century.

So if people don't like THIS, then I have failed in a very fundamental way, one that will make me question everything I have ever been working towards as a writer and a poet.

It's the great importance that I, personally, place on it, that has me so jittery about this story. THIS story cannot fail. It's too important to me, personally, to fail. So even in the face of praise, I feel frightened, because I have a totally irrational fear that somebody's going to pull the rug out from under me. Because I'm used to failures and setbacks, when writing and trying to get published.

I come from a wealthy and privileged family and they have never put any pressure on me to get a job or support myself. Even now, now that I'm in graduate school getting a MA in English Literature, there is no huge pressure on me to finish my degree quickly, or get a job to support myself. I get sent money every month to cover my expenses.

This actually fills me with a significant sense of obligation, and a desire to prove myself. If I don't HAVE to work, if I don't HAVE to wake up every morning and go to a job to get my basic needs taken care of, then I need to be doing something worthwhile with my time instead. It terrifies me, and disgusts me, to read about shiftless thirtysomething Millennials, and also younger Zoomers, who are supported by their parents, and who basically don't do anything but sit around stuffing their fat faces, and smoking weed, and playing video games.

I desperately want to put the free time I'm so blessed to have to good use. And one thing I love to do is write. I have been writing in some form or fashion since I was in middle school, and my undergraduate and my graduate school degrees are oriented towards literature. I suppose once I have my MA I can teach somewhere, but that's not what I want. That's not what I REALLY want.

I want to become a GREAT writer and a GREAT poet. I want to be a significant literary figure in the 21st century, and I want to write things people will be reading a thousand years from now. I've gotten some poems and some short stories published, so I've gotten a start already, but I want more. I want to scale the highest heights of grandeur as a poet and writer. Then, perhaps, I'll pay my parents back for the way they've indulged me. I'll repay their support for me by making our family name famous and legendary for all the rest of time.

Does anyone have experience integrating poetry and prose into a single work? I'm writing a big, novel-length story that mixes prose and poetry. It starts out as prose, but poetry gradually breaks more and more into the story, until by the final quarter of the work it's a full-blown narrative poem. Are there any examples of long works that do this? I'd love to see how other writers and poets have managed this.

>>14992217

If you haven't read Peter Flannery's 'Batttle Mage' give it a shot. Very good fantasy read, one of the best imo. Check out Amazon reviews on it.

>>14881451

You aren't giving up video games by reading books. You are simply replacing a cpu processor with your brain. The game continues therein.

What country, in your opinion, has the best myths and folk tales?