/lit/ - Literature

>>17262653
How do you guys stay motivated to keep writing when you consider that you likely won't get published or be popular? I've finished about 150 pages of my book so far—and when I sit down to work I get a certain catharsis from it—but on the whole it feels hopeless, even though I don't think the quality of my writing is poor.

>>16966028
When I was younger and I kept a journal I mostly wrote about my feelings, where I thought I was going in life, women I had relationships with, and so on. When you're younger, there's this large question mark that looms above your life, and so life is emotional and exciting because you don't know where it will take you. As I've gotten, my journal has gotten less about how I feel regarding life in general — less emotional — and has become more of a log of my daily activities, and more recently about developments about COVID-19 (I work for the government).

I would highly recommend keeping a journal in your late adolescence to your mid-20s. You always think you're going to remember everything in detail, but you never do. And someday all of those things will be gone and unrecoverable. You'll be glad that you kept some record of them.

>>7519826
This.

I read his piece about his life in the NYT Magazine a while back and it sounded interesting. My GF's sister (who attends the same college where he teachers) gave me a copy of his Man Booker novel for Christmas. The topic (Bob Marley) made me a bit queasy, and I haven't read it yet.

Anyone else have an experience with the book?

>>7377893
>What other books comes even close to hitting all the feels and motions of our daily life and dealing the with the existential side of things without being overly philosophical and try hard? He just nails it

This is the answer right here. Read one of his books, reflect back on it, and try to think of what exactly 'happened' in the book, and you'll realize it's not much, but he's just very good at giving voice to those human emotions we all feel and yet have trouble voicing. It doesn't seem like very many noteworthy things have happened in his life (I'm in my late 20s and I've had many more interesting life experiences than Knausgaard describes—at age 40+—in his books, and yet the manner in which he does it makes it have a certain gravity and importance; viz. even the small, stupid things have meaning to you if you're the one experiencing them. This makes the book easy to relate to.)

That said, he doesn't seem like he'd be that interesting of a person to hang out with, and he comes across as fairly socially awkward.

>>6085247
I read the book about a month ago and I agree with some of your points. I think perhaps that the 'love' is meant to feel a bit forced, or as initially being superficial—though by the end I don't think it is.

It doesn't immediately seem like a great story, but it covers an interesting aspect of the war (an American in the Italian service), and gains a certain value from being—at least partially—based on the author's real life experience.

It probably suffers from being over hyped. (I also couldn't help but feel that the tragic ending has caused some to consider it a better work of art than it actually is. This seems to happen with certain films and books.) However, I still think that it is still a fairly interesting and solid story.