/lit/ - Literature

>>22965446
A few days ago I actually jerked off to the mental fantasy of an obese Danerys shitting her bed.

I haven't even read more than halfway through the first book.

If I own the .com domain of my pen name, would it be viable to set up a Wordpress-type site on it, and then start putting my fiction up on it? I've got a decent presence on social media, so it's not like I'm incapable of advertising to an extent.

>job

Graduate student, freelance writer/editor/proofreader, also my family is wealthy so I don't need to make a TON of money

>fav book

Moby-Dick

>stories I write

Literary fiction, magical realism, science fiction, fantasy. I am also a poet, and I write both short poems and longer narrative poetry.

>published

Yes, several short stories and a number of poems. Since 2020 I have been trying to get the first book of my very, very big sci-fi epic published, so far with no success.

The real truth is that the US government has a loyalty problem on its hands.

Snowden is merely one facet of it. We all joke about "lol the CIA killed JFK" or "lol the CIA took down Nixon" or "lol the ATF murdered people in Waco".

But what's the cumulative effect of that joking, and all these revelations?

Have you noticed the US military cannot meet its recruitment goals? Didn't meet them last year, won't meet them this year, either.

What if Snowden and the other dissidents have simply poisoned the well in the United States? If you are convinced your government is wicked and tyrannical, and that it doesn't actually represent your interests, why would you join it? Why would you fight for it? Why would you die for it?

Is it possible we are seeing the beginnings of a crippling legitimacy crisis for the United States government?

After all, somebody's actually got to supply the manpower for these things. Somebody's actually got to be the soldiers, sailors, Marines, FBI and CIA agents.

If the US government has become so poisoned, with such a black reputation, by Snowden and all those like him... does it just get starved of men?

>>21831002
While it's certainly true that connections go a long way in any form of publishing, if you've received 50+ form rejections from query letters, I think it's time to revisit your manuscript and see what isn't working from the eyes of a potential agent/publisher. What genre is the MS you're querying? That may also play a part in the volume of form rejections you've received. If you're trying to publish "literary" work, you may want to consider submitting directly to small presses who have open calls or first book contests.

At this point, I recommend sending your current draft to a trusted group of readers in your social circle (3 is OK) and using their feedback to guide your revision process (accept some changes, discard the rest, etc). Most agents won't have time to offer any substantial feedback, of course, but if you haven't received anything in the way of a "human" response since beginning to query in August, it's possible that the work isn't quite there yet.

Keep your chin up, anon.

t. former fiction MFA/lit mag anon