/lit/ - Literature

>>10895644
>>10895644
thanks for making these threads for me. Its like you know what im thinking ALL the time! i really appreciate it.

The ideas are great and i can come up with a ton of ideas, some more startling than others, but its fleshing out the material thats always a challenge. I can only pretend to be so many different characters at once. Is real life the best source material truly?

Who the fuck would want to be a writer? I laugh inside every time someone introduces themselves as a writer or poet. You're all a dime a dozen. A factory worker may be one of hundreds of drones but at least he has a steady income and doesn't agonize over why people don't understand his """art""" like all the other dime store novelists.

>>10895682
Are you dumb?

Being a writer and having a job that gives you a steady income is not mutually exclusive.

>>10895696
Coffee shops and waiting don't count

>>10895702
People with all sorts of jobs write on the side. The whole "coffee shops and waiting" stereotype is based in reality (because many low-wage earners engage in creative pursuits), but the truth is that people all across the socioeconomic spectrum dream of artistic success.

>>10895644
Good thanks, you

>>10895668
Yep. Which means leaving the computer behind and taking up an instrument, or going for long walks, or chilling out at the mall and watching the people pass by, living their lives while you observe a vertical slice of a much bigger picture.

>>10895682
I'd love to be a professional writer, if it becomes financially viable for me to do so. Until then, I'll stick to Performance Manager and write on the side.

>>10895696
Being a writer is a job. Being someone who writes is the act of writing.

People who introduce themselves as writers and say "there's NOTHING wrong with calling yourself a writer :^)" are scum because they ignore reality in favor of bald egotism.

>>10896085
if you have a vertical slice of a bigger picture i'll take it. ive got my own, but I like having variety. I am trying to intermittently learn to play guitar, and I am pretty good at harmonica. I long walks all the time, and im going to start riding bicycles again, and i tend to avoid malls nowadays, but i still watch people and get an idea of what they're doing and how they go about doing things anywhere. I was going to say that I write alot, but then i remembered this is /lit/. But that being said, learning a new language and /sci/ is definitely something to take up too.

Pretty shitty anon. I never write. Always plan to but when I sit in front of my laptop I don't write. I just find everything I write so cringy. I feel like a pseud. Maybe I'm better of fantasizing about being a writer instead. It sucks honestly. The only reason why I haven't commited suicide was always because I wanted to finish creating my "artworks" and then I could off myself after that.

Oh well guess I'll keep on living then.

>>10896289
write a story about a writer that sucks at writing and base it off your own experience. for fuck sake anon, get creative. start writing with pen and paper. it feels odd if you only ever use a computer, but you'll get used to it eventually when you arent being bombarded by EMF and draining your brains energy.

>>10896301
thanks for the advice anon

My books are now making tens of dollars a month. The reviews help me get more interesting ghostwriting gigs, at least. I don't have to churn out shitty web content anymore.

>>10896274
I try to play a game where I make up backstories or plots for people walking by. The best example I've got for it comes from a book on writing for comic books, which goes something like this:

"You see a woman walking down the street with a guitar case. Where's she going? Is she secretly an assassin, smuggling her weapon of choice to her job? Is she a musician, hoping that her audition will lead to her big break? Is she both, and the person she's contracted to kill is also the manager giving her the shot at being a star she's always wanted? What's she going to do about that?"

>>10895644
slowly building up a repertoire of characters, I have absolutely zero ideas beyond a few short stories, I don't know where to go or what to do.

>>10895682
funnily enough I know a factory worker who's also a poet. Good guy.

gave up. i'm gonna do something people actually care about

Almost finished with a rewrite that an agent requested. I'll see soon enough if the effort was for nothing.

haha

I'm just a high school lit teacher

I'll write one day

I want to write. I love to write. I could give up now or I could keep writing until I'm 80. I'm going to choose the latter.

the thing I fucking hate is when you're 1000 words into a short story and you know it's going to need a mad edit but the fact is that you've got the start of something good there, and you're trying to chug along the first draft fighting the urge to just start over already except you're just rereading that same 1000 words over and over to get back on the same wave length, and then you finally click out of /lit/ and you're like "RIGHT time to get started" and then it's just that shit staring you in the face again that was always there.

>>10895682
Cool it with the ressentiment buddy

>>10895644
I got one of my screenplays into the longlist a few days ago for an internationally renowned film festival but it didn't make the shortlist. I'm kinda pleased though because it was one of my first scripts to send out to competitions and festivals so it felt very encouraging.

Working on a Mike Leigh-esque comedy drama, a psychological thriller and I'm torn between working on writing a survivalist thriller or a children's TV pilot (in the UK, children's television is receiving a £50 million increase in government funding so it might be the better place to try and get one of my scripts produced).

I try to keep optimistic but it genuinely is lonely work, proof reading for typos and to see what can be improved on, re-drafting and re-drafting, making outlines that are as cast-iron as they can be before I start a first draft, having barely anyone to bounce ideas off so it's mostly solitary, and it kinda hurts knowing people just see me sitting on the laptop and genuinely think "he's just on his games again." Got Gucci Gang on repeat while working on my comedy script just trying to pump myself up.

>>10898471
"If this were (insert name of series/writer), where would it go next?"

That should get you through most of it.

>>10899939
Nice work, anon. Be sure to let us know how it goes.

>>10900010
You're doing it anon, you're living the life

(I think) I'm not delusional enough to make that my serious aspiration. That being said, there has been definite progress in my art, especially my short stories recently. So maybe eventually I'll be able to get something published.

>>10900089
Thanks, anon, but it's disheartening that it's still on my own a lot of the time. Plus, I've only really got a short film I wrote and some experimental films under my belt, nothing I've made any money on so sometimes it does feel a little unlikely I'll get paid one day for this.

I suppose the best thing to do is just keep going and build up a portfolio of work, keep submitting to competitions, applying for work and contacting agents.

There was a production company interested in new film scripts (they've had multiple success with international film festivals and now they're branching out into feature length films) so I sent them my psychological thriller and I sort of hope that leads to something because they were very willing to pay writers to develop scripts for them. My fingers crossed for that but I'm still just starting out and I don't think they'll take it. Just gotta keep going, I suppose.

>>10895644
slow but fulfilling