/lit/ - Literature

>>12351541
Start a journal and write about your day

Well I can tell you my experience, but if it helps is dependent on you i suppose. I like writing to explore fundamental aspects of reality and existence. I take a lot of influence from the philosophy I read which helps me analyze the world in a creative way and thus work with writing creatively. I think really the most important thing is just that you have something interesting and important to say. Style and prose are very important of course, but I think they come after this. Aside from all this read a lot of a particular author you enjoy and your writing will reflect that style (at least for me this works really well). This is a good way to experiment because you can play with what influence you are taking while trying to input your own influence. Last of all, be confident! You aren't going to improve at all if you aren't comfortable taking risks, and you won't be able to take risks if you aren't comfortable writing something that isn't good. A teacher of mine told me "write like you're a genius, edit with scrutiny" which I think is great advice. I try to not restrict myself to any judgement or rules when writing and think it has helped me understand style immensely.

read alot
write a journal
Keep a journal of novels you have read
Don't expect to make a living from it.
Pic related is the best "how do I write" book

>>12351619
this is good. but I'd also add that you write to think on paper and not produce a work of art. You don't have to do anything with what you have written. It could just be thrown out. Now go out and hand me in an article on some new construction and if I don't like it you won't get paid. Only 250 words. Go. (Or at least that's what you got to imagine doing, getting paid for it.) Just talk out loud on a wall until youre having a convosation.

>>12351555
but i want to write fiction, not some boring crap.

>>12351700
Your life is fictitious, you aren't real

>>12351700
oh then steal. that's what good fiction is. grand theft, both from books and reality, history or mishmashes of proverbs in music and poetry in political rhetoric. just steal it all, steal it all!

just fucking do it. there's no proper way to begin developing a creative skill or idea. you're going to suck and you're probably going to give up again and again. if you're lucky you'll keep coming back to it. pussy footing around is the worst thing you can do - quit wasting time

These are the basic rules i came up with when it comes to self learning. I am a self taught painter. But i figure it could be applied to other things.

1. Read about the history of the thing you are learning about

2. Read about the elements, principals, and composition of the thing you are learning about. Basically learn the basics. Learn the different ingredients painting or book writing is made of

3. read about theory, aesthetics, and philosophy of the subject you are interested in

4. Read about different techniques, especially ones implored by the greats

5. read about the business side of things, what one really needs when it comes to that. what the money people actually look for, how to market and advertise

6. Now that you have the basics drilled into your head. Read about the avante garde, experimental, weird, outsider, side of things

7. figure out what your goal is. You want to write genre fiction? you want to be a hack that makes money by fleecing young adults? you want to be super serious man who critics love?

8. read books, or look at paintings, or watch movies. etc, etc

9. Start writing

>>12351700
You might find that your boring crap is far more engaging than your fiction. Just give it a shot.

>>12351700
you niggas always want to be masters straight off the bat. prepared to be humbled when you read the first piece you finally get around to shitting out

>>12351782
But then it would just be erotica. I dont want to write erotica.

>>12351840
i don't think describing jerking off to anime counts as erotica

>>12351883
no im an adult film entertainer.

>>12351896
and i'm sure there's a lot more to your daily life than fucking. at least i hope so.

>>12351653
Mainly, this. But also:

1. Write, literally, every day, unless either (a) you're physically incapable, (b) there's an emergency, or (c) there is some profoundly important life event the proper responsiveness to which is incompatible with writing. Really, (c) is a judgment call.

2. Write even, indeed especially, when you really don't want to.

3. Write with humility, and in the knowledge that you're terrible at it and will be for a long time, but with enough arrogance to hold yourself to higher standards than you can reach.

4. Never drink or masturbate before writing, but feel free to do so excessively afterwards (consistently with getting a good night's sleep).

5. Somehow get an education, if only in the form of friends who will offer frequent and exacting feedback, or a job that requires you to write with intelligence and discipline. Every autodidact is either a genius, or shit. Are you a genius?

6. Learn to love language, and to be anal about it, to the point that you'll never write "alot."

>>12351541
OP you should read Robert Olen Butler's book From Where You Dream and try the techniques he describes in the workshop section. They are very difficult if you take them seriously. Here is his advice about journaling. There is more to it and I do recommend reading the whole book though (several times) and really seriously practicing what he promotes. If you do this the stories will start coming to you from a deep place instead stuff that you write "from your head" which is not going to connect with readers

>At the end of the day or beginning of the next day, return to some event of the day that evoked an emotion in you. Record that event in the journal. But do this only -- only -- moment to moment through the senses. Absolutely never name an emotion; never start explaining or analyzing or interpreting an emotion. Record only through those five ways I mentioned that we feel emotions -- signals inside the body, signals outside the body, flashes of the past, flashes of the future, sensual selectivity -- which are therefore the best way to express emotions.

Then after a couple of weeks of this...

>From then on each day's journaling should have two parts to it. First, write a new entry. Then, when you've finished, go back and read the journal entry of two weeks ago, and with a marker pen slash through all the examples of abstraction, generalization, summary, analysis, and interpretation you see in the text, leaving only moment-to-moment sense-based events and impressions.

Another book that I recommend, though not as strongly, is Method Writing by Jack Grapes.