/lit/ - Literature

>>18900416
Unironically get a trade, something outdoors and physical.

You don't need motivation, you need to build discipline and the habit of doing work.

>>18900443
>>18900448
This, you have to live before you can write OP. And you have to write a lot before you can write well. The "writer" is not a natural category at all.

>>18900448
please, i beg you, how do i go about doing that? where do i turn to learn it? i am deadly serious

>have trouble even getting myself to watch anime and read manga
It's not just laziness because there have been days where I've read more of Ulysses than I have animu/mango

>>18900461
Write daily, even when you don't want to. Simple as that.

>>18900416
keep doing stuff, regardless of whether its writing. at some point you'll have enough life combined with enough reading to really want to write and then you'll develop the discipline.

warning: this may not happen for a while or ever

>>18900478
thank you very much, but i meant building discipline in general. this is an extremely pathetic thing to say and i apologize, but i have felt unable to do anything at all during every day of the past three years. despair, i guess you could call it. how do i get my head out of my ass and just do things?

>>18900501
Get. A. Physical. Job.

Here is some genuine advice anon:
>1) You have to be able to picture yourself as somebody who can actually write and finish a novel.
I know this sounds like manifestation shit, but I think it is really important. The biggest hurdle I had to overcome was simply being able to imagine myself as an author. I had always 'wanted' to write a novel, but when I really thought long and hard about it, I realised that I wasn't able to picture myself as somebody who had actually written a novel. When I confronted the thought head on, I realised that I was scared by how insurmountable a task it seemed and that fear was preventing me from taking the plunge of even trying. It was frightening to come to that realisation, but actually having confronted it I was able to work through it. Reconfiguring my perception of myself as somebody who, by the end of the year, had written a novel, helped to actually do it.

>2) Set a desire word count, a deadline, and work towards it.
If you just try to write vaguely until the story is done, you'll run out of steam. If you set an overall word count and date you have to finish it by, you'll be more likely to pump out words even on those days when you're not feeling any inspiration.

>3) Likewise, set weekly writing targets, not daily targets.
Your mileage may vary here, but for me personally weekly targets worked a lot better than daily. I set myself the goal of 5000 a week - but I could spread that 5000 over as many days as needed. If I was on top of my shit that'd be 1000 a day, but if I missed a few days then I had to force myself to make up the difference. This gave me a good amount of flexibility - I still had the pressure of meeting a word count, but I didn't feel like shit if I missed a day or too.

>4) Focus on writing something sincere, not 'good'
You will always be your own harshest critic, but also at a certain point, you have to accept that you're not going to write like James Joyce (presumably). I was held back by my own 'perfectionism' (which is really just a cope) and then I realised that if I ever wanted to finish the manuscript then my goal should not be writing a masterpiece, but simply writing something sincere. If I could get to the end and say that I stand behind everything I've written, then I would be happy - whether or not it was a masterpiece. Thinking along these lines helped me actually focus on the goal, rather than giving up too early.

Overall I really want to stress that first point. If you're anything like me, us 'men of inaction' are paralysed by fantasies and are prevented from pursuing any of them because they seem unrealistic and out of our reach. You spend your life thinking "I would like to learn French, well maybe next year" and then you reach your 30s and you never did it. You have to stop picturing yourself as a man of inaction and start picturing yourself as a man of action. That's the first step and it can take a while and it requires some soul searching, but you can do it anon.

>>18900443
Tried this and it was a disaster.

>>18900639
Lol story time?

>>18900461
Read Atomic Habits for a start it won’t fix you but I got a lot out of it.

>>18900618
I also want to build on this to say that you need to be decently happy and functional in your life overall if you want to achieve secondary goals like writing a novel. It will be hard to get the motivation if you are eating like shit, living a sedentary lifestyle, not socialising etc. All these things work hand in hand, if you are feeling physically healthy and you are able to complete the essential tasks of living (getting enough sleep, eating the right food, exercising a good amount) then you will also have the energy to complete non-essential tasks.

Sure, many successful authors were recluses, but they were also manically devoted to their craft. If you are a recluse with no motivation, you are not a secret genius, you are just a loser.

>>18900416
You know, I used to be like this and got better, began to work and went to a college I was enjoying. I kid you not the pandemic happened 6 months later. I was truly happy back then.

>>18900676
I'm in the same boat. Was just starting to find my groove and then memeflu came along and fucked everything.

>>18900416
You're mistaken if you think novelists simply have the motivation to write novels. You simply have to start working on it. Once it starts to take shape and your mind is firing on all cylinders - that's when the real motivation kicks in. If you wait around for inspiration to strike there's a good chance you'll never write a novel.

>>18900416
To post some Nietzschean shit, that helped me a lot:

A lack of motivation usually underlies a fear of something. Fear of success, fear of being disrespected for your work, fear of how others might perceive you.

Well your fear come from your thoughts, which comes from your desires, which comes from your understanding of the world, which comes from your interaction with reality.

You need to figure out what exactly your unconscious assumptions are about your understanding as a novelist that prevents you from writing.

For me I absolutely fucking dreaded the idea of someone criticising my own work. The idea of being disrespected for something that was sincere because I've had that done plenty of times before.

But people will respect you only when you live according to their own values, better to live according to your own values so at least you respect yourself. Respecting yourself will help to say fuck off to the haters who don't understand what a momentual task it is to something down on paper and put your heart into it.

>>18900443
This. in addition to making you less of a lazy loser it will also teach that writing a novel is worthless waste of time.

>>18900416
This didnt used to be me but became me over the last year. Thanks shitlibs for shutting the world down over a bad flu

>>18900618
>>18900662
solid advice? on MY literature board?

>>18901064
muhphysicaltradefags once again proving themselves to be complete asshats

I think it's important to build a solid foundation for your life before attempting something as superfluous as writing a novel. Chances are you won't get very far without having your affairs in order first, and even if you do, it's unlikely to be any great success. Focus on living well. Finish your education, find employment, exercise, eat well, talk to people, etc. The most important thing is that you start. Baby steps, anon. I believe in you!

>>18901098
not op but i recently dropped out of univesity due to miserable failure. should i just directly learn a practical profession with a diploma/certificate or should i go back and study something else?

>>18901131
That depends on a lot of things. Why did you fail in the first place? Was it due to lack of motivation, discipline, or competence in your selected field? More importantly, what do YOU want to do with your life moving forward?

>>18900443
>Physical trades

Please give examples, genuinely looking for career paths.

>>18901150
i'd say i failed due to an extremely embarrassing lack of effort. as for what i want to do, well...it's very difficult to answer that question since there's many things i'd like to achieve, but i recognize that i would have to sacrifice most of them in order to at least succeed in a few. i'm guessing this is a bad sign already.

>>18901172
>failed due to an extremely embarrassing lack of effort
Well, thankfully this is something that can be remedied with time and energy, it only requires that you develop good habits. As for your lack of direction, that's unfortunately something you'll sinply have to decide for yourself. I find making a pros and cons list helps when understanding what you really want to do.

>>18900416
Jesus christ why'd you have to show me this.

>>18901171
heavy duty mechanic, hvac (this seems to be paying quite well), cnc machinist, watch reparations, plumbing if you have the patience
if all else fails, just do compeng at a community college

>>18900416

Eventually in your later 20s you do tire of yourself a bit. If you haven't had your attention span completely destroyed by internet/phone/video games you naturally turn back to longer-form engagements since you've exhausted the shorter ones. Of course this only applies to those with the capacity for that turn, which I think applies to a decent subset of the board's userbase.

>>18900615
Meme solution. Almost as bad “just lift bro”. It’s better, but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue.

>>18900974
For me, it’s just crushing lack of self confidence. I have no faith that I can actually be good at anything or do it well. I certainly don’t have faith I can do all the things I want to do.

>>18900618
>>18900662
Not him but this is really what I needed to hear. Thanks anon.
What was your novel about? (I just mean in a sentence or two, I'm not trying to steal it.)

>>18900416
Man this is too close to home...

>>18900443
I am actually on a moderately successful career path but everything else is still exactly the same.
Having a job literally didn't change anything.
In some ways it's worse because it's an excuse not to do things outside work hours ("too tired").

like great I can be good at 1 thing in life, still suck at everything else

>>18901497
The fundamental issue is OP is an isolated low test loser, which the job will fix.

>>18901532
A lot of what's in OP's image applied to me when I was working a dead end job, so no it won't.

>>18901517
>What was your novel about?

It was set at a university, following the lives of a bunch of different students of different backgrounds as they interact / conflict with each other.

>>18901592
Nice. Did you use 3rd or 1st person to tell it? I am having a lot of writer's block just figuring out how exactly I am going to go about certain parts.
I have tried both; but I have a feeling if I use 3rd person the character might not be likable enough, and if I use 1st person, it might be difficult to have him tell the whole story in retrospect from an unbiased perspective, since I want to have him shift ideologies throughout the book.

bumping

>>18901592
that could describe literally any varsity novel every made. What sets your book aside from the rest?

>>18901619
Third person. I have nothing against first person but I've always preferred third person, I feel like it allows more emphasis to be given to description and things outside of the character's point of view. Not that that's impossible in first, but I find it easier and more natural in third.

I think the ideal for me is a free indirect discourse style, where you get both the external narration provided by 3rd but don't lose the internal thought processes you get with 1st - which is what you get in e.g. Emma by Jane Austen.

>>18901505

I haven't ever met you, but I know that's not true because it's not true for any human in existence.

Every single person has both positive and negative sides, you are incessantly focusing on the negative side. I know exactly how it feels to feel powerless, incompetent.

The only thing I can really say is you need to kill those demons in your head, and that's only going to happen if you start doing the smallest thing you can achieve and build from there.

It could be as simple as cleaning your room, or making a dinner that is nutritious. Leafy green vegetables (spinach, brocolli, etc) have an almost immediate mental health boost

>>18901746
>Leafy green vegetables (spinach, brocolli, etc) have an almost immediate mental health boost

Not related to the rest of the thread, but the best change to my diet has been eating heaps of bokchoy and chinese spinach. It's the cheapest veg at my local supermarket and very tasty, especially blanched with a drizzle of sesame oil.

>>18901770
I never tried bokchoy or chinese spinach, how do you blanch it?

>>18901792
Just chuck it in boiling water for like half a minute. If you're not used to them you might not like the taste, plenty of people don't which I understand. But I personally love it.

>>18900416
Gather the shitposts u make on 4chan and compile it into a book

All I can say is get that shit fixed before 29 because staring down your 30s still like this is awful

>>18900416
Hits too close to home.

>spends most of his time watching garbage on YouTube, browsing boards of talking in chatrooms

This, by far, is the biggest thing in my experience.

Remove this shit from your life. Totally. Just block it on everything. You shouldn't be at a computer to do anything except work. If you can't sit down and say "I am here to do X thing" then you don't sit down at the computer. When you do, having blocked everything stops you from falling into the endless content loop.

Doing this is by far the hardest thing someone in your position can do, because it suddenly removes the majority of what you spend your time on. You're now going to be bored but without distraction.

But the plus side is that you quickly start filling that time with something else. You'll read more books, you'll do all your basic tasks, you'll fire up duolingo or whatever just to have something to do.

You're going to still be distracted and unfocussed as shit at first because you have up until now habitually avoided anything difficult. But having blocked the major distractions you are ultimately forced to improve that.

Once you've got there and built that ability to focus, you'll find it much easier to do the things you wanted to do, like writing a novel.