/lit/ - Literature

So far I've only shared my full length novel with my grandmother. She thought it was awesome, but she's my grandmother. I have one online friend who is into writing, but I'm scared to show him my stuff. Putting yourself out there is difficult enough as it is.

>>21508700
I got a novel based on a man with treacher collins and it all revolves around 90s rock lyrics

After I lost my job because of coof hysteria I came to the realization that I've been wasting my life. I decided not to settle for mediocrity or misery. I started writing seriously. I've always loved doing it and tried writing a book in college, but I gave up because I was inexperienced, immature, and distracted at the time. This time, I mean it. After two years of writing whenever I had the time to do so, I just finished my first draft a couple weeks ago. I'm editing now, finding a cover artist, and will self publish because there's absolutely no chance a publishing house will want this story. I don't care if it doesn't make even a penny. I want the feel of triumph in being able to hold it in my hands and read my own novel exactly how I envisioned it. And you know what? If just one person picks it up and enjoys it, well, that will mean the world to me.

>>21508700

I have been making a living from writing books and articles since 2018

You just have to do it, making an outline and planning things out makes it a lot easier

Connect with other writers and with publishers if you are trying to be a novelist, writers help each other out, doesn't have to be so lonely

Myself, I am a very reclusive type

I send my drafts and manuscripts to editors over email and live in the forest

>>21509375

I have worked with editors who have never even seen my face in person

I did a lot of ghostwriting early on as well, so a lot of my work has someone else's name on it

Writing is an art and you can live however you want if you can make a living from your words as an artist/craftsman

Used to sling words for $0.01 each it was rough, but Dickens used to scrape by cranking out serials and news reports

Journalism is not a bad place to start for writers, a lot of novelists cut their teeth with journalism

You need to think deeply about the practical facts of making a living as a writer, that will motivate you to produce work that you can make a living from

>>21509390

As a final thought, shopping around your finished work can be a nightmare

Publishers always want to change things to "fit the market" or just because they want to

If you self-publish, you need a way to get your novel in front of the people who want to read it

You can even shop it at bookstores

>>21509410

As a final, final thought, ebook sales are making up the bulk of sales for many authors today

Personally, I would not want to work with Amazon in any capacity, but there are other ways to publish ebooks

>>21509350
>I don't care if it doesn't make even a penny.
>I want the feel of triumph in being able to hold it in my hands and read my own novel exactly how I envisioned it.
Those are the most important points in anything you do in life.

If you want to break your shackles, you need to finally say "FUCK EVERYTHING" and just "DO IT" until you either die trying, or finish your goal.

The most important thing so many people don't understand about improving in something is that 99 % of the time they will find a new path and end up with something completely different that fulfills them.

Also look what happens to most writers like GRRM or Rothfuss. They can't finish a new book because of the pressure of "success". Even Sanderson, who is famous for actually finishing his books, is struggling with new books because of this pressure of "succeeding".

The is nothing more amazing than being the "underdog" who has no skin in the game. Right now you don't have 100 people depend on the success of your book. Right now you can just write without having a publisher or helper telling you stuff like "don't make this character look like this" or "add this to your book", so we can sell this merch.

The good thing about writing fantasy books without a publisher is that you are free to do whatever you want. The moment you make millions and have employees, your writing is now a commercial enterprise and not for your own fun anymore.

Everything has a good and a bad side. The problem is that retards only think about "MUH COLOR OF BUGATTI!" and don't understand that money is worthless for happiness. Sure, having more money is better than having less money, but every successful person says the same thing if you ask him what the happiest time in his life was
>I remember when I was poor and struggling. No matter how much money I have now, I'm the happiest when I think about the time when everything started. When I was just me and fought to improve.

When you write books, you will always remember your journey. This is more worth than all gold on earth. Or as Alexander the Great would have said shortly before his death "When I'm dead, I can't take anything with me. The only thing the world will remember from me is what I left other people to remember and not what the color of my bugatti was"

Test

>>21508707
Are you the same anon who on that confessions thread a few months back talked about reading a ton of Star Wars novels and writing a like 100,000 word novel that only his grandmother read? If you are, I kneel king.

>>21509350
Awesome stuff anon, big inspiration for me to try my hand. Good luck!
>>21509211
>>21509375
Great job finishing your own novels anons. Big accomplishment.

>>21508700
I wrote a book about an unhinged loser who finally has enough and decides to live out all of his bad thoughts. I managed to speak to 1 publishing agent who told me it was 'too rapey'.

>>21508700
The average amazon self-publisher makes around $50 a year per book

So no

>>21509350
BASED

>>21509457
Not OP, but thanks for this anon. Hope you are doing well.

>>21508700
I published with a mid-sized publishing house.
They spendt exactly 0 money on helping me promote the book. Not even letting me contact book stores with their email to try and book a presentation. Sold very little. Pretty much back to square one now. I don't mind 'cause the book was borderline bad, but damn if I didn't get my hopes up and had them crushed.

>>21508700
no

I have a short philosophical dialogue I haven't finished. Spent 2 days on it, and it has progressed for the last 4 months. It's not that I don't know how to plan or end it, i just never got around to finishing it.

I wish you all horrible luck with your novels. It is not enough that I succeed; others must fail.

>>21510273
it has not progressed*

>>21508700
I left a tech career to write.
That’s not even entirely true since I have a side project that took off enough to pay the bills, and spend half of my workday time on expanding that. I just left the corporate world.
My family took it as a psychotic break. I don’t talk to them anymore.

>>21510280
The most important thing for me anon, is to know that you are happy.
I appreciate and applaud your move to write and take out your time to do something that (I hope at least) you enjoy.

>>21508700
I have several projects underway - short story collection, Screenplay, novels etc

Work on them bit by bit hope to publish the short stories on Amazon this year. They aren't very good but I just want to do something

After that I'm gonna work more on the novel, take my time and try tradpub maybe shill it here a bit

>>21509350
I hope you can find some degenerate internet corner where as many as ten people really give a shit about your story. Probably won't be here, but it's worth searching for one. Just think! Ten real readers!

>>21508700
People will consider my writings juvenile because I'm a natural happy person. I'm never gonna make it. People rather read about cynicism, suffering, and death

>>21508700
I tried my hand at writing. Sharing what I put my soul into was an awful experience that I won't repeat.

>>21510296
Thanks anon. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s had to say about it.

After going through a medium-scale life breakdown, I got a sort of obsessive urge to create something of my own, something that ONLY I could create and nobody else, no matter what it took. After about 7 years of note taking with hundreds upon hundreds of pages of random crap, and workshopping different mediums, I finally decided that my story would be best expressed as a novel. I finally got around to actually starting it about 1 year ago, and progress is painfully slow, as I’m only about 130 pages in (decently polished though) of what I think will turn out to be about 1300 pages, and I’m struggling even harder to think of ways to “sell” it to a publisher. The more I write though, the faster it gets, so it might only take me 3-4 years instead of 10.
Like other anons ITT said, I honestly just hope that I can find and connect with a very small handful of readers that will appreciate my work. I’m not a transblack queerfaggot, and I don’t have the marketability of Harry Potter houses or something like that, so I don’t anticipate a big push into commercial success. But such is the nature of the creative business. It’s all more for me than for other people, and that’s okay. Success would be nice, but it brings its own baggage along for the ride that you may not have signed up for.
>>21510486
Not that anon, but I quit my button up job too to become an electrician. It’s hard work a lot of the time, and I’m doomed to be a poorfag for a few years while I’m in training, but the corporate world is so totally soulless that for me it was either leave and struggle, or stay and live as a zombie. You only have one life to live, anon. “Do whatever makes you happy” is a low IQ trap, but sometimes there’s wisdom on the left end of the bell curve.

>>21508700
im illiterate

>>21508700
Self publishing is an admission of defeat. It confesses your inability to find anyone not yourself to believe in you. It is to forfeit your intellectual property and to make sure your work will not be read.
Having said that, it is often STILL the play. The state of publishing is dystopic -- it is basically a massive money laundering operation between diverse peoples, publishers, and the academy.

>>21508700
Much like the other anons mentioned, I spent many years working dead end jobs, dreaming of the day when some publisher handed me a big check and I could then focus on writing full-time. But then one day, I said fuck it and quit my job and started doing gig work to support my writing. Three (self-published) novels later, I'm stranded in Ecuador, giving online English lessons, scraping by on two meals a day.

I would appreciate it if you guys would buy my novels but, as always, I'm giving free digital copies to anyone who emails me at zulualitspa@gmail.com

>>21508700
Don't know about a novel, as I'm too shit at writing (I've tried), but I've made my own game. It has fifteen hundred plays on itch.io, but I'm still happy I managed to finish something, whose creation was entirely directed by me. I'm a game dev, so I've made plenty of other peoples' ideas (i.e. mostly derivative copy-paste) into games.
So I'd say personal projects are worth it as you will improve your craft and get some creative satisfaction.

>>21508700
>wrote novel
>over 500 pages
I know I'm going to have to self-publish. Autistic epics don't get picked up by publishers and that's fair. Maybe I'll buy ads for here or something.

>>21509417
What are some good alternatives to Amazon for ebooks?

>>21511186
You've made some very questionable life choices, mon ami, but let's hear an elevator pitch for your work.
Remember your audience.

>>21511355
All three books have deeper socio-political themes, but my primary goal is surface level entertainment.
>Panther Pride is a story of middle schoolers who riot due to broken air conditioning and an ill-timed pep rally. They manage to seize control of the building, but then rapidly split into two different groups, each with different aims. The nerdier kids want to use the riot as an opportunity to negotiate with the school for reforms, whereas the more athletic kids just want to wreck things and have fun. The attempts of the adults to regain control of the school are baffled by a mysterious Cuban student's uncanny knack for asymmetrical warfare, as well as protestors outside the school who use the riots as an excuse to air their own personal grievances with society.
I assure you, it's not a direct rip-off of Lord of the Flies.
>The Savage Green is about a paramilitary contractor who has been hired to recover a renegade scientist from the wilderness of the Florida panhandle. He soon finds himself embroiled in a fever dream hellscape populated with vicious wildlife, inbred Confederate holdouts, and a powerful supernatural force which threatens to unleash Florida on the entire world. On the flipside, a man born and raised in Florida must come to terms with his own arrogance in the face of God, and hopefully redeem himself through an act of genuine faith.
People seem to like this one the most. It's been favorably compared to Harassment Architecture.
>Modem Waves is about a veteran of a capitalist militia who now lives in a socialist breakaway state in the Pacific Northwest. After he is hijacked by the younger sister of his dead squadmate, he finds himself forced to participate in a desperate scheme to restore a version of the United States which never actually existed.
This was meant to be an inversion of the YA dystopian genre, in the sense that young adults are now running a dystopia. It's been compared to the Fallout games, but I've never played them.

>>21511186
I'll be sure to draw you next time, Zulu.

>>21510374
Write children’s books and YA novels. Find your demographic, fren.

>>21511186
where the hell do we buy your books Zulu???

>>21509410
I finished my manuscript and sent it to dozens of agents. I kept all of the rejections. I ended up self-publishing out of necessity.

I submitted the finished book (ISBN and all) to a professional review. I'll get the results next week. Maybe with a review I can shop it to bookstores. Fuck Bebos and his jungle website. But maybe the review will say it's garbage.

>>21509741
It's not about the money, nog

>>21510374
People want stories they can aspire too. People want soul. Every piece of media today is saturated with post-modernist cynicism and 'why try when it's all meaningless' endings.

>don't cut yourself on those edges

I know, but uplifting is against the grain these days.

>>21509417
>>21511285
Seconding this

Anyone got good advice or info about what to do?

I got some short stories, and have 1 novel almost finished with the revisions I've done, and another almost finished, but I've stalled because the social networking, getting out there, publishing whatever I'm finding harder than the actual writing cause I'm a social retard.

I managed to get a short story accepted in one of my country's lit magazines a while back, but I don know

>>21508700
>had two of my novels printed out by professional book printing service
>sitting on my shelf looking so pretty
>makes me happy every time i see them
>can flip through any time i want and read whatever section i want
>when i die someone might pick them up and give it a read out of curiosity

i still intend to trad pub. i won't self pub because even i don't read self published novels, idk who the fuck does. i queried these two and my other one to as many agents as i could find that match criteria, all rejections, but i'll keep writing more novels and querying them to everyone who accepts this type of story, and eventually someone has to say yes.

my new one is kind of pandering to agent tastes, a compromise between what they want and what i want to write. having some trouble on it because my heart isn't in it yet but i just have to find the right key.

>>21510280
i get it. i could advance in my career (which i don't give a shit about) and make more money if i focus all my time and attention on it. but i have an easy, low stress, medium pay job instead, so i'm not too stressed and exhausted to write. there are things in life more important than earning as much money as possible. i still put $1k into savings every month so i have enough money to be comfortable. it's about priorities.

>>21513092
Keep making progress. Don't give up. You can't do anything if you don't finish your manuscripts into polished works. Submit your works to critical reviews. It may hurt, but accreditation will help tremendously.

>>21513511
All it takes is 1, anon. But judging from the experience from the other anon ITT, don’t get desperate and jump at the only publisher who will give you any attention, but then in the end will do zero work promoting your material. Just like falling for the first girl that talks to you for more than two sentences, but she ends up being a shitty person. Know your worth! Unlike women where you ought to get that going during your prime years, with your book, you have your whole life to get it done right!

>>21513070
>No response
Amazon can't be that bad. Yeah they own the ISBN shit but they must be great for just getting your stuff out there.

>>21508700
I posted a chapter of my novel and it got trashed for being boring and not having a plot. The main character is a NEET who mostly stays home, so I can see where they're coming from. I got about a third of the way through, but because I didn't see a way to fix it, I just sort of gave up. I still have the manuscript. Part of me wants to see it through to the end, even though it's trash, but at the same time, I find I'm a lot less stressed when I'm not writing. It seems stupid to stress yourself out for something you know is shit. I've got two other ideas for novels, but I just don't feel like trying to write another novel. I might just go back to short stories.

>>21513980
people don't get this point, but it's the key point to writing--you have to write something people actually want to read. expecting otherwise is like pestering mommy to put your crayon art up on the fridge and tell you how great of an artist you are.

>>21509350
Contact? I'm sort of a drawfag and would definitely wanna do some kind of artwork for a lit anon. I'm not amazing but I'm competent. I actually wanna take the same pill you did and get into a serious art grind but I've got a lot to deal with a5 the moment.

>>21509350
based and jealous

>>21511186
Sent, if I like them I'll buy them.

>>21514073
What styles can you do? I was thinking something like Frank Frazetta.

>>21509350
Based

Are Londonfrog’s posts still being collected?

>>21509457
I don’t think Andrew Tate is a good example of unhappiness, but perhaps you are alluding to people who fanboy him (perhaps you have a negative view of money or you just realized it doesn’t change how you feel). He is clearly spending his life doing what he wants to do

>>21509350

It makes me upset that I won't be able to find and read my fellow /lit/ards stories if or when they are done. Some of these sound interesting.

>>21513980
Post it again

I know the whodunit genre is totally played out at this point but GODDAMN IT I WILL FINISH THIS THING

>>21509350

>>21509350

>>21514053
No, write what you want to read. If other people like it also, great. Don't fucking compromise your art for others

>>21516020
When I publish mine I will make a thread here to advertise it. I'm the anon from earlier ITT who just finished a first draft. It will take my a couple more months but I'm hoping to publish it in the summer. If it looks like something that interests you, then I would greatly appreciate having you as a reader and customer.

>>21516557
You understand.

>>21513980
Remember you can polish a turd if you try hard enough, Listen to what they were saying and make some edits.

Also if you don't plan to publish just move on to the next book and see what *You like* Its a common problem I noticed with writers and me myself You need to read/watch/listen to media and see what *you like* And what *You want to write about* A lot of people get confused and write things they don't really want to read but want to write. Maybe the reason your having issue with it is because your not writing what you want to read you are only writing it because its a cool idea, and not something you'd pick up and read

>>21514208
Frazetta is quite a bit above my level considering his mastery over forms and abilities to exaggerate anatomy. I'm a halfway decent copycat but a lot of my stuff needs work. If you wanna chat more drop some form of contact, I feel offtopic posting is kinda gay.

>>21516885
Ah that's alright anon, but hey I appreciate the offer.

>>21516666
You should refrain from taking the advice of anyone who mentions 'polishing' and mindlessly absorbing media. This is an amateur mentality, the mark of someone who looks at writing with a sense of superstition and mysticism. Writing is an artisan craft, with established steps for the foundation and room for creative flourishes, even within the fundamentals.

You literally cannot polish a turd, not without chemical additives and a very loose definition of polishing. Chances are the manuscript of the anon in question needs serious structural revisions, not just some clarification on the imagery or more naturalistic dialogue. It sounds like an incredibly boring story devoid of any conflict. I've seen probably a dozen versions of "Inside Anon's Life" on /wg/ and they're all relentlessly boring.

And when it comes to using outside media to improve your craft, do not simply turn on netflix or open a book and start taking notes. All that will do is turn an enjoyable pastime into a tedious chore. What you should do instead is reflect on the media which has already impacted you, and ask yourself why. The scenes and quotes which are already stuck inside your memory are there for a reason.

>>21516981
As an aside, anything even close to the level of Frazetta would likely cost you a decent commission sum. Not to mention they might want royalties or something if you even turn a profit. Personally I've no idea how that kinda thing works.

An actually inspiring writing thread from lit? This is a rare treasure

Fucking love this thread, for the love of whatever you believe in, believe in yourself anons. Just finish the work, fuck the rest, the results and everything else is already done. All that's left is for you to inspire, sit down and get to it.