/lit/ - Literature

I'm nearing the completion of my first novel and I was actually just wondering about where to go from here. Will be monitoring this thread.

Perhaps your book is shit

>60k
>novel

>>6450802
It might be, but I have had a decent number of yeses. I think I need to work my way in with a good crowd, maybe go on a coke and captain Morgan binge somewhere prolific; maybe I should move to New York, no, what I will do is travel across the US stopping at every major publishing house and literary agency. Lets see them turn away a half-naked 155 pound causation from Wisconsin and a seven foot tall Native American. Fucking sons of bitches!

>>6450791
post sample

YUO FUCKING KARS! Somebody help me with a list of fucking publishers and agencies worth a fuck!

so far I have the cucklers that published god-forsaken fucking that one fuck, Wallace, and then a few other basic publishing houses; whats the underground? WHeres the hidden-wiki of this fucking habitat, fyou fucks!

>>6450791
I know a great agent, he'll hook you right up with one of the biggest publishing houses in the world. Potentially millions will see your book after you submit your manuscript to him.

K. Indle.

>>6450791

60k isn't a novel, it's a novella, and novellas are not currently marketable in traditional publishing.

Self-publish the novella, gather some experience and good reviews, and use that as a notch on your belt when you finish your next book and begin shopping THAT around to agents.

>>6450791
You have to make friends in the industry. For a lot of people that means going to an MFA program, but not always.

I'm an editor at a major publishing house in the literary fiction department. For writers I think it's really all about having connections. The agent has to be convinced in your potential to succeed before he tries to sell you to publishing houses.

>>6450878
How often do fuckwits show up at the publishing house to submit their work? To what degree of a heinous crime would that be considered in the face of the publishing house? Would I be briskly thrown out, my work quickly discarded?

>>6450908
>How often do fuckwits show up at the publishing house to submit their work? To what degree of a heinous crime would that be considered in the face of the publishing house? Would I be briskly thrown out, my work quickly discarded?
Well for one thing you can't even get up to our offices without going through security in the lobby to get a visitors pass that allows you access to the elevators, and you can't get through that without clearance from one of our receptionists. So if you don't have an appointment already, you can't just barge in with your manuscript.

I remember when I first started working we had a guy fake his way through as a food delivery guy at the receiving dock of our building and came up through the freight elevator into our offices. He had a big stack of pages that he threw on the desk of our managing editor. It caused quite a scene because the guy seemed a little unstable. We threatened to call security, but he just left and went back down in the freight elevator. We passed his manuscript around, I glanced at it. But it was laughable and went right into the trash.

You can try an email submission, but those don't really all get read since we get so many of them.

>>6450943
Interesting story. In complete and utter honesty, what would you do if somebody showed up at your apartment, or no, pushed a query and the first could of pages underneath your home door; or maybe in your mailbox depending on what the situation be.

Would this approach be too fringe?

>>6450791
Maybe your book is just shit.

>>6450875
>assigning classifications to literary work based on the number of words in the book
Dohohoho

You've only been trying for three months for Christ's sake. Some people who write great shit spend years. You haven't even spent half a year. Send two letters a day.

>>6450875
In the convoluted modern parlance:
6k or less: short story
6 to 15k: novelette
15k to 40k: novella
40k to 60k: grey area/short-form novel/light novel
60k+: novel

Be aware, such distinctions are often used for the handing out of awards and otherwise disregarded by all

>>6451013
maybe you should stop being so melodramatic

or maybe if u post a sample he'll recognize ur genius ;^)

>>6451013
did you just sincerely ask if it's okay to slip a manuscript beneath an editor's home? i mean, really?

OP your book is shit

i cannot actually believe people define their books as "postmodernist"

fucking kill yourself charlatan

I think OP may use more drugs than the average writer

>>6451070
Yes. It would get read, no? The question I ponder is whether the severity is worth the determination. I would have to use a tormail as my contact info though, now that I am thinking this through.

>>6451075
be mad.

>>6451013
Well of course I would look at it, even if just a glance. It would have to be really captivating for me to take it serious though.

I'd also be more than a little creeped out by how you got my personal home address.

>>6451070
better to wait, I think, to watch said editors house and monitor when he/she allows the family pet to do his doggy duty. Kidnap the dog and than staple your novel to said dog. A message WILL be received and you will certainly be published (in something)

op has delusions of grandeur

>>6450878
This aggravates me because MFA programs don't make good writers. The last good writer to come out of an MFA program is Flannery O'Connor. This is probably why we have to put up with garbage like Marie Calloway in literature these days..

Tattoo the entire novel to your body in subscript, covering 99% of your skin surface including your face and the back of your eyelids, strip naked and run into the publishing house with a loaded gun, screaming, "My body is a temple of pain!" That should get their attention.

>he jumped straight into post-modernist trash
>he never established he was capable of writing a traditional novel first

Not even Faulkner or Joyce kicked off their careers that way, you shitty bitch.

Do you know if its good for sure? If there's doubt, its bad.

>>6451111
Not in the least! I would gladly accept a 'no' or a 'not my thing.'

What I am looking for, is an agent who is able to get me on a main publishing house, a respectable one I mean, and not some small penny-publishing house. You see, you gaze, you FUCK! I want to touch the link, I don't want to snort the line of amphetamine off the table but take it from a hand, or at least have the hand rejected, so long as the hand is a hand and not a phallus. Or something like that.

>>6451127
fuck thats a nice cat

>>6451114
Do you forget that the patron saint of this board, David Foster Walrus, also came out of an MFA program? Anon be cry.

>>6451121

>people actually think subordination to tradition is a good thing
>20XX

>>6451136
>people think writing postmodernist drivel is a good thing

fuck off you talentless hack

>>6451121
Faulkner started off with poetry and short stories you fucking turd

>>6451127
Were you the narrator from Notes From Underground?

>>6451139

>he thinks anything else is worth reading

it's not 1860, cowboy. if you haven't dealt with your daddy issues by now, it's probably too late

>>6451114
>This aggravates me because MFA programs don't make good writers.
I'm that guy and I agree. MFA programs are a vicious circle jerk. They are supported by their own tiny literary presses and essentially exist to reproduce their own instructors. They have their own cult mentality and write for each other as opposed to the general reading public

>>6451157
>people want to read my ironical observations

hahahahahhahaha you are such a shit

>>6451157

"The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows."

- DFW

>>6451160

>postmodern = ironic observation

have you ever read a book?

>>6451161
He's basically describing John Green.

>>6451168
Yeah man. You got it.

2/10

>>6451161

yeah, thanks for the copypaste.

You fucking nuns cunts and visually circumcised fuckwits! Why is this fucking cuck fucking thing that fucking literary writers market and forum 90% Self-help food allergy cooking and protein shake agents? God help the little man, god save the queen! Gahj GHaj! Where the hell do I have to go? I have two grand and I am leaving next weekend, I am printing out the first ten pages and my query quay quay and delivering it overwholeslae- - -

David Vigliano GO FUCK YOURSELF
Jennifer Mattson GO FUCK YOURSELF
David Haviland GO FUCK YOURSELF
Marilyn Allen GO FUCK YOURSELF IAM SITED OF THIS SHITN

>>6451132
Oh no, I remembered, and it doesn't change what I said.

"He can't think... he can't write... there's no discernible talent."

>>6451171
>if i call it copypaste it has no merit anymore

>>6451178
>le bloom face

>>6451161
This describes the alt-lit thingy pretty well. But, I still think there is a place for 'literary rebels' in other-senses as well. There have always been banal platitudes of boredom, just never front and center.

yeah

1) Make a LinkedIn account
2) Get a business card
3) Keep manuscripts available and make sure they look good (typeface, paper, spacing must meet industry standards)
4) Make a resume or an infographic with things that make you worthy to publish (dont be afraid to use intangibles, but dont be arrogant)
5) Start networking

Seriously, there are billions of names in the world. I picture a generic human body every time I read one, then I assign a gender. Be more than a body and a gender.

>>6451161

Is this an interbiew transcript - if its prose it is awful prose

>>6450822
>155 pound causation

amazin