/lit/ - Literature

I have no reason to write a novel. I'd much rather stick with short stories and poetry until I live through something that demands to be expored in great detail.

I have literally stopped caring at this point and now just write whatever I feel like when I feel like it, without the gnawing sense of inadequacy and pressure. so it isn't, and I guess that's OK.

Just fine, you asshole

now get back to work

"Hyperspace" is going p. well, OP.

>>7075201
>a novel with 24,000 different characters

Overkill m8

>>7075216
kek

I've always wanted to write something, but I just don't know what. So far I've only written articles on history (since that is my major), but that's it. Any advice?

>>7075158
pretty good I emailed tao lin to give it a look
waiting to hear back

>>7075158

I gave up

>>7075216
He's the next Pynchon and you know it.

>3,000 words in on both of my novels
>been editing them for months
>one is still shit currently but I'm pretty fucking proud of how the other one is turning out so far
>actually writing every day now instead of just talking about writing all the time while not actually doing it
I'm so happy, bros. I've tried to publish a few short stories before but they all got rejected. I know rejection is a natural part of the writing process, but it was still a huge blow to my confidence. Now I realize why that was: I wasn't happy with the quality of the work I was submitting. It's easy to be optimistic about getting published eventually when you're confident your work is good. If you're not happy with it, it's very hard to keep submitting it just to get rejected time and time again. So with these two, I'm just going to keep working on them until I get them to a point where I deem them to be publish-worthy, then submit them until they get accepted.

We're all gonna make it, bros.

>>7075201
mirin'

>>7075158
>novel
As if I'd ever write such a traditional, formulaic, unoriginal piece as a novel.
>hurr how can we achieve true originality and still stick to old conventions?
Fucking modernists, man.

I'm writing a series of short stories that tie together as an overall plot that is never revealed but implied.
Which is a bit of a joke because it's also not terribly original, but it's better than a novel.

And it's coming along just fine.

>>7075278
>Which is a bit of a joke because it's also not terribly original,
At least you're aware of it.

it's nonfiction so that's a little different to write than a novel but the project is swimming along

Four months.
Kill me.

>>7075278
>As if I'd ever write such a traditional, formulaic, unoriginal piece as a novel.

>>7075303
don't worry, at this rate you'll be at publishable length in 10 years

>>7075284
Very. I just think a complete break from traditional form would make a work either nonsense, unrecognizable or inaccessible, but that doesn't have to mean there should be no deviation from tradition. I just want to write something weird enough but still literary, so I'm obviously having trouble conciliating conflicting ideas.

>>7075314
kek
The thing is, I edit as I write, so even though I only have 2,800 words or whatever, they're all pretty much final draft-tier.
>tfw type at 54 wpm
I wish I could write faster ;_;

>>7075303
So you're averaging 4.4 characters per word and 21.3 words (2.2 lines) per paragraph. Is it a lot of dialogue? I'm just curious.
>/r/theydidthemath
>tfw you're way ahead of me
>tfw I'm about ready to try to just sell off my story ideas and my writing books

>>7075412
The numbers are a little skewed because I have a paragraph/sentence with 948 words and another with 291. But yeah, it's pretty dialogue-heavy.

What's your novel about, if you don't mind me asking?

>>7075272
Why are you writing two pieces as once?

>>7075158
>mfw literally no one here is even remotely talented at writing

>>7075272
>3000 words
>arleady editing

Jesus fuck. 3000 words was like an essay in high school if you weren't in retard classes (anything below AP)

>>7075561
I find it's nice to juggle two novels at once because I can take a break from one to work on the other. This way I can set something aside and still remain productive, as opposed to just playing with my dick until I pick it up again.

>>7075606
>he doesn't put the utmost love and care into every word he picks and every sentence he writes
>he thinks writing a novel is comparable in difficulty to a high school essay you'd do in three hours the night before
>he doesn't compulsively go back over what he's written the previous day and spend hours revising it to make it reach his high standards
>he's actually going to finish his novel in a reasonable amount of time
Step it up, fam.

I'm writing a TV show instead

>>7075158
Like an ever-mutating dream in the back of my mind.

>>7075681

>>7075158
My writing sucks, I am ashamed of it so much and I want to cry.

>>7075158
Writing 3 long pieces; all of them on their first drafts.
the memoire piece is about 225,000 words
and each of the two fiction pieces are about 55,000 words

>>7075158
Been away for two weeks, but I'm writing another chapter as we speak.

It's about a peach farmer who hates peaches.

>>7075687
Never write, please.

I am busy with this short story and by busy with this short story I meant I am not writing jack shit

>>7075637
>he has absolutely no idea how to writer

>>7075427
Most of my ideas are in some odd corner of SF (inb4 >genre), and most of them would be short stories I think, but I do have an idea based on a different use of time travel that I think would form a series.

wrote 10,000 words
gave it up
write poems now

>>7075767
>he treats his writing like a high school essay
smh fam tbh

>>7075158
45.798 words full of shit. I should probably give up.

>>7075791
>mfw when I dont even write

>mfw you do

>mfw he has no idea how to write

>mfw he will forever be a NEET forever

>mfw he is forever a failure

>>7075815
I'm sure a spell-check would get you up to at least 46.

>>7075785
post poems

>>7075158
Mine's at 32k words and progressing at roughly 1500 a day. It's frustrating sometimes but I've finally got my plot kinks worked out so when I get blocked on one section I just go work on another.

>>7075278
>short story cycle
>nontraditional, unformulaic, original piece that doesn't resemble a novel at all
Eliminate your map for keeps.

>>7075303
Stop trying to make it a novel and do some short stories until you have a novel you actually want to write down. That's where mine came from after several abortive attempts at novels.

>>7075158
It's going ok I guess. It's hard to stay focused between working an awful job and dealing with the mental fuckery that comes and goes. Alot of the things that typically hold up the plot in a novel are missing from my book so I am afraid it is going to fall on it's ass at a 100 pages. Hopefully I can keep it interesting enough that whatever flaws it may have will be forgiven.

>>7075850
>mfw when I dont even write
This is the best news I've heard all year, and I tested negative for melanoma in May after a false-positive diagnosis.

>>7075876
I can't feel anything today at all.
I currently have no desire to move
away from the computer that I use.
I also don't want to kill myself, strange.

>>7075870
Great. Thanks for making me feel worse.

>>7075899
Just a joke on how we all format numbers. Take heart, you're doing better than I am.

>>7075158
The first third is done. I'm itching to start on the rest of it but u just moved and my new apartment is still fucked and my writing space is screwed up so I have nowhere to write.

I also have to spend my writing time for about the next week writing fucking grad school essays.

>>7075957
Congrats fam. What does it feel like to finish the first draft of a novel? I've never known this feel.

>>7075977
>First draft

Nah man, I'm through the first draft of part 1 of 3. That being said I can make good progress but because of moving and other, more urgent writing needs, my mental game has been thrown off for a couple weeks now.

>>7075850
stop posting fam, the man is right

>>7075850
>mfw I don't even write
>mfw he has no idea how to write

sounds wrong, eh

Started my second novel

The literary lifestyle isn't all it's cracked up to be

Currently planning it.

I started writing a novel last year but I wasn't happy with it and subsequently dropped it after a chapter or 3000 words.

This one will likely be a novella as I doubt I have enough to say to span a novel. Currently I have a general story arc; the first chapter is mostly cermented and I have a few ideas for other chapters.

I keep a notepad with me to jot down any ideas that come to me, the most of which arrive at inopportune times. I will likely need a change of environment if I am to devote a lot of time to writing.

>>7075999
I'm sorry, I'm a fucking retard who can't read. Good luck, though!

S'ok.

I'm 3/4 of the way through editing book 3.

>>7076307
>900,000 words
>writing a (presumably fantasty or sci-fi)series in the first place
>having such a low number of paragraphs for such a high word count
>900,000 words
>s'ok
>doesn't know how/too lazy to take a screenshot
>900,000 words
>dirty-ass computer screen
>dat blatant probable syntactical error on the bottom page
>900,000 words

>>7076404

>>7076307
what is your story about, man?

>>7076466
Space opera.

>>7076307
I'm sure gonna sit and read a 4000 page book by a nobody.

>>7075333
You can do it anon.
Also nice trips.

Is 27k words a good number? I just posted mine on Amazon, since I published it on Amazon last year and no one gave a shit.

>>7076813
Whoops, meant to say I put it on Medium.

>>7075158
Stuck. It was going great before but now that the friendships and the mental health are being destroyed I don't feel like I wrote enough of some characters to make them fall in a realistic way.

>>7076789
11 books, smart guy. And I didn't write it for you. I wrote it for me because it's the story I wanted to read. There's naysayers all over /lit/ who call "pleb" and "genre fiction" but I think it's a significant accomplishment for a fledgling writer. It took me almost 9 years to write the series and another stand alone novel. If I can do this, anyone can. I hope it encourages other writers to carry on and keep writing or even start writing a book. Every great writer started as a nobody. And after following the Joseph Campbell Monomyth blueprint to help me build this series I'm ready to take the training wheels off and create some real Wheel of Time type shit. I'm excited. You should be too.

>>7076813
Nigga 27k words is not a novel. This is how big your first act is suppose to be.

It's a hunk of genuine novel meat stuck together with 5 short stories all in the same world & on the same basic topic, about 40,000 words, that I'm using as a guideline/source to write a fresh first draft. That I'm only 8000 pages into, aiming for ~100,000.

I just had the idea yesterday. Was so excited I paced back and forth in my apartment elaborating on it in my head. Currently sketching an outline. Will start writing once I'm done with a short story I'm currently working out.

I haven't written anything longer than a few thousand words before, so I'm not sure I have it in me to produce a quality text of 50k-100k words. I really believe in the idea though. If it goes well and I feel motivated to finish it, I might even take next semester off from school to focus on that.

>>7076851
Well I'm happy for you mate, but did you at least publish one book? If you dump 11 books like that, no one will give a shit.

>>7076853
Really? Oh shit. Should I just rewrite it or start a new one then?

>>7076871
Nah, if it's a good book, just publish it. But normally novels are considered from 50k words and up.

Sending query letters now. I don't mention that it's a series. If like to be traditionally published but in the end of its not in the cards I'll just put it away and try again further down the road. I'm already 50 pages into the next series. It'll be 12-18 books

>>7076851
I admire someone who legitimately writes for themselves, but it's hard to get one book published in the industry, let alone eleven that are already written. How are you going to pitch 900,000 total words of content to an agent or publisher?

Good luck fam, but idk about all of this. Especially the genre fiction bit. There's nothing wrong with it in theory but in practice it's usually of a very low quality, both story and prose-wise.

>>7076877
OK. Thanks. I think I'll just put it on my blog then to practice and have some feedback.
If anyone is interested in commenting, though, here it is: http://www.cartapaulista.com.br/post/128440010104/silent-prayer-to-a-deaf-god

>>7075158
I'm making my first attempts at writing in several years, so I'm trying to move past a rather elongated plateau that comes from not practicing something for a while, which is a bit frustrating but I'm coming around. My biggest problem is writing dialogue, and finding a central theme. Any tips for dialogue? A theme won't fall out of the sky but it seems like something that has to come naturally. How do I get better at dialogue though?

>>7076851
are you the one that posted the pic of those boxes filled with all your manuscripts not to long ago? also thanks for that motivation.

>>7076871
Just because it's not long enough to be considered a novel doesn't mean you should scrap it. At 27k words most would consider it a novella.

>>7076894
Stay with it.

>>7076912
I wish you luck with your novels, anon. Godspeed.

I took a break from writing my novel and started writing a screenplay instead.

The difference in format is very interesting.

I have written down 0 (zero) words

>that absolute faggot writing his novel every couple mornings at the cafe on his macbook
>sit behind him once, peeking
>he gets up, moves his stuff to another backend table
>glares at me
Whatever happened to actual writers?

>>7077182
We're not at Starbucks with macbooks because we can't afford either. In ten years I've killed three second-hand laptops while chugging Redbull in the dark corners of indie coffee shops where I can leech wifi without getting hassled.
I don't give a fuck who sees me and those sons of bitches with macbooks never finish anything. They talk a big game but they're fucking posers

Don't worry anons, even writers like John green had to start somewhere! :)

10k words in or so

i've mostly been at it the last few weeks

I just started one. It'll be a sci-fi fantasy epic like Dune and take place over thousands of years. A human ship crashes into a newly discovered living planet and the now stranded humans have to struggle to live on this alien world. They also find that they were not the only sentient species on the planet.

>>7077437
so it's like an old episode of Lost In Space but instead of being resolved in an hour it goes on for thousands of years? oh boy, danger on planet pleb

>>7077437
Way to go, dude. We're headed in equal but mirrored directions.

>>7077444
Well, what's your brilliant magnum opus in the making about? :^)

>>7075333

Wow you sound like a pretentious faggot

I gave a former English professor the first few chapters and she said she'd held me edit it.

Here's part of the first page, tell me why you hate it and how it's terrible writing.

>>7077469
Wow, irony

fuck you, that's how

I gave a former English professor the first few chapters and she said she'd held me edit it.
Here's part of the first page, tell me why you hate it and how it's terrible writing.

>>7077494
>All I've ever needed is hate.

>>7077494
I think it's enjoyable, but since it seems to be a continuous flow of short sentences, you should read that "I'm extremely possessive of her..." part because it is divided by a comma when it shouldn't.
But I like your style.

>>7076851

aren't you like forty years old tho....

>>7076912

>11 books
>none of them published

It's probably just unreadable insanity.

>>7077545
>Anonymous 09/05/15(Sat)22:06:59 No.7076019 ▶

>Dislikes: "Levis"

Coldsteel you basic bitch

>>7077560
It's rather structured actually. I used Joseph Campbell's "hero with a thousand faces" blueprint for a basic outline and moved on from there. Besides when you're raised on the original Star Wars trilogy and reading lord of the rings, the structure is cemented in the subconscious even before the matrix and Harry Potter (the same fucking story structure) came along. No, I planned to be the opposite of incoherent. And since I'm the newer generation of writer, I'm afforded the luxury of looking at the collected works of Lucas, Tolkien, warchowski's, and Rowling and being able to put my own twist on things through influences and options they didn't have ingrained as plot devices when they wrote their respected epics.

>>7077545
WAT

>>7077711
Not to be a dick but that sounds awful.
I mean, it sounds like you've got it all planned out and you not only know what you're doing but have the motivation to pull it off, and it could even be rather successful/popular. You could be the next GRRM. But why would you want to? Fuck that noise.
Best of luck to you anyway.

>>7079172
>not to be a dick

>>7079172
Naw, it's cool. This isn't all I want to do. It's my intention to not be pidgeon holed as a genre writer and to expand past my own comfort zone and write some other things. I've got a book idea that borrows from the "beat movement" as well as a book that's a coming of age story in a small town in Kentucky. I get the skepticism, don't feel bad.

>>7079219
There are very, very few authors who start out writing genre then are accepted as doing other things. Ian Banks sort of managed to. Ishiguro started out with "literature" then his most recent thing has been sort of fantasy. I don't know. You might be able to, but it'll be hard.
At least you'll be enjoying your work, either way.

>>7079198
Yes. As in, I'm giving my honest opinion, not expressly setting out to upset the guy.

Just broke the 10,000 word milestone.
It's a fantasy novel about the aftermath of a global power vacuum caused by deities who try to control everything and end up breaking their world. Has a number of characters who are all working towards their own ends, national wars, the fate of diaspora from them, economic and logistic turmoil, all kinds of fun.

I wrote something like 600 words and then shelved it because it was shit.

I've only been doing research for my novel, trying to find a good book about Putin

>>7079411
Have you looked at Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya?

Can't get started because I can't settle on a plot T_T. Send help.

>>7079418
I haven't read it, is it worth reading?

>>7077494

If what you just posted is representative of the rest, you need to toss it.

First-person navel-gazing, no narrative, "lyrical" and "deep" sentences which are really just laughable and cliched. No progression at all from one sentence to the next. In particular,

>My existence is characterized by a perpetual, somehow optimistic dysphoria that has always driven me towards chaos

is embarrassingly horrible. Sounds like you're 15.

You need to read a lot more and study how to construct a basic narrative before you try writing again. For God's sake, don't make your English teacher "help you edit it" or even give you feedback. You need to totally reinvent the way you think about writing.

Honest feedback. Good luck.

>>7079590
From what you're working on, it sounds like it would be highly relevant, not least because Putin had Politkovskaya killed.

>>7079628
yeah it should be very useful, thanks

I'm writing a novel whose title is inspired by / partly a reference to Bertrand Russell's essay "In Praise of Idleness" and it focuses on a pair of brothers living in a small post-industrial town whose attitudes towards employment / working contrast but whose feeling of isolation are mutual. They spend their evenings driving around expressing their resentment towards people they deem either to be succesful or who are so degraded as to enjoy their lives, by breaking up parties and so on. One of the brothers is college-educated and refuses the type of jobs he is offered, feeling they are degrading and that he is too innocent to take part in a society which treats him with so little apparent value. His younger brother meanwhile is trying desperately to find work but only finds a series of low-paid jobs which wear him down and threaten to undermine his notion that work is a duty and that life can be good and that having a job and a famile etc is a worthy pursuit. They live together in a tiny apartment owned by the owner of a large call centre with a high turnover of staff which is pretty much the largest local employer after industry has closed down and he raises the rent on their apartment (one of many he owns in town) to pay for damages caused at the birthday of his frustrated wife who insists on getting a job because she is experiencing something of an existential dilemma and wants some independence etc. While the younger brother goes out to find work in order to pay for this raised rent the older brother has his welfare payments threatened by the new regime at the local welfare office who have moved to the area due to its high unemployment and who are placing a lot of pressure on the welfare office staff to get the unemployed folk off their register. In reaction, and despite justifying receiving welfare payments and not pursuing work, the older brother announces that he is to attempt to become self-sufficient from society and begins attempting to grow crops in the brothers small apartment and also dresses in clothes belonging to their deceased mother and attempts to camwhore but gets caught doing so by his brother who has found a girl who is attracted to who is the daughter of the call centre boss and his wife and who has so far been very sheltered by her father because he does not want her to mix with the local youths but engages in a sort of reverse-nepotism by allowing his daughter to attend the job centre to find work and be more independent but tells all local businesses whose owners he knows through the masons and so on to refuse her a job (hoping she will give up and return to the sanctity of her attic bedroom). The older brother tries to get this girl to become a camwhore in order to pay their rent, but the younger brother does not want her to do that. Meanwhile in town there are a number of suicides, and these suicides are being investigated by a police officer who is a Western movie-

Word limit. Anybody interested in hearing the rest?

>>7080009
lol'd. if you can write it should be a fun read

>>7080009
I was about to complete my smirk and click out and into a new thread, but then I read "a number of suicides" and I'm hooked again. Plz post the rest.

>>7080053
I'm 16k words in.Trying to find the right "voice" or something, everything at the moment seems fraudulent and tryhard in a pejorative sense. Once I get it write I know I'll be good, but it's a struggle at the moment.

>>7080067
The suicides take place largely in the background of the book. My intention was to focus on the humour but also have something of a "serious" tone behind the main narrative, albeit without relying on the sort of working-class related "shock" tactics many writers employ when trying to entertain middle class readers and provide them with an image of what it is to be working class (a lot of books I read, especially by "young" authors, throw in stuff like infanticide, heavy drug use, murders and so on in a way I find rather cheap at times). The fact is that in this book a number of young men, who are found to be unemployed, are committing suicide at a rate that is pretty alarming. The officer who investigates them is a Western movie fan who has himself becoming something of a Sheriff in the wild west town that is the town in which the story takes place. He rides his Vespa sidesaddle and cracks down on any crime he comes across (drugs and burglary, have all risen thanks in part to the high unemployment), which the brothers obviously enjoy since he responds to every call they make about some crime being committed whether it's quote unquote noise pollution from a party or people drinking alcohol in public. The question is eventually raised as to whether these are indeed suicides or whether someone is killing these young men and framing them as such. I don't make it clear who it is, or make this a central concern, because I'm not writing a "whodunnit" and don't want to focus on that. However there are candidates for the potential killer, including the call centre owner / puritanical father who does not want his daughter spoiled by local men, the officer who is pretty callous when it comes to asserting a sense of order on the town, and a particularly overworked and frustrated worker at the local welfare office, who is responsible for finding work for (among others) the older of the two brothers who feels his decision to avoid employment is logically sound and ethically defensible, and who seems be under immense pressure to hit targets set for him by the new manager who comes from a wealthy background and who treats the local population the way a colonial officer might treat the local native population. One of the young men who commit suicide is another willingly-unemployed individual at the job centre, who partly influenced the the older brother's decision to avoid work, who is something of a lothario due to his ability to take advantage of insecure unemployed girls. He makes money on the side as a sort of pick up artist, and his seminar gets raided by the job centre boss and his gang of servile Shift Managers who have heard rumour of a union being formed among his workers and mistakenly thinks this is such a meeting.

Is that copyright abolition thing still going to happen?

wrote 1,750 words or so this afternoon

might pause for the day, I sort of need to refresh

>>7075767
>writer
What are you gaaaaaaaaay?

>>7075158
My third manuscript is done.

Four rejections so far. I will check my inbox once a week because I can't handle the anxiety of doing it every day. I'm going back over my second manuscript while I wait, and I'm really enjoying editing it.

>writing a novel

61k words so far. It'll probably end in a month then I'll start the polishing/editing process.

>>7075216
>24,000

I started it two weeks ago or so, im right now in the page 66 and over 36.000 words, im fucking happy with this shit but the problem is going to be editing it, i have reached the hard part about writing for me, i don't know why but i like to delete what i wirte when i reach at least 25.000 or 40 pages, shit feels good when i write.

>>7079549
it doesn't matter i can't get a plot until i don't write the first page, just write and let your mind controlou.

>>7075719
kek

>>7075850
You sound like an idiot

>>7076885
Aren't you the Brazillian guy? Did you end up publicizing the books or what?

>>7075850
>mfw when I dont even write
that explains everything.

Brilliantly tbh

Finished first draft. A little over 61k. That's okay, I didn't want to write a monster.

Printed it out, going over each page with red pen finding sections that need to be rewritten because they don't read nicely, looking for continuity errors, and any grammatical errors/spelling mistakes I come across but I usually have someone else proof after I've done the first rewrite so the little things don't matter as much as the larger things. Then I do final edit and re-through and give it to someone else again just to be sure.

All is well, but fuck I hate editing.

>>7084401
>6 paragraphs
>55 words

ADHD?

>>7079234
Do you have reliable stats on the number of writers who've successfully moved from genre to literature versus the number who've failed? If you do, why do you think they'll bear on this guy's particular situation? This is such a stupid kind of thing to tell someone.

>>7080009
yes great stuff. I would read it

>>7084438
Opens with a dialogue

>>7084640
you shouldn't do that, the reader doesn't know who they are and you should add some information first and also the reason of why theyare there.

>>7084009
How do you write that quickly, bro? I'm only 5k in after two weeks.

>>7084703
no fucking idea man, i use most of the day to write and maybe that's the reason, i also don't really think about what is going to happen next, the story move by itself as the ideas get into me.

>>7084668
I'll probably delete it. It has been sitting like that for months

>>7084729
Good luck next time, you should add a little bit of information, maybe half a page or less and then add the conversation if you want, start slow and you will get it.

>>7076307
Hey gas-man, I promised to read your book #1, I'm sorry for the delay.

>>7084668
>>7084640
Buddenbrooks

>>7084803
>Buddenbrooks
Ok, do you have another example or only that one?

>>7084816
One good example is enough to disprove a bad rule.

>>7084866
K, good luck then.

Pretty shit, just started

>>7084668
beckett

>actually writing every day now instead of just talking about writing all the time while not actually doing it

feels so good. I'm even shitposting on /lit/ now instead of the other boards.

>>7075253
Try writing a narrative history on something that interests you

It's going really good, im going to start another one so that i can keep my mind distracted and i can keep myself hyped to write about them.

>>7076789
>that gif

lel

>>7076851
Please just use a fucking trip already