/lit/ - Literature

Have you started with the Greeks?

>>9362094
Please no meme responses, if only for this thread.

>>9362094
Came here to post this.

>>9362092
CAN WE READ YOUR STORY, OP? Any asshole can win a short story competition. How do we know you're good? Whether you're good's obvs the deciding factor.

>>9362092
>just won a short story competition

Same guy?

>>9362105
I'm not claiming to be good. But I have previously written a novel that was accepted for publication, which I withdrew. But I simply fail to write anything worthwhile while also working full-time, more than full-time really.

>>9362109
Yes.

>>9362111
Okay well then do it

>>9362121
I'm fucking terrified of being a lifelong NEET and having a mental breakdown caused by the isolation and self-disgust at living with my family

>just won a short story competition
>no skills

wut.

>>9362133
Everybody is. From what I can tell you can write, so go for it.

>>9362148
>wut

No marketable skills. I am essentially Gregor Samsa without even the sales skills.

>>9362109
that's what you remember, i remember the bit about the roommate going under.

Weren't you here last week asking about whether you should talk to some girl?

>>9362276
Just pull the stick out of your ass/apple out of your back and do it, man.

>>9362292
OP here. Yes that was me too.

>>9362092
You have a family that actually encourages you to do what you truly want. How the fuck can you be even hesitant about it? And how the fuck can you have mental issues?

Fuck, I'd kill just to be in your position.

>>9362296
But I have zero connections. I have zero marketable skills. If I quit I will likely end up as one of the hoard of nameless, faceless men who live bitter, lonely half-lives drifting from obscure job to obscure job, never climbing the "ladder", never earning the respect of their peers, too overwhelmed by failure and regret to concentrate on writing, too mentally fucked and too-far-gone to write the kind of hip slash marketable slash relatable books that get published, sitting as a 30-year-old man in their mother's spare room weeping and eating candy and making occasional clear-minded attempts at writing their memoir before hyperventilating at having realized that the great bulk of their existence has taken place either in their thoughts or in their (read: my) imagination. Emily Dickinson did it but she had a comfy middle-class life and people came to visit. I am insect, a rabid dog. I am completely unsuited to life in an advanced human civilization. I have today (today) embarrassed myself in work by withdrawing my resignation. Luckily my boss knows I'm a hopeless, harmless sperg and didn't mind me doing that. Even Pessoa is an alpha compared to me. Kafka is a well-balanced and normal person in comparison. If I was a fascist dictator I would have people like myself executed without even the briefest of trials. I am so thankful that I have no desire to breed. I fear I am on the verge of the sort of solipsistic collapse that Hesse feared in his 40s. I feel like running around the streets screaming and lassoing my clothing above my head. I have allowed my mental health to deteriorate to the point where I can no longer either romanticize my abnormalities nor treat them as ironic and optional aspects of my identity. I feel like I am trapped in an unfamiliar city and that despite my attempts to make contact with someone every door is shut just as I am about to reach it, so that all I can do is run without direction down the cobblestone streets to the sound of slamming doors and figures dissapeared into doorways, just like in the game Driver 1 where the pedestrians could not be hit nor the car exited. If only there were an oppressed horse in the street that could justify my inevitable breakdown.

>>9362326
OP here.

My mom lives with her partner, and they are both retired. He has two normie sons who are both around my age but successful (great careers, fiancees, friends, etc). If I move home it means having to live with my mom's partner, deal with his normie sons, and then go looking for a job in 6 months in an economy that treats gaps on your CV like tumour cells. I will be 26 years old begging some overweight normie HR woman who I interrupted from browsing facebook to tell me that sorry but I'm not qualified to wipe shit from the ass of the elderly at the nursing home for minimum wage. I will be a social leper, an societal fault, an existential failure. I would probably sperg out and study TEFL and go live in Siberia and just end my life there when I'm forced to realize what a retard I am and have been.

>>9362092

>It's a huge fucking risk moving back to my hometown, where the only jobs for people like me are minimum wage.

Honestly, minimum wage jobs are the best places to meet people if that's something that concerns you. I've never once made a proper friend working in an office job.

>>9362133
>a lifelong NEET and having a mental breakdown caused by the isolation and self-disgust at living with my family

holy shit use this
you've been given a gift
I can tell you're gonna make it

>>9362370
OP here. The thing is that after college I worked minimum wage for almost a year full-time, two jobs simultaneously. I have no connections, no charisma and I am frankly autistic to the point where I should be consigned to an isolated medical ward. If I go back home I'll be working in a city where there are no jobs for faggots like me, and at my age I risk wasting time for nothing. My boss is being very kind to me and has offered to let me work from home, but I just feel like I'm being attacked on all sides by opportunities and my only solution is to sperg out by making threads like this.

>>9362373
Use it in what sense? Are you mocking me? I can't tell.

>>9362353

>I will be 26 years old begging some overweight normie HR woman who I interrupted from browsing facebook to tell me that sorry but I'm not qualified to wipe shit from the ass of the elderly at the nursing home for minimum wage.

You might be on the verge of mental collapse but at least you still made me laugh. Thanks.

>>9362353
Jesus Christ, you're the prime example of a pessimist. Why did you mention your sister's new house then? Why don't you move with her? Also, you already had the opportunity to publish your novel. What the genuine fuck is wrong with you? You managed to do this before you hit your 30s, it shows you have the ability to sell something to the masses, or at least a publisher saw the possibility or else they would've never offered it.

Does your current job count as no valuable experience? Don't you have a degree?

>>9362408
>Why don't you move with her?

Because of my aforementioned terror of ending up a lonely manchild NEET with delusions (literal, medically defined) of grandeur, only to be outed (by myself and others) as a fraud, a weirdo, a creep, a faggot, a loser, a manchild, an autist ad infinitum. If only I had a wife I could become a house husband. I frankly wish I was married and had children at this point so my feeling like an exhausted office cuck would at least be compensated by the knowledge that I'm pulling off some Homer Simpson-tier "Do It For Her" self-sacrifice to help others. But as things stand I'm just a burned out office clerk lifted straight from the pages of a shitty 19th century Russian novel of a lowly office cuck slaving away and finishing the story throwing himself in the river after years of bitter regret. I am so unqualified to live the life expected of a human being. If I visit a small town it takes no more than fifteen minutes for me to become utterly disgusted with the ugly pointlessness of life. In a major city I can at least opt to not exist and keep cutting off the Hydra heads of potential suffering knowing all the while that I'm just buying time until I JUST myself off a 20 storey building. I feel like the sole of a boot is placed at the bottom of my back and that it is forcing me onward through further suffering and confusion, allowing me neither rest nor time for anything, just pushing me on and on, and the best I can do is resist for a few moments every once in a while before I am shoved onwards twice as hard grasping for something to clutch onto.

>>9362435
Honestly, I don't know what you want out of this thread if the suggestion of certain possibilities to initiate isn't an option for you. You have an abysmal self-esteem, but you probably know that since you always know how to rationalize your non-actions. I understand the need to vent your worries, but what can some Anons do for you if you have always reasons up your sleeve to do nothing?

>>9362452
I really do. It's embarrassing at my age. I have had cute girls pursue me. I've had a publisher offer to publish my novel. Yet my reaction is to simply stare without expression and barely step foot in the external world. I exist as little more than an observer, but even then I lack the temperament to be the hip, cool, passive observer who exists with dour contentment on the fringes of society. I rush the gates of my own self-imposed repressive psychological regime yet all the world sees is a slight change in my autistic facade. Internally I am boiling alive, unable to breathe, screaming, running around yelling and kicking over trash cans into the street, a profound and articulate mind, the lonely librarian in the immense archive of my memories and ideas, an intense and passionate lover of women, capable of both viewing life through eyes and taking advantage of that fact to become an incredible, incomparable, utterly distinct lover and friend, yet externally I am strange and autistic, an eccentric without even the eccentric's tendency to humour or entertain, a meek and placid robot who stares without apparent emotion or reaction at the external world of phenomena and human dispute, a literal waste of a nervous system, a lonely ambassador of the inanimate world to the living world, a freak, a creep, a pedant, a pathetic, miserable, self-pitying, selfish, narcissistic, over-emotional, sentimental, demanding, entitled frogboy with no traits that would convinced even the most needy and submissive human female to view me as a potential mate.

Is this some intricate bait designed for local English majors? What advice do you want? Stop being a fag and try to become whatever you want to become. Nobody really cares about your life and all the subtleties of your tender psyche. I mean that in the most non-edgy, non-derisive way. Strive towards goals or rot away forever posting autistic pasta.

>>9362491

>I have had cute girls pursue me

If you're not interested then I'll take them off your hands.

>>9362491
This is actually good. Channel this into your writing. Definitely quit and go for a creative break.

>>9362511
This OP. I really enjoy reading about your struggles with life because i'm an aspie but more because your writing style is great. If you end publishing a book with those themes you may start a literary trend on NEETdom and social struggle.

>>9362556
OP here. I did start writing a book about NEETdom last year but gave up due to exhaustion. I love NEET-lit so my standards are way high. Confederacy, Dangling Man, Welcome to the NHK, Young Hitler, etc. But it's hard to break ground in the genre without being accused of LARPing as JKToole.

>>9362565
>>9362565
Tren try to combine the NEET themed narrative with the increasing isolation caused by technology and the repulsion that postmodern morals provoke on the new generation of men who also enjoy roleplaying as Nazis on internet forums . Seriosly, Confederancy was released more than 30 years ago, so i think the NEET themed narrative can definitely be revolutionized with more actual subjects.

>>9362092
>work 830 to 530, sleep 8 hours
>6 hours free time a day
>32 waking weekend hours
>no time to read and write

>>9362612
Fuck off normie

Dear OP,

I am a marketing assistant for a US-based publisher (Coffee House Press). I gather from your posts that you are based in the US. If so, do you have any examples of your writing that you could send over to me? Part of my job involves searching online communities for up-and-coming talent, and although I've visited the literature forum on this website for about a month now, your are really the first person I've seen who looks like they have potential.

Let me know,
Tim

>>9362664
>Dear OP,

>>9362664
>non profit

>>9362373

Suffering through perceived isolation and loneliness, struggling with self-doubt and self depreciation, afraid to step into the unknown in pursuit of a dream...

Sounds pretty relatable to almost everyone in a developed country.

OP, you're not going to find the courage to follow your dreams outside of yourself or in other people. You will only find the courage inside of yourself when you start smoking crack.

OP here.

I just spoke to my boss. He offered me the opportunity of working from home in my hometown. However, I might ask him if I can do that part-time, but I think he will assume I'm being retarded by asking that and will want to know why I only want to work part-time.

>>9362353
This dilemma only exists if you interpret the world in such a way that permits it. Youve created this behavioral paradigm that isn't an individual necessity.

>>9362756
Dude,

You have nothing to gain by hiding your goals from or lying to your boss. It even sounds like your boss is pretty chill. Just tell your boss what you're trying to accomplish, that you have really appreciated the opportunities and flexibility offered to you, and that you desire to continue to work for them as a part time employee if at all possible.

>>9362092

>lives a normal millennial life with the average job, the average commute, and the average exhaustion
>minus being in college or mentioning of college debt
>who gives a shit about your sister and what does it have to do with anything?
>won a short story competition but thinks he has no skills

My advice? Just keep doing what you are doing. You are the most average person I think I've ever heard of.

>>9362098
The Greeks aren't a meme, how dare you?

>>9362276

Start sending your work out everywhere. Publish some on a website. Market that website

>>9362491
Please don't pursue writing. Of all people you deserve success the least. I had yet to see on this board someone so pessimistic; so unable of introspective maturity. Must you avoid all suggestion? Must you persist with these humble brags about what could have been? I opened this thread happy, and I'll now be closing it depressed.
For the love of god, find some meaning in your life; whether it be fictitious or based matters not.

>I will be a social leper, an societal fault, an existential failure.
You already are. Just die already, or at least stop making these annoying threads. Take it to /adv/ if you absolutely must sperg out with walls of whining text at everyone who tries to help you.

the world is a scary place but living on 4chan wont make it any less scary make the leap anon

>>9362789
And, while I'm at it, and before I close this tab, I must add that your writing itself is shallow. The echo of your posts give it a facade of experience; but to dissect the text is to dissect the man, and what comes after is the reality of your text; a subtlety of emotion, shallow and bleak, disguised with pedantic verbiage, and in which immaturity is alluded to; your whole IS void of substance, your "struggle" is of no matter; you are the poster child of a generation lost to themselves. The last thing I'd want to read is the perspective of a person whos entire being consists in the act of self-pitying and who lacks a sufficient meaning towards life that would enable him the power of a writing style full of resonance.

>>9362775
OP here. I don't like talking about what I hope to achieve. I believe in just doing something rather than saying "oh yah I'm writing this novel it's totally gonna suck but whatevs hehe!" Also if I fail I'm fucked and humiliated. I prefer to be the Red-Pilled Alpha Male Mysterious Dark Horse Pro-9/11 Truth Filtered Water Drinker than the loudmouth retard who thinks he's the next Kurt Cobain despite being 47 years old and only practicing guitar twice a week while stoned and drunk after returning home from a lumbermill job in Elkins, West Virginia. Contemporary literature frankly makes me want to puke. The self-promotion, the cuteness, the backslapping, the literary circle jerks, the political single-mindedness. The idea of "making it" in this world is laughable to me, because I never will unless I sell myself out (am I just excusing my failure in advance? hmmm). My goal really is to write a boss novel, get rejected 100 times, sperg out and upload it to PDF and post it on /lit/, /r9k/ and the /dep/ board on Wizardchan and become a cult phenomena, the first bard of the internet, the voice of the frogmen, etc. I want the 18-year-old autistic NEET applying for obs at this local Walmart in rural Missippi to read my work and feel relieved that someone is as fucked up as him, yet possesses the necessary humour and mental strength to articulate things that are pretty hard to find in literature. I want females to read my books and feel "wet" (?) due to my ability to understand their perspective(s) and to articulate it in a frank and honest way. I want to be the voice of the refugee skeptics, the people on the verge of turning away from art in disgust, the losers (self-described and otherwise), the lonely and the irredeemably uncute. I want to break free from your lies you're so self satisfied I don't need you I've got to break free. God knows, god knows I want to break free.

>>9362827
>you are the poster child of a generation lost to themselves
ugh i hate that saying, it goes through me nails on a blackboard

>>9362827
>The last thing I'd want to read is the perspective of a person whos entire being consists in the act of self-pitying and who lacks a sufficient meaning towards life that would enable him the power of a writing style full of resonance.

fukkin say that to me face m8 not online see what happns

>>9362833
I'm sorry your being is of so weak a nature to allow words and their arrangements the power of exerting physical pain on you. Get well soon :)

>>9362854
*unsheaths broadsword*

No, YOU will be the one who'll need to get well soon

*lunges at you*

>>9362092
I work from 8:30 to 7:00 you whiney bitch. And i still have time for writing and reading. What you dont realize is if all you do is write you will get burned out. With a dayjob you will have an income but also a balance in your creative life.

>>9362878
You are literally never going to write anything worthwhile. Not a single writer has ever written a novel while working those hours. Maybe a poet has but even then they're usually obscure

>>9362092
I don't care about what you do. Eat shit.

>>9362854
hate =/= pain

>your family supports your life choices and want to help
nigga, i wish that i was you.
Or did you fell for the work until you die, meme?

>>9362491
this reads like an edgy version of a John Green character. cringey to say the least

>>9362092
>be me
Get lost newfag

Do it
Your life will be miserable either way, only this way you have a chance to create something meaningful

>>9362827
I'm not even OP but you completely and utterly destroyed me and everything I've ever written

Personal blog bullshit. Anyway, get on antidepressants in the short term. Get some hobbies and a physically fit body in the long term. The rest will fall into place.

>>9362832
Good luck.

>>9362926
OP here. I have worked full-time since graduating, first two part-time jobs and now a full-time job. I have not taken a day off through sickness for three years. Last year I only took 18 days holiday out of 25. I am not the "I'm totally spooked out" spamposter, but I sure relate to him. I don't know why I do it. I don't even earn a high wage.

>>9362789
>>9362827
rekt

>>9362827
You're my hero

>>9362832
you can do it op. you can be a legend.

quit the job OP. you seem like you can write and that you're passionate enough. in the words of shoah lebuff, "just do it"

OP go to therapy, your misery and insecurity are massively out of joint with the actual circumstances of your life

OP stop blogging every fucking event in your life, we dont care and besides you shouldnt trust the people in here who barely know you. You're a neurotic pussy and everything is drama to you, so focus on writing and stop giving explanations.

>Hey guys i like a girl wat do???
>Hey guys just won a competition but im in nyc and theyll disqualify me
>Hey should i move back???

Jesus Christo

OP here, I think you guys are right. I am a faggot.
I will continue writing my homoerotic fanfictions and maybe start a patreon in the future. If I fail at that I'm jumping off a bridge. PEACE.

>>9362353
OP, you're a wannabe writer, I'm a wannabe musician. You're fucked up by the fear of faillure and lack of self-confidency and I am too.
So, please, be my Paulo Coelho and I'll be your Raul Sexas (lol).
In the worst case scenario you're going to be the most selled writer in this fucking country.
PS: And don't you try to deceive me, I know you're bracellian. I'm yet to see another fucker so obcessed with Pessoa as you are. You've shilled this shit so fucking hard I've began to read it. I'm enjoying it so far.
PS 2: I keked at that Driver reference.

Mental health issues? No friends? The beginnings of a career in writing (the short-story prize)? Mid-late 20's? OP you're primed to write: do it.

>>9363449
You make beats in your bedroom too? Charming

>>9363456
Most successful contemporary writers are actually huge normies. Connections is at least 50% of writing.

>>9363470
Yeah, just look at JKR

>>9363481
Not really contemporary.

MFAs / MAs in Creative Writing have exploded in the past decade or two. Also JKR is a rare example: an author who wrote one thing for several years and made sure every details was perfect.

>>9362491
I'm back again. Sorry for being late, but I had to work. So, from your self-description I like you. Why? Because I identify with everything you've written, except your overly pessimistic nature, but if I'd be 26 then I probably wouldn't be so different.

Do you want to exchange email-addresses or Skype names? I'd like to know you better, and I think I'd be able to learn a thing or two from you.