/lit/ - Literature

Finally have the confidence to try writing competitions. Finishing a book this month.

>>9653192

>>9653999
taking a hiatus, before i continue to more difficult exercises that will hopefully churn out better poems. (was writing sonnets, going to Villanelles and Sestinas)

I'll never make it. I'm 22 and I don't write.

Can't finish anything but absurdist short stories. My larger projects are unfocused and I get bored of them. Its probably not going to happen

Although I did submit some poetry to a few contests/competitions recently. Still waiting for an answer

>>9654081
Neat!

I'm 46 next month.
Been writing since I was a teen.
Still haven't published anything.
I'm almost finished with a novel.
At least five in the drawer already.
I truly believe this one is good.
I truly believe this one will be published.

Eh it's on hold for a while. I have five musical projects that I need to finish by next February. Right now I have two done and the third is underway. I also have a Youtube series in which I talk in-depth about video games that I'd like to maintain but it isn't really a priority. But the thing about that is that it's got a definite end because once I run through my list of vidya I'm done with it. So, when it comes to my writing, I'm thinking that I'll just read as much quality lit as I can this year and ease into writing again next spring. My prose was HORRIBLE when I was actively writing my novel so it's definitely for the best that I gave it up. The only books I'd read were Harry Potter and there I was trying to write this serious novel about a girl living in the modern age. You can probably guess how bad it was. Pic possibly related.

>>9657193
It doesn't need to be published to be good, anon.

It'll never happen. I don't actually like writing and I hate myself.

>>9653999
Senseless as fuck. The last response from a publisher was "We have so much shit going on that we don't have time to read you."

I have 3 anthologies collecting dust and a nouvelle doing the same. Right now I'm writing some kind of surrealist nouvelle about a guy and his best friend, a talking cat, who steal from the Night some kind of drug and deal with the traffic of monsters that should be killed according to the cat's syndicate. It doesn't make sense but the prose at least, is fun and games.

Ella abrió la sombra. Su bella imagen briaba un perfume tan suave, que desperté y volví a fallecer en un sopor fresco. El vestido rojo la destacaba y sus ojos de sortilegio pedían que los comiera, así mi boca se espinara con sus pestañas negras. Ella anduvo hasta mí con paso coqueto y sus piernas, café con leche, eran carne tierna. Cara a cara, mordió mis labios y su lengua de mango jugoso me disolvió en un torrente de vino cárdeno.
El carrusel tiene entrañas; ronca y baila en el humo. Es el humo quien lo monta. En sus sillas, tiesas personas dan asiento a la bruma, y sus rostros, tras mascaras de fantasía, murmuran deseos y con gran habilidad, toman de la bruma un capricho prohibido. Ella escuchaba la Chanson y su cuerpo estático, posaba un canto mientras su rostro siempre dulce hace gestos de beso, sonrisa y cariño.

>>9653999
I'm two chapters away from finishing the first draft of my first ever book. This one's non-fiction, and I want to self publish as I don't want to get bogged down trying to get noticed by someone.

>>9657193
What are the negatives you get like?

Can you post some of your writing?

>>9653999
I'm writing quit a lot lately.

...on /lit/. :(

>>9653999
Can't find any inspiration whatsoever even though I actually am itching to write. Also, just the thought that will have to go work tomorrow in the shitty job I have sucks any inclination I have towards it.

I'm about 60 to 70 pages in, but it's an absolute clusterfuck. Sometimes I just sit there and just wonder "what the fuck should I write here ?".
I just can't seem to see what part of the story I should write, plus I'm always afraid to have a shitty writing in a meaningful part.

>>9657193
We all support you anon.
Unless you succeed and everyone here suddenly becomes incredibly jealous.

I just started out pretty much so I'm trying to find my voice. I'm writing short stories and there's no shortage of ideas but I feel like I don't have the skills to do them justice. Still I'll press on and learn as I go.

>>9659309
Perhaps you'd like to try writing style exercise ?
Take a scene in your mind and write it several time, each time in a different way. Short, impactful sentences, then dialogue-only, then long description of everything important, then in a dark way, in the funniest angle, the list goes on.

I lack the inspiration and ideas to make anything more than lame, flowery-but-devoid-of-substance short stories. I'm only 20, so hopefully I still have time for my life experiences to catch up and give me something to write about.
I don't know. I'm currently reading Ulysses for the first time and the fact that I will never be able to make something so beautiful is a little bit crushing.

>>9659405
Actually the stories I've finished ( more or less anyway since they need some polish ) are basically all style exercises. First person, third person, some oblique stuff that completely stumped my critique partner. I haven't really gotten the hang of going deep with the descriptions though. I think it'll come to me as I read more I suppose.

>>9657856
congrats man
60 pages is more progress than most people on /lit/ will ever make
and i think that kind of uncertainty is natural

A Confederacy of Dunces

>>9659513
Thank you. It took me one year though, I hope to finish by the end of next year as I have taken a very different pace now.
Hope it'll be published in the end.

>>9659435
Honestly it is what should bother you the least. Should Shakespeare be ashamed of not doing as good as the Greeks ?
And Joyce didn't write Ulysses when he was young as far as I remember.

>>9653999
>How's the writing career coming, /lit/?
I don't know if my novel will ever get due to the plot

>>9653999
My sample essay on hirewriters.com just got approved, which means I now get paid small amounts to write. So I guess that's good

>>9653999
>How's the writing career coming, /lit/?
>implying I write
>implying I read
>implying I don't cry about my pathetic life all day
You pleb.

I've always wanted to write something but I've finally found it. I was bored on the internet today, and I drunkenly stumbled onto r9k meaning to click on my twitch book mark. The first thread I see is about cuckolding, and I wanted to scream in panic. It all of a sudden became so clear to me, that we as a society have dove so deep from great art and literature to, wanting to jerk off to black men fucking our loved ones. This feeling of being trapped and hopeless woke something up in me. I have to do something, though all I can do is try to point out how crazy everything has become. I doubt that it will ever go anywhere, but if the world ends at least I can tell myself I tried. Even writing this out on 4chan makes me scared to say it, since it's somewhat in public. Though I refuse to be afraid of my own thoughts anymore.

>>9653999
>when your most prolific writing work is fucking autistic fetish smut

Just kill me now, /lit/, it's all downhill from here.

>>9664749
Don't give up man, some people are too afraid to post on this site. You have a the courage to post something, use that to publish something better.

>>9664749
>used to write shitty philosophical interpretations of pop culture on reddit and got thousands of upvotes
>literally thousands of people are reading my work
>put 100x the effort into fiction and serious philosophical essays
>cant even get accepted to a magazine
we dont always choose our legacy, right? right?

>>9664817
the masses are fucking stupid, it's better to walk the high road alone eternally than spend a single day in empty fame

>>9653999
hella slow. I have urges to just sit and write. but, I can never bring myself to do it. or when i do my mind is blank! I haven't finished a proper book yet. all I have is fragments, just fucking fragments. I don't even have a complete short story, but boi i have pages upon pages of fragments. it's so stressful because I know I have talent I just can't seem to finish anything.

>>9664731
Wtf

Wrote a 27k novella, but no one was interested.
Currently writing a proper novel.

>>9653999
Almost finished translating a play into English. Meeting with a professor to revise another play we've been translating. Once I finish translating the play I'm translating on my own, I'll be working with the original playwright to adapt it to an American audience and will get co-writing credit on it.

>>9664817

What fucking magazines are you going to? Have you actually submitted to every publisher listed on Preeditors and Editors?

>>9665345
I began with fragments too. If you do a sufficient number of fragments, you'll end up with a finished product. It's not a failure to do 300 to 1500 pages of fragments at once. It's just a beginning.