/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12391404]

How's the writing career coming, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.12391533]

>>12391404
I mainly just read. It’s tough to quiet the voice within that says “your shit is shit and so are you” and I figure reading will help me be a better writer at least a little bit

[Anonymous No.12391543]

>>12391533
I myself want to become a successful writer, you have to read and practice writing everyday,

[Anonymous No.12391546]

>>12391533
>>12391543
the best writers dont expect a career

[Anonymous No.12391557]

>wrote for twelve hours a day through 2015 and even got a short story published in what felt like the comforting beginnings of a career
>got too depressed and into drugs and didn't write anything for the next three years as my brain was absolutely JUSTed
>got completely sober in the past few months and just started writing again two weeks ago at a level at or near where I was before the break
I'm trying not to beat myself up over all the time I lost and just be grateful that I'm writing again.

[12391543 No.12391561]

>>12391546 Yeah, I’d agree, I don’t focus on becoming popular, I just write and study those who mastered what I like doing, also good to tap into the business aspect of it, but all I can do at the moment is write and read everyday.

[Anonymous No.12391608]

>>12391546
I don’t care about making money off of writing or becoming famous. I would like to be published and receive critical recognition, but really I just want to write a book that I think is the best possible book I can write, a distillation of my best possible abilities. If I can write a book that I am proud of, and have a few intelligent readers and literary people recognize it, then I will be satisfied.

[Anonymous No.12391616]

>>12391546
No offense, but the pseudointellectual gatekeeping of this board really falls flat once you look into any critique thread and see that pretty much everyone here writes at or below a high school level and has absolutely no idea what good writing is despite always claiming otherwise.

[Anonymous No.12391654]

>>12391404
>Just want to start writing, give 0 fucks about making a career from it
>Plan on just publishing on Kindle
>Huh, well I'll need to get an editor
>Editors are unbelievably expensive
>mfw I'll have to go into the red just to make a book

[Anonymous No.12391659]

>>12391533
you're

[Anonymous No.12391661]

>>12391543
Since I'm not a genius writer, how do I get all the bad writing out of me? I assume that means that I'll have to write at least 1k words every day, but without some kind of external feedback, I feel like I'm going to be going in circles

[Anonymous No.12391677]

>>12391404
Slowly and steadily.

[Anonymous No.12391704]

>>12391546
The best writers know exactly how great they are, and they chafe at the world's inability to realize their greatness until much later. This is what Milton felt, and Wordsworth, and Joyce. Sometimes it's not an inflated sense of self-worth. Sometimes you're a genius and you know it.

[Anonymous No.12391760]

>>12391661
Join a writing group where you can get critiques

[Anonymous No.12391791]

>>12391760

>writing groups

Circle jerks you mean? Have you ever been in an MFA program? Nightmare fuel.

[Anonymous No.12391812]

I’m blank

[Anonymous No.12391838]

>>12391791
Depends on who you form a group and the people you find... if you keep trying then eventually you’ll find one with some good readers/people who have similar taste to you. You might as well leave your room eventually.

[Anonymous No.12391864]

>>12391654
dont fucking get an editor then?

[Anonymous No.12391878]

http://expatpress.com/product/information-blossoms-ryan-bry/

i'm here

[Anonymous No.12391888]

>>12391878
Looks fun, congrats on your work

[Anonymous No.12391904]

>>12391888
thx mate

[Anonymous No.12392180]

>>12391878
Cringe. Seriously dude, get a professional cover or just go minimalist. It looks like a website from the 90s.

[Anonymous No.12392208]

>>12391404
Really good (literally James Joyce btw).

[Anonymous No.12392325]

>>12392180
funny thing to say on a website from the 90s

[Anonymous No.12392375]

>>12392325
Learn about typography and colour theory too, it hurts to see the incompetence of that cover design.

[Anonymous No.12392385]

>>12391557
Do you outline or just write? Can you tell me your process? I'm struggling to outline and thinking of just writing a first draft because I'm stumped on how to make characters.

[Anonymous No.12392391]

>>12392180
I think that’s what he’s going for maybe. 90s aesthetic is very popular

[Anonymous No.12392395]

>>12391404
So far I've had three short stories published in a University magazine and one short story published in a literary journal in a different city. Currently have four submissions i'm waiting to hear back from. Just a matter of keeping at it.

[Anonymous No.12392398]

>>12392395
>>12392385

[Anonymous No.12392422]

I don't understand how I'm supposed to be good at writing or where I'm supposed to find the time. I don't understand why people like me are just made to be mediocre bodies.

[Anonymous No.12392426]

>>12391616
What does at or below high-school level even mean?

[Anonymous No.12392590]

>>12392398
First guy here. I usually have a premise in my head and a vague idea of the story beats, then I just let the writing go wherever it wants, often morphing into something completely different. The story I'm working on now started from me trying to think of metaphors for alienation in my head, writing a few down on my phone, cribbing together the bits of prose into a full paragraph, and realizing I've unintentionally started a new story that instantly made itself clear to me as soon as I thought about it. I latch onto a word or a scene or an emotion or whatever kicking around and then as soon as I start writing it's like everything instantly resolves itself and I don't really have to stop for anything.

Everyone works differently, but personally I find elaborate outlines to be too restrictive and detrimental to the work, their biggest pitfall being that they can snare you up in working on stuff peripheral to writing instead of actually writing. The only thing I would do an outline for would be a mystery novel or something similarly complex, and even then I would improvise a lot.

[Anonymous No.12393089]

>>12391404
>mfw i spend $0.87 on ads and get $5.98 worth of sales just from that

[Anonymous No.12393096]

>>12392590
Your response is much appreciated.

[Anonymous No.12393103]

I drew a picture for my book today

[Anonymous No.12393203]

>>12393089
That's how advertisement works


Now Die

[Anonymous No.12393434]

How many books do you write a year?

[Anonymous No.12393498]

Been writing for a couple of years. Read a bunch, both poetry and prose. Edited a poetry prose compilation for a writing class i took part in last year. There's a publishing opportunity offered to two manuscripts from people who have taken the writing class in previous years. There's a chance I'll get it. I'm currently working on a compilation of short stories for my submission.

[Anonymous No.12393515]

>>12393498
oh and got a few poems published in a local anthology. Haven't got any short stories published. Anyone know of a good place to submit short stories?

[Anonymous No.12393591]

>>12393515
Local anthology? Those exist?

[Anonymous No.12393637]

>>12393591
only in pretentious parvenu enclaves

like NY.

[Anonymous No.12393696]

>>12393637
>>12393591
Yeah the town I study in has a strong literary culture. Its got the national english literature museum (South Africa) and the university press puts out the country's premier poetry publication. The local anthology was put together by one of the poet's in the area. The anthology is nothing crazy but it's nice to see something getting published.

[Anonymous No.12393739]

>>12393696
Here are the poems since you guys didn't ask but I'm chillin.

A woodpecker on the grass

A woodpecker on the grass
needles for worms
shooting through the damp
green sea; its wing a mussel shell
blotched with barnacles
Its glistening spear
unrefracted
Rabbit Stew

The sunlight went slowly on through the dust and the fleshy corrugations of clouds, slower than the wind turning the turbines black like the wind that came from the trees the cold evening before the hunt. The sky was cold and clear besides the stark clouds - the sun’s eye turning from leaving them dead and grey above the wild grasses getting darker as they’re stirred in the wind.
Through the grass they stalked before the headlights. In the headlights – I can see he’s still breathing - Another was loaded. Their shadows falling in the shadows of the clumps of wild grass and the grey with gold running through hare took another, final shot. They moved on it and saw that it was dead under white torch light, on grass green again and one picked it up by its hind legs and it’s eye rolled back with the bright brown stare of life just fleeted and not the frozen fish eye under the white torch lights as they gutted it standing in a circle with its blood wetting in streaks across the white fluff of its underbelly.

Cleaned and prepared, they ate it the next day with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes; all with forks dipping into the pan placed in the centre of the table.

The light beyond the horizon was cast upon the clouds’ corrugations in old ribcages and spines, a severed rabbit foot, snapped off, falling away with the guts in a black bag that night and later, under a full moon, its bones.

[Anonymous No.12393747]

Rabbit Stew being the title of the second poem*

[Anonymous No.12393998]

>>12391659
He had it right. It's his shit, as in his possession.

[Anonymous No.12394399]

>>12392422
Mediocre bodies pretty good anthology title friendomine

[Anonymous No.12394428]

>>12391404
It's going alright...I started writing scripts for a small company in my city last year. Haven't been paid a single dollar so far but the director keeps saying that if the company takes off he'll start paying all of us.