/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15601691]

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

[Anonymous No.15601700]

>>15601691
I've got a lot of good ideas, but I'm afraid my prose sucks

[Anonymous No.15602512]

>>15601691
I've got good ideas and finally like my own prose, but the actual writing is just slow suffering. Feels like it will never end.

[Anonymous No.15602612]

>>15601691
I'm having trouble with dialogue, and spacing things out. My idea for a short novel is mainly about political intrigue leading up to and following America turning into a dictatorship in the 30s.
Any advice?

[Anonymous No.15602660]

>tfw always been interested in writing
>never bothers studying because fuck that
>studied finance instead
>got a job in an IB
>making bank
>wrote a fantasy book on the side
>mfw it got published
>kekalekadingdong

[Anonymous No.15602677]

>>15601691
Posted some stuff that I thought was half decent on my poetry IG account. Only got four likes and some cunt asking for a follow. Ngmi

[Anonymous No.15602692]

I worry that I have been to 4chan too much and I hold my writing to far too high a standard, (you know what I mean) and that immersing myself in such relatively obscure and extreme artistic circles has developed my interests to some esoteric and disjointed niches that no one could ever be lured into reading about. What stresses me out about this on a secondary more guilty layer is that I am considering an audience while writing and that seems impure somehow. Then on a third level below that there is the guilt of knowing I am using an imagined highly picky and well read audience as a mental block to avoid writing or serious reading and just going off to play video games and it not only stops me from creating but also reinforces my pretentiousness, since by writing to that perceived higher standard it implies that I am writing above the plebs and every example of writing that tends this way I have hated. I worry that after my whole life I will have had one short story in a /lit/ magazine and a trunk load of unfinished novels that I was too scared to finish or show someone to my name.

So I am around about the place where I release a novel that I know to be compromised and later come to disavow after a lengthy identity crisis about how I am perceived wrongly and it's my own fault for misrepresenting myself, after which I write my magnum opus and then a failed followup chased soon after by my suicide via home made guillotine. Oh yeah, got it all planned out.

[Anonymous No.15602703]

>>15601691
I think it's going well. I finally went out of the phase of worrying and couldn't care less what any fag thinks about the shit I do.

[Anonymous No.15602704]

>>15601691
Enrolled in an online beginning writers workshop through my library. Anyone else ever done anything like this? Feel like I need some hard external entity to mandate deadlines or I’ll never get shit done.

[Anonymous No.15602714]

>>15601700
It does, and it will until you star writing.

[Anonymous No.15602715]

>>15602703
how

[Anonymous No.15602732]

>>15602715
I realized that shame is meaningless unless it somehows puts your life in danger

[Anonymous No.15602959]

>>15601691
>Wrote a book about a soldier fighting in Iraq who realises that the insurgents he's fighting, however backwards they might be, at least believe in something, while the society he's fighting for ultimately believe in nothing
>Sent it to multiple agents
>Only one of them responded, in an email that started with 'Yikes'

[Anonymous No.15602967]

>>15602959
Keep trying. Don't give up.

[Anonymous No.15603005]

>>15602967
Thanks anon. However pretentious it might be, I like to comfort myself by thinking of Melville and all the other writers who were ignored in their lifetime but today are recognized as great.

[Anonymous No.15603239]

>>15601691
Pulling a Simenon, just writing whatever I can, plot and prose be damned. Will fix up once I have my 50,000 words. 5000 a day, this method seems very entertaining and enjoyable. Some grammar and rhetoric practice would help immensely in prettying up the prose.

[Anonymous No.15603482]

>>15601691
While it is one of my life goals to get my novel published (and hopefully it squeal since I intend for it to be a duology) I'm not gonna delude myself that I'm going to be able to make a career out of writing. Sadly, we live in an era where it is highly unlikely to make a career out of any creative pursuits without several outside factors aligning beyond one's personal talent or the quality of one's work.

That being said I don't think I'd want to write for a career. I've found work as an ALT in Japan and I hope a career teaching English to foreigners will give me the inspiration for the writing I do on the side. As I learned the hard way during quarantine siting around all day trying to write isn't the best environment for me to write in.

[Anonymous No.15603500]

>>15602959
I misread soldier as spider at first. For shits and giggles, change your protag to a giant tarantula and sent it back to that guy.

[Anonymous No.15603578]

>>15602692

[Anonymous No.15603585]

>>15602959
can i read it? that agent was a fag.
actually sounds interesting to me, unironically.

[Anonymous No.15603634]

I write goodish short stories. My prose is not too bad, not a rip off and my themes range from played out but solid to kind of neat.

I have major issues with anything longer than 15 pages though. My attempts only consist of loosely related single events. Snapshots, if you will. There is no proper connection, no overarching story. I hate it. I always have an interesting starting point and know where the journey is headed. Inbetween it always falls apart and gets boring. What can I do to mitigate this?

[Anonymous No.15603652]

>tfw gonna be published
nothing fancy but I never wished for more, the best part is I like reading what I write

[Anonymous No.15603689]

>>15603634
I have the inverse problem where my mind inherently wants to write long, far reaching epics, but I often have trouble focusing on a single story for long enough. I would suggest trying your hand at short story writing. If you can have something complete under your belt that's under that 15 page mark, then that may give you the flow you need to write something longer. You could even try setting these stories in a shared world that you explore bit by bit from different perspectives.

[Anonymous No.15603694]

I don't know how to write.

[Anonymous No.15603711]

>>15603652
I plan on trying to publish in a literary magazine with some of my short stories, then moving upwards and trying to publish one of my full-length novellas/novels.
I enjoy reading what I write too. When I go back to edit my works, I forget to edit them because I'm enjoying it.
Good work getting published, fren. Proud of you!!

[Anonymous No.15603720]

>>15602692
Fuck man this is my exact struggle articulated almost perfectly. Except for me there is an additional layer of cancel culture

[Anonymous No.15603726]

>>15603482
>I've found work as an ALT in Japan
Sounds comfy. Wish I had done that in my early twenties. Japan is amazing

[Anonymous No.15603755]

I've written 3 complete novels and have no idea how to get them out into the world. The agent publisher cycle seems like a closed loop that's impossible to break into without knowing the right people, but even if I could break in it really seems like every published book out there is just upper middle class/rich kid white liberals proselytizing to the choir (my books aren't right wing treatises by any means, they're apolitical, but I feel like that is a detriment in the modern publishing racket), and self publishing seems akin to pissing in the ocean.

I think I'll just mail a few copies out to agents, wait for the inevitable rejections, and just put them on Amazon for free. I don't write to get rich but I do want people to read what I've wrote

[Anonymous No.15603763]

>>15602692
damn anon, are you me?

[Anonymous No.15603925]

>>15603652
>>15603711
frens

[Anonymous No.15604234]

>>15603755
Exact same position anon. It's a tragedy, really.

[Anonymous No.15604271]

>>15601691
Terribly, I haven't kept up with it for months now and need to get back in the saddle starting next month. I should be done with warming up once this month is over, so I remain hopeful and will kick ass in July when actual writing comes into play.

[Anonymous No.15604284]

>>15603755
They don't care if it's good or not, it's important if they can sell it or find a way to pitch it. It's also a hard and cruel marathon of enduring all the bullshit so that you can finally get to the finish line, so don't lose hope and keep at it. If it's meant to be, one day your work will get published.

[Anonymous No.15604300]

>>15601691
Terrible of course, ive been working through the same jornal for 4 years now and am only now nearing finishing it, the first third is incomprehensible nonsense and the latest third is starting to be more in line with the way I view the world. As long as I continue to live a somewhat interesting life and continue practicing at this rate I think Ill be able to get out one solid work by the time I die

[Anonymous No.15604342]

>>15602959
This actually sounds good. Try editing it or revising some parts and keep sending it around.

[Anonymous No.15605293]

>>15602959
is it like mccarthy?

[Anonymous No.15605435]

>>15603755
I self-published my first book, and I'm hoping to get a traditional publisher with the second. The indie community is retarded and ridiculously political, full of people obsessed with their disability/gender/race/mental illness. I've been getting positive reviews, but feel like a total outlier, especially since I don't write genre fiction. (It's edgy, but not horror.) This one horror blogger wants to interview me soon, yet I have no idea what to say, since their only interests appear to be LGBT fiction and activism.

[Anonymous No.15605553]

Does song writing count? I can't seem to break out of the pattern of using extended chords but a I VI IV V progression. And I'm still shit at writing riffs or melodies.

[Anonymous No.15605768]

I want to write a YA novel where the male character is eventually kidnapped by an agalmatophiliac Turkish-Japanese multimillionaire that wants to turn him into a statue he can get off to, what do you guys think?

[Anonymous No.15605798]

i spent a year writing a book that i self-published, a few weeks later an indian gent leaves a one star review calling it the worst book ever written and no one has bought it since, regret not using a pseudonym

[Anonymous No.15605962]

>>15602660
Congrats, anon. Your shitty fantasy novel will be read by hundreds. You do realize how many people get "published" and never sell 500 copies?

[Anonymous No.15606018]

>>15601691
Lads anyone have practical tips for getting published? Is cold sending to literary agents the way? My understanding was to try get short stories or poems published first and then use that to get the ear of an agent or publisher.

Tbh would like to hear sending a novel to an agent is all you need to do is good enough as novels are what I really enjoy writing

[Anonymous No.15606035]

>>15602959
Post email please

[Anonymous No.15606057]

>>15601691
I've written an essay I'm thinking of turning into a youtube video (only way it'll probably been seen/heard...) and submitted a script idea for a movie contest

[Anonymous No.15606159]

>>15601691
Every good idea I have ends up being too long to be a short story and too short to be a novel, and I feel like I'm never going to be able to publish a single novella as an unknown. Luckily this isn't my career, otherwise I'd be broke.

Which would be more marketable, a collection of short stories ending with a novella, or a "trilogy" of three roughly 30k word novellas that share a common theme, published together as a single book?

[Anonymous No.15606392]

>>15605768
That does not sound like a ya plot but it might work as a surreal short story or something

[Anonymous No.15606432]

>>15606392
Yeah it's more like parody YA

[Anonymous No.15606785]

Won a short story award judged by a big-named novelist in the country. The literati here worship this novelist.
It opened many doors for me, but I started to crack mentally. Restarted my novel about 6 times now. I keep changing my benchmark.
I also just so happened to delve real deep into Hermeticism/Kabbalah, and probably lost my mind. If someone asks me what I've done for the last four years, I usually just smile and say Oh, all over the place.
I usually spend most of my time playing guitar now. Every so often I'll shitpost some of my writing practices as something out of a Pynchon novel. Fooling the spergy anons here feels good.
I'm waiting for the day where writing will be my only bastion of hope for living a comfortable life. As soon as I'm quartered off in a shack somewhere, I'll begin my Faustian redemption arc.
I spend my days writing a little, playing my guitar, reading, drinking wine, and sometimes watching black people react to Mitch Hedburg on YouTube.

[Anonymous No.15606794]

>>15602959
Apocaypse Now?

[Anonymous No.15606802]

>>15602959
What else did the email say?

[Anonymous No.15606925]

>>15606018
Agents get sent thousands of novels. The only way you're gonna get actually read is either through nepotism, or, as you said it, winning awards and getting pieces published. Those names get put to the top of the read list when it is known.

[Anonymous No.15606941]

>>15606925
Also immerse yourself in the literary scene in your city. Read at poetry nights. Meet people.
I've met some novelists in my city who have books published via big name houses.
If you're good at the readings, they'll respond to that and what to get to know you.

[Anonymous No.15606950]

>>15606941
want**
I'm drunk

[Anonymous No.15606976]

>>15606018
Imagine you're an agent. Your goal is to make money off the total sales of whichever novel you help get published. Then you get sent two 80,000 word novels. Without opening either one up, you see just from the emails that one has published several short stories in magazines, indicating that perhaps they already have a small following who will likely buy the book. The other you have never heard of, they haven't published anything before.

Presumably you might open both books to see which is higher quality or more marketable - in the case that you only have two books to choose from. In reality, like the other anon said, you have thousands.

[Anonymous No.15606982]

>>15606925
>>15606941
Thanks lads. I thought as much. Fair enough I guess, time to keep grinding the small stuff

[Anonymous No.15607625]

>>15606159
Novellas are trash and you will never be read until you learn how to write a proper book.

[Anonymous No.15607860]

>>15601691
>How's the writing career coming, /lit/?
i daydreamed a lot about it this week

[Anonymous No.15608188]

>>15602959
Unless you’re an actual veteran it’s inevitably going to look like you’re hijacking someone else’s conflict in a way that has been artistically played out.

[Anonymous No.15608540]

>>15601691
I was doing well in terms of output but once the semester ended I started to slow down due to a lack of schedule and now I just exist in a horrifying reality where I shift between being awake and being asleep, unproductive the whole time.

[Anonymous No.15608688]

>>15601691
>I've got a bestseller in me, I just need to follow through
>go on /lit/
>"I've got a bestseller in me, I just need to follow through" x one million

[Anonymous No.15608747]

>>15608688
Well no shit. There are a lot of people gunning for what you want. If this is a surprise, and demoralizes you, you never had the artistic spirit in the first place.

[Anonymous No.15608789]

>>15602704
in university I took a writing class for this purpose....not so much to learn but to make me write

[Anonymous No.15608809]

The fantasy is going just how I want it. I can’t wait to be manic again so I can commit to writing down my brilliant ideas.

[Anonymous No.15609675]

My productivity on my book flourished during the pandemic shutdown phase and now I am almost disappointed that things are going back to relative normal. Working on my book during that anxious time was my one solace. Now it seems that the outcome of all that turmoil was for things to return to how they were but vaguely somehow more shittier. The pandemic felt like permission from on high to suspend the usual priorities and focus on the unusual. They say Shakespeare wrote King Lear during an epidemic and I can see why. Quarantine is good conditions to write a book, exactly the sort of backdrop of spiritual winter off of which to play one's thoughts. It doesn't beat some idyllic mountain retreat but the tinge of anxious suffering permeating the dimension of humanity and the pall of uncertainty over everything feels as if something is in motion and makes the moment feel important. Now that the pandemic has become less of the prominent concern and I have still not completed my book work on it seems less touched by a manic urgency.

[Anonymous No.15609756]

>>15608747
This is like when I had a crush in second grade. One day the boys went around in a circle and admitted who we all liked. They all liked the same girl as me.

[Anonymous No.15609766]

>>15601691
i work a real job and write for fun, so good i guess.

[Anonymous No.15609771]

>>15609675
Im the opposite. I had nothing to do. When I'm busy, I get shit done. Free time in excess is my worst enemy.

[Anonymous No.15610036]

>>15609756
Have some confidence in yourself.
I know I'm going to make it as a writer. I'm great af.

[Anonymous No.15610305]

>>15602959
the existence of >>15606794 makes me think it wasn't the general plot that got you your yikes

[Anonymous No.15610307]

>>15601691
Copywriting career going nowhere, but plenty of free time to sit at home and not write my novel. At least I'm out of retail.

[Anonymous No.15610331]

>>15601691 >>15601700 >>15602512 >>15602612 >>15602677 >>15602703 >>15602704 >>15602959 >>15603239 >>15603482 >>15604271 >>15604300 >>15606018 >>15606057 >>15606159 >>15607860 >>15608540 >>15608688 >>15609766 >>15610307
Anyone here have any connections to literary agents? I could use a referral for my picture book.

[Anonymous No.15610347]

>>15610331
Yes, my sister is in publishing, but I'll only refer you once you post a page of your picture book.

[Anonymous No.15610368]

>>15610347
I can share some samples over email.

[Anonymous No.15610784]

>>15610368
Oh god, you're serious. I'm sorry I led you on. My sister doesn't have any power and she's not an agent. Also, she's based in China. Best of luck on your journey. You've accomplished more than anyone could expect from someone posting on this site.

[Anonymous No.15610879]

>>15601691
my bad LITRPG on royal road just crested 150 followers. For whatever reason it's gone up 50% in the last two days. Somehow still rocking a 4.42/5 rating when it's mixture of action scenes, stilted conversations, and me rambling about my poor understanding of philosophy of the mind in the guise of the protagonists thoughts.

[Anonymous No.15610954]

>>15610784
I had one weird fiction short story published, but I have been trying to get my picture book published too. I talk about my issue here:
https://youtu.be/OkiqFBH2Qoo

[Anonymous No.15610956]

>>15601691
Writing my 3rd novel now. Only a few close friends read the first two. The second one was okay but needs editing. I'm fearful and lazy. I do too many drugs and fixate on chicks and hedonism generally. I only like to write on the upswing of a nice coffee buzz. The other 10 hours of the day I forget how to take care of myself. But things are getting better now.