To any published writers on /lit/

[Anonymous No.20790447]

What's one tip you would give to new writers hoping to get published?

[Anonymous No.20790471]

>>20790447
Rejections are meaningless and a work is not finished until it is published. Keep working on it and improving it until it is accepted and keep submitting and resubmitting it until it is accepted. All a rejection really means is it is not suitable for them to publish it at that time.

[Anonymous No.20790483]

>>20790447
If you're a white straight male, seek a different career

[Anonymous No.20790510]

>>20790483
I am a white straight male and am doing fairly well, second novel (third book) will be out next year, my editor has it now and is busy at work with his red pencil.

[Anonymous No.20790514]

>>20790483
>straight
where do you think you are?

[Anonymous No.20790547]

>>20790510
What's your one tip anon?

[Anonymous No.20790575]

>>20790447
Have a high-concept that is compelling. Have a good comp title. Literary agents can help you, but you're gonna have to wait like everyone else unless you are really good at determining which agent wants your story the most. Don't take rejection personally because even good books are rejected not because pros think its bad, it's just out of all the things on their stack there are ones that personally interest them more.
Have your manuscript copyedited and proofread if you go too many months without a getting an agent or signing; it takes pressure off the editors they are pitched to and makes you look smarter.

[Anonymous No.20790590]

>>20790547
>>20790471

[Anonymous No.20790628]

>>20790447
My dissertation got published by a prestigious publisher, does that count

[Anonymous No.20790729]

>>20790628
Certainly, feel free to share your advice. It doesn't have to be about publishing strictly, it could be about the writing or editing process too

[Anonymous No.20790776]

>>20790483
>>20790510
>publishing traditionally

[Anonymous No.20790802]

>>20790776
>self-publishing

[Anonymous No.20790812]

>>20790776
>spending all your time giving hand jobs on twitter in the hopes some of them will read your book
nah, I would rather write.

[Anonymous No.20790826]

>>20790483
>hello fellow white people

[Anonymous No.20790840]

>>20790483
Ask yourself what the person posting this stands to gain from demoralizing writers

[Anonymous No.20790881]

>>20790840
in another thread that anon said that instead of writing a book, white men should instead develop a video game. I don't think they have a secret agenda, I just think they're kind of retarded

[Anonymous No.20790913]

>>20790881
Never assume incompetence when malice is a satisfactory explanation

[Anonymous No.20790944]

>>20790881
He has been making those threads for like a year now and sometimes goes all weekend without taking a break from posting. He is heavily invested and it goes well beyond the run of the mill 4chan retardation.
>>20790913
Malicious incompetence.

[Anonymous No.20790945]

>>20790840
justification for not even trying. this world doesn't deserve the great things i'd surely create if i ever got around to it etc

[Anonymous No.20790959]

There are no published writers on /lit/.
Most of /lit/ hasn't even read any contemporary literature so can't make even attempt to make an informed guess as to how to get published.

its not 2014 /lit anymore. you're best trying reddit. I'm not joking

[Anonymous No.20790963]

>>20790959
good pic

[Anonymous No.20791052]

>>20790959
You're wrong, I know I've been published. Also there's been good advice given in this thread, why try undermine it?

[Anonymous No.20791070]

>>20791052
He wants to kill the last remnants of worth that /lit/ has left.

[Anonymous No.20791110]

>>20791070
Unbelievable how much demoralising goes on here, especially considering that this thread explicitly addresses success stories.

[Anonymous No.20791111]

>>20790447
Keep writing and don’t give up. Perseverance is the key to success.

[Anonymous No.20791205]

>>20791110
It is depressing, especially considering how amazing this place used to be for writers. I am a writer because of /lit/, years ago I started to respond in a write thread, describe this image in your best prose, a shitpost that just kept on going and developed into something considerably more. Ended up writing through the night and have not stopped since, and that shitpost ended up becoming my first novel. Had no interest in being a writer before that, never even crossed my mind and now here I am a decade later with a respectable amount of published work and getting ready to rearrange my entire life so I can write full time.

I hope /lit/ can be saved, never found anything even close to what it was. I learned to develop character by larping as my characters here, we had anons that were good enough to spot a larp just by something said which was slightly out of character. Learned to set scenes in the describe this image threads. On it goes. It was an amazing resource.

[Anonymous No.20791219]

>>20790959
>Most of /lit/ hasn't even read any contemporary literature
Recommend me 5 books of contemporary literature.

[Anonymous No.20791236]

>>20791205
I just had a quick look through warosu, back to 2011, and people interacted with one another so differently on here. Sad to see. I'm sure this holds for the internet in general, but it's true that the golden age is behind us.

[Anonymous No.20791251]

>>20790840
Sometimes “demoralization” is really just the hard truth that could benefit someone in the long run. You wouldn’t in good conscience encourage someone to dedicate their life to something that you know will never work out for them, would you?. Whether they choose to do it anyway is entirely up to them, but it would be irresponsible and uncaring if you to push them like that. I think that we are living in a particularly difficult time to be a writer at all, let alone a white male writer is undeniable. People who would should be made aware of that as soon as possible and people who have gone down the path already have a responsibility to shout back the hazards and dead ends ahead.

[Anonymous No.20791267]

>>20790959
Do you think pop culture and social media are bad for writers? We’re saturated in it now, even here. I don’t think it’s as bad for other crafts. I learned pretty recently that the author of Tokyo Ghoul, a highly praised Japanese comic, started out drawing funny comics on 2chan, the Japanese equivalent of 4chan. Maybe it’s basically a weeb website? An image board? I don’t know. It feels to me like the environments I inhabit both in real life and online, but especially online, are harmful to writing somehow.

[Anonymous No.20791271]

>>20791251
The blackpilling around here doesn't seem like it's coming from a place of concern or sincerity. More seems like misery loving company.

[Anonymous No.20791272]

>>20791251
You have already been outed numerous times as someone who never went down that path in the first place. You have nothing to offer anyone but your own bitterness about failing before you even tried. Fuck off already.

[Anonymous No.20791302]

>>20790471
>>20790575
>>20791111
Thanks for the tips anons, both helpful and heartening

[Anonymous No.20791361]

>>20791205
Based wholesome anon. Long live to you.

[Anonymous No.20791772]

>>20791271
Perhaps not genuine concern but sincerity is likely. I think people feel it sincerely and just say what they feel.

>>20791272
You must be some kind of amazing hacker to know who I am.

[Anonymous No.20791782]

>>20791251
>Sometimes “demoralization” is really just the hard truth that could benefit someone in the long run.
No it isn't. "Never even try anything" is projection for niggerblooded little faggots to drag everyone else around them down to the level of their failures.

[Anonymous No.20791796]

>>20790959
>Most of /lit/ hasn't even read any contemporary literature
Why the fuck would a burgeoning writer be evaluated on the basis of how much of other peoples' work he consumes? You actually have no moral obligation to be a consumerist in order to be accepted into consumerist society - as if outsider artists have never been published or even redefined the mainstream.

[Anonymous No.20791829]

>>20791782
So you don’t believe there are certain things which may be ill-advised due to contextual problems that might be faced? There obviously is. You can’t with any honesty deny that certain problems exist with literature and publishing right now, and it stands to reason someone might advise someone not to pursue it for the same reason you might advise someone not to take out a loan to open a Blockbuster.

[Anonymous No.20791843]

>>20791267
The American establishment explicitly funds this stuff to keep humans at the level of cattle. You can look it up yourself, for example, the connections between the prison industrial complex and popular music glorifying criminality, or how sex and porn apps explicitly target children through popular media. Ask yourself, why is all your food saturated in corn syrup? Why does all your water have flouride in it?

This website represents the potential for creative and spontaneous mass action, which represents a threat to the regime. That's why it's been awash with bots for the last five+ years. They're just wearing down avenues of dissent at the expense of the human condition.

[Anonymous No.20791891]

>>20791829
>You can’t with any honesty deny that certain problems exist with literature and publishing right now, and it stands to reason someone might advise someone not to pursue it for the same reason you might advise someone not to take out a loan to open a Blockbuster.
Producing literature is not a zero-sum game like investing money in a failed business. Cultural production is not entirely, or arguably even primarily centered on material gain. I would never advise anyone drop all tethers of financial stability to pursue a bohemian ideal, but ceasing to develop your own ideas and art in pursuit of self-realization because you're unlikely to make material gains is the definition of demoralization. Stop trying to render all culture and individual expression down to the level of material warfare, its an obvious subversion tactic and I doubt whether you even realize why you're replicating that behavior. The demoralized swiftly become demoralizers.

[Anonymous No.20792232]

>>20791891
I think the argument is that this cultural production you imagine will only result in frustration or counter-productivity. That has less to do with your income than the possibilities for creation and the finite moments of your mortal life.

[Anonymous No.20792242]

>>20791843
That first paragraph doesn’t really answer my question at all but the second suggests you do not believe a space like this is counterproductive to writing.

[Anonymous No.20792249]

>>20792232
>you will be more culturally productive and achieve self-realization through expression more readily if you completely give up producing anything for an audience, ever
No rabbi, I don't think so.

[Anonymous No.20792496]

How is it that indie music, film, and games can have massive followings, festivals, and general public support, but people draw the line at books? Have traditional publishing houses done that great of a job convincing everyone that their gatekeeping is necessary? Has anyone who is staunchly against self-published books read more than one, but that one was shitty and they decided to dust their hands of the rest? Why is it that every book I own has typos in it but if a self-pub book has typos, well, that just goes to show the awful standards of self-published books! If traditional publishing is such a shitshow, and everyone knows it, why is it that I still feel like I've "failed" if I decide to give up querying and just self-pub? Will literature ever have its version of bandcamp, or will there never be enough support from readers for such a place?

[Anonymous No.20792500]

>>20790447
Hey OP, i'll give you what tips i can based on my experience with getting my first book (pic related) published.
Firstly before you do anything work out what your "voice" is, what you want to say and how you want to say it.
Embarrassing confession here but i originally tried writing genre fiction in the belief that it was easy and it paid well. I started writing a multi-volume SF saga that was basically Game of Thrones in space, instead of tits and dragons it was all tits and spaceships. Needless to say it was awful and went nowhere.
I thought for a long time about what it was i wanted to say. I was working out bush at the time at a remote roadhouse on the Nullarbor and i'd recently read W. Somerset Maugham's short stories and i thought to myself "what if i told stories about the life here out bush" and before i knew it i had a book's worth of stories.

[Anonymous No.20792532]

>>20792496
Because all of those other art forms are experiential and the "indie" community is a pretense for young adults and the infantile to get together and engage in acts of base hedonism. You might as well ask why furry conventions are more popular than books

[Anonymous No.20792543]

>>20792532
Yeah but if you say "I'm in independent filmmaker" you get "ooh, aahh, wow" but if you say "I'm a self-published author" you get "oh, that's nice hun."

[Anonymous No.20792697]

>>20792496
>!
gottem

[Anonymous No.20793171]

>>20791236
>2011
I kinda wish I was here then, reading more and at least writing. I ended up on 4chan in '07 but I wasted my time on /x/ and /sci/ even though I did read literature, I just thought I wasn't cut out for writing. I'm closing in on final draft of my first novel and I'm starting to submit short stories and it took maybe 4 years to get this point trying to become competent with it. Changed my life, to be desu with you.

[Anonymous No.20793936]

>>20790447
It really is a long game. Unless you are in the 0.5% of people who can write amazing stuff in moments of inspiration, you will need some organizing principle (for most people this takes the form of a schedule). You will be sitting a lot so find a form of exercise you like. Don’t ignore back pain.

[Anonymous No.20793963]

>>20792500
>>20793936
Thanks Woolston and anon

[Anonymous No.20794042]

OP here, I made this thread for others' benefit more than my own, given that I've already had some short stories published (I don't write long form fiction). May as well give my own advice at this point. Read and write as often as you can, you never know what might come in handy later, or what might spark something else. Experiment widely and it's unlikely that your first style / idea will be your best. If a publication doesn't accept your story, don't take it personally and submit it somewhere else. Use submittable but also look through twitter to find calls for submission, even if you don't have a twitter account. Things take time. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Have fun with it. Thanks for the good thread everyone, lit's gonna be okay.

[Anonymous No.20794052]

Pretend you're a white, millennial female and make some trunk novel jam packed with the usual shit that sells these days, then put the money you make from it towards getting your serious writing out there.

[Anonymous No.20794062]

>>20790447
Keep trying and don't let the rejections negatively impact you; they're there for character building and to also humble you. Keep trying to make your craft better.

[Anonymous No.20794186]

>>20791772
>You must be some kind of amazing hacker to know who I am.
Your language usage follows fairly rigid patterns, you say the same thing over and over in essentially the same ways and have a reliance on certain words and phrase structures. You really are not difficult to spot.
>>20791796
What he is poorly saying is that if tou are not aware of current trends in literature you will be unlikely to get published because of unknowingly rehashing what others have done or just being archaic in general. For the most part you have to incorporate some aspect of current literature if you want to get published just for the sake of marketing. Which does not mean you have to follow trending themes or the like, you just need some sort of touchstone they can use to entice readers and stick a meaningless blurb on the cover about how you inverted modern literary paradigms to produce a scathing and humorous critique of the fast paced world of dental insurance or some such marginally related nonsense.