How many of you seriously aspire to be a successful published author?
There are a lot of people with this attitude, that they are reading to "get good" at lit or build up a repertoire that represents all the quirks and facets of their style, but the same people dont spare a thought for their own voice or ideas or the truthfulness of what they write. It is like they're trying to crack the trade or something because they're too detached to really get into it.
There's something to be said for writing when you actually have an artistic vision or at least inspiration put at the core. This "just write and see where it goes" nonsense gets my goat. It is like instructions for building a travesty.
>>7730571
You can have your own thoughts while reading to improve your prose. Reading doesn't do much for your creativity, it just influences your prose, and hopefully, it improves it.
>>7730627
What this anon said, really. Reading a fuckton will generally improve your own prose, but I can see people becoming too derivative of previous works in the process. My prose is much better for having read as much as I have, but I can't say I'm a good "writer". Ideas are few and far in between.
As you read, you realize that your ideas are not your own at all. At least, you are not the first one to have them. This may make you lose motivation, realizing that you are not a special snowflake, but it can also do the opposite: motivate you do delve deeper into those writers that you feel a connection with. In short: be influenced. No masterpiece stands on its own.
>>7730646
>>7730627
Sorry I don't think my point was very clear.
I wanted to point the finger at people who apparently read so they can be good writers and in doing that really miss the point - ie that the best writers are people who read for the shear joy of the words on a page.
It seems there's this idea that lit is a trade or a science or some shit and you there should therefore be a formula and skillset for success. I think writing is maybe more of a spiritual thing, that you need to be really emotionally/intellectually honest to do well. Just a thought.
>>7730754
Strictly speaking, I don't think anyone like that actually exists. If you're not enjoying it on some level, you're not going to read a several hundred page long work of fiction just to crib ideas or prose from it.
>>7730754
Being emotional or "intellectual" means shit when you cant eloquently convey this. If you dont think there is an art to writing that is mined by thorough and varied reading your efforts will be weak.
>>7730754
You mean books like "french literature for dummies" or what? What the fuck is wrong with reading what's been done before you?
>>7730754
Do you write and if so how long have you been doing it for?
I am actively pursuing that goal OP.
I just finished the first draft of my first novel last week.
Here's a link to a short story I completed recently.
https://www.booksie.com/posting/randall-huff/the-itsy-bitsy-spider-an-adult-fairy-tale-459289
I am pretty sure my novel is going to be a blockbuster hit and get a movie deal. I eagerly await my millions when I become the new Stephen King.
>>7730571
I write for myself and enough people around me enjoy my ideas and prose that I feel like I can "make it". At the end of the day though, I'm writing because I want to read what I'm writing. You have to be your own biggest fan to be successful.
>>7730754
Personally, I'll sometimes read books because I know particular words will be important to the text, it's a little like watching an actor in a role.
I think you are right about being honest if one should write. Writing can't hide a thing and the reader is astute, most likely knows how to tell the words from the page.
Well, I write mostly for myself, not that I'd not want to be a published author. Usually I have some "what if" ideas and write a short story/novel about that. I just enjoy this hobby.
I write... when I don't come up with excuses to not do so, school work being the main one lately. I do think I have a vision and that I have something to say, yet I just don't have the will to fully dedicate myself to writing. Oh well, some fags get published in their 40s and do decently, I guess.
>>7730571
Personally speaking I write and have aspiration to becomen a worldwide best sellet author.
Nevertheless, I only read for pleasure, and most people who have read my works tell me: "Your ideas and creativity is amazing, loved the plot and everything... but you have to polish your writting."
So I guess they both go by the hand.
>>7730754
There probably is that aspect of it, but it is small
>...need to be intellectually honest to do well.
Writing is still a craft and a job my friend. You need to have vision and enjoy what you do, but if you want to be good at it, you need to hone it, improve it, polish it. No one became an excellent author because they just really enjoyed writing, they worked at it, tediously. You sound young (late teens/early 20's), you'll find that in order to be excellent at anything in life whether it is something you enjoy, or something that needs to be done, you need to work at it. Writing is no different.
>>7730571
I'm doing the opposite. I have something to say and I am learning how I want to say it.
>>7731468
this, it'll take a while but i refuse to let the vision go to waste on shoddy production
>>7730571
You have to read to develop this "artistic vision". You think it falls from the clouds, pal?
I only write out consitutions to forms of government I make up.
>>7730960
I don't know why buy it makes me so wary when people say their writing has received good feedback
Help senpai I don't care about being published or making money I just want to end up being taught in a classroom to rich liberal arts kids who want worthless degrees.
I write because I have things to say and a deep desire to be understood. The fact that what I'm producing is good just makes the experience enjoyable. There's something so indescribable about feeling the words join together the way I never could have imagined them. It's like some deep hum in my soul that I can translate. I pour it out and watching it take form into something beautiful is better than anything else in my life. Writing is about achieving harmony with myself; it's about giving voice to the parts of myself that I've never heard clearly. I write to be understood and I write to understand.
>>7731868
get an mfa and teach yourself in class
>>7731935
I didn't say I want to work in Starbucks. I want to actually live life and draw from experience. As such, I'm taking a job in sales for a freight logistics company. Only there will I learn what the world is about.
>>7730956
Terrible reference to GG
Terrible writing
Lacks high vocabulary
Copyrighted photograph
>Denied.
Are you drunk /lit/? Most of you couldn't even read OP's well written post correctly.
I used to. Was working on a novel that got up to around 20,000 words. Posted it on critique websites around the net and spent months editing.
I sent the first few to a bunch of local writing contests and got rejected from each one
It was at that point that I realized that the genre fiction market is way oversaturated and since genre fiction is the only thing I enjoy writing I might as well stick to writethreads on /lit/ and /tg/
>>7733558
OP's post is a clusterfuck, further confused by his attempt at clarifying later.
>>7732471
I've never read or watched GG, I just hear women in the MC's age range talk about it all the time.
And Stephen King never resorted to forced high vocabulary to sell his fiction.
As for the copywritten pic, um.... w/e it's the internet, I wasn't pretending it was my pic in the first place
>>7733652
You sound offended, or maybe you're easily confused. He just proposes that good writing might proceed from the writer's honest disposition rather than his technical skill.
>>7734130
There's nothing to be offended by. Nor am I confused; No, he's annoyed that some people (according to him) read in order to improve their own writing, and not for the shear (sic) pleasure of reading.
>>7733650
While you may feel at the moment that genre fiction is all you enjoy--and I, for one, know that feeling well, being as I was once the same way--sometimes things happen in your life that inspire you to write something greater. Just over a three months ago, I came very close to dying. I was at a party, drank way too much, and took 2cb; when I woke up the next day, I was covered in vomit, and so was my bed. I'd been sick in my sleep, and seeing as how I always sleep on my back, I couldn't help but feel that I'd actually died. Of course, after a little while, I began to realise that I was still alive--but the whole experience had still stirred something within me, and I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I'd actually died.
Flash forward a month, and I had a great idea for a book (I won't go into specifics, just in case somebody picks up my idea and finishes it first). I'm now around 45,000 words in, and have found that more "high brow" topics have unintentionally worked their way in.
Sometimes, the negative things that happen in life can have a vast impact on the work that you produce. Don't give up on writing just yet.
I read for pleasure
I read constantly, (every day, one book right after the other) because I want to improve my writing.
>>7733650
>It was at that point that I realized that the genre fiction market is way oversaturated and since genre fiction is the only thing I enjoy writing I might as well stick to writethreads on /lit/ and /tg/
its not that genre fiction is oversaturated, its just your work wasnt good enough to distinguish itself.
also
>local writing contests
A long time ago, the president of Warner Bros commented their cartoons in a way that has inspired me for years:
"We don't make the cartoons for kids. We make them for ourselves."
That said, I write for myself. I personally want to see how my story unfolds. The result is a style that is not a compromise, but exactly the style that suits my tastes.
I dare say that is the only way to become one of the great writers.
Currently trying to get my YA fantasy novel published. I'm waiting to hear back from different agents while I raise money to workshop my manuscript at a conference here in NYC and pitch it to publishers in person.
>>7734481
So it's better to find an agent before approaching publishers?
>>7734442
Good post, friend. I agree.
I'm writing a memoir, which I didn't really know would be the plan but ended up being the plan. I wanted to write the story of my adolescence (18-22) but less of "here's what happened" and something more in line with Gertrude Stein or Kerouac or Proust or Mary Karr.
The idea was a couple years in the making but the story just wasn't really there until last summer when I was traveling a lot. When I came back home, I spent August-December writing this long first draft of what would be the first half of the piece, but I kind of hit the finish line with the events of the story because more or less it was still going on, but I'm moving really soon and in the past couple weeks what is going to be the second half of the story clicked in my mind, and now I feel very very confident to continue revising the first draft into agreement with how I see the story now, and then write the rest of it and get it done.
I have the plan for how I want to proceed with writing it, it's now just a matter of moving and then getting into putting the rest of it together. Once it's done, though, I see no obstacles in getting it published. It's a good one.
>>7734765
Most publishers don't take unsolicited submissions from authors directly. The agent's job is to sell it to a publisher but writer conferences are supposed to be the way to network and get around that to an extent.
No way to only do this for the feelings.
If you have half a brain you will learn a thing or two from reading good books. I don't have learned anything that improved my prose in any shape or form because I retain myself from reading anything but meme books; yet I can at least say that my grammar has profited vastly from all my readings.
>>7730571
I would like to have some published short stories but I have a hard time finding the motivation to put my ideas down in text, so I never really start it. I just can't focus.
