What do you "have to say"?
I hear it's important for novelists to "have something to say".
uhh... you literally posted a picture proving the opposite
paul auster has made a whole career on having nothing to say (and written some good books, too)
>>8138326
It's a retarded and deluded statement.
I want to write about navigating identity, living in the margins of society, on love and optimism, I want to narrate a dreamy aesthetic, breaking down barriers, being stuck in bed with depression like an anchor around your throat, double entendre and visual puns, why I'm right about everything, a soft touch on the nape of your neck, dead sparkling eyes, the sound of an ocean crashing over and over and drowning out your mind.
shit's all fucked up yo and it's everyone else's fault
tfw no gf
You'll know when you read it
>>8138326
The American education system creates unprepared broken adults with victim complexes, exasperating class differences and entrenching corruption. This is allowed to continue due to the anesthetizing and anger directing media. The only way to get passed this is to start with Greeks. Book deal nao pls
>>8138799
First half of this
and that the world doesnt care about your struggles. That indifference is the only zeitgeist of any real value
bitches be shoppin
Well nobody ever claimed that "something to say" means you need to step on a soapbox. Having something to say might just mean having an interesting aesthetic take on a story, or strongly desiring to share a joke concept you enjoy.
So I would say I agree with the premise. Sturgeon's Law is real because too many people have literally nothing to say but god damn if that won't stop them from spending pages saying it. This thread stuck out to me partially because I've just had my weekly fill of cringe from reading the critique thread on this very board. It's tryhard, plain and simple, the mark of an amateur uncomfortable in his/her writing skin. I'm not trying to be some smug know-it-all, I'm just saiyan that as some random faggot on the internet this has been my perception. I'm not the greatest writer ever but I do know that people who are at least tradesman tier writers do not write like this.
Get yourself some passion so that the writing isn't like pulling teeth to both write and read.
I have nothing to say. I just wanna write nice stories about things I find important.
>>8138326
that it's perfectly fine that I want to fuck my 12 year old cousin
Novels should help people with their lives and get people out of tight spots. When somebody is like in a low place, alienated from society, they should be able to pick up a novel by a writer with a good heart and get their lives saved by the book so that after they read the book they like throw the heroin needle in the toilet or call their mom or something. If you aren't writing books to save people's lives and make society a better place, you are wasting your time. Art is about what it is to be fucking human! We are all lonely human beings crying in our rooms reading books we wrote for each other. Modern society is bad, and so is racism. But every once in a while, you catch a glimpse of something, like humanity, like compassion, and that's what great art is about—that glimpse, it's about the world opening up and creating like an art-hole that's not modern dirty industrial ugly society and that's more like, human and stuff. Art is a human hole of great sincerity and compassion, and it warms your heart like a toaster and makes you ache. A story is therapy and medicine for the soul. When you're finished reading my story about what happened to my character on his day out, you're... oh boy, you're not gonna be the same afterward. You're gonna know art hit you when you reach that conclusion. But after you feel bad, you're gonna feel good, because John's story? It just saved your life, bitch.
>>8138326
>What do you "have to say"?
If I could simply describe this in a 4chan post, then what would be the point in writing my novel?
>>8139979
Pics pls
>>8140005
Are you john? Or is the character john?
>>8140048
We're both John. The character is based on me.
>>8138326
This is what I have trouble with the most. I don't really have anything to say and when I try the results aren't good. I just try to make an entertaining story and let the reader decide what the themes are. I know that isn't the literary way to write, but it's the best I can do.
I want to say somehing about Life, the big picture, how we're all connected, what love can do, how we can survive in this metropolis with all this money... All the good times we had in our twenties, the drinking, the drugs. We were lost souls! We were in your apartment, my apartment, Josh had his car, we would hotbox it. Mulan, emo, 9/11, etc. I want to write a novel where critics go, "The very first page announces the arrival of a new and vibrant talent." And when I go to book signings, I want an old lady to come up to me and say, "You know, I didn't think I was going to like it, because I heard there was so much sex and drugs, but you are a good man with a good heart and I loved it. You are like my son." I want to go to the beach and spread my arms out wide and embrace the sky and then get down on my knees and gather the sand to me and roll around in it and make sand angels. A novel! A novel can change the world. You say a guy did this and then he did that and realized this and people cry and girls want to suck your cock right off. It's a beautiful world, this Earth, if we could only learn to love, to live, to get a long. That's what I believe. That's what my novel is about.
If I had something to say I'd say it at all the audience pussy who would sit on my face every night. But I don't.
>>8140019
uh, no.
Besides, I 'stopped' loving her two years ago. Or last year, I am not sure. And after that, she gained weight and is now chubby in a sense. She is still cute to me but she ruined her body that screamed youth and virginity.
>>8138326
Alienation and rejection of love-as-fun is the swan song of the twenty first century.
>>8140094
Oh, so you want to be a novelist to write about smoking weed with your friends and be declared a genius so your identity and optimism will finally be affirmed? Dream on. This is seriously some of the most pathetic shit I've ever heard. Q: "What do you wanna say in a novel?" A: "ME ME ME ME!"
>>8138326
"When your readers figure out what your on about, you're finished"
DeLillo
>>8140855
I mean, you're also falling in within the realm of "ME! ME! ME!", whatever that means as criticism.
>>8138364
I would read about that.
I am better than every single one of you. Humanity has been irreparably stupefied since the First World War, or at the least, the turn of the 19th century. I do not want to fix you, rather, I would have my work be a mirror with which you animals can behold your ugly and unsightly reflections. Know only that I am he who sits upon the periphery of society, aloof and awaiting, for the next individual who, fated as they are, will carve a path unto greatness through the corpse that is modernity.
that being white kicks ass and if you aren't white you should do everything in your power to act white
>>8140899
>>8138326
just bee urself :^)
>>8140891
I can't respond with an image since the one you used is actually appropriate for yourself.
>>8140875
Thanks! I'll mail you a copy when I publish it.
