How's the writing career coming, /lit/?
Slowly. How's yours?
Going to try and apply for a meme scholarship so I can get paid to study literature
>>7783031
>writing
>career
This better be another one of those cynically rhetorical threads, OP
>>7783039
No OP here, but I do plan on working on my novels enough over the next few years that I can quit my day job and write full time.
Just need to start bringing in roughly 2000-2500/month on writing, and then I don't have to sell phones anymore.
>>7783054
Good luck man
Im not saying its impossible but unless you're gonna stoop to YAF and Romance novels a writing career is one of the least financially rewarding professions you can undergo
>tfw I've fallen into the habit of obsessively checking my Submittable page
>tfw several things have moved from 'Received' to 'In Progress' in the past week
;_;
becoming a successful writer is the only way i would ever be able to live a life that doesn't make me want to kill myself every day and i know there is 0 chance of it ever happening.
>>7783116
Oh, I know. I don't expect to be rich, but I have worked almost 2/3 of my life making other people wealthy. I left school when I was 14 to start working in construction and roofing and treework, running swamills and logging, retail lumber sales, hardware, etcetera, and I did that until I was about 25. After a car wreck, I started working in the cellular industry, and now, I'm watching all these young fucks who know not NEARLY as much, and have not NEARLY the experience i have in cellular come along and scoop up sales in a comission based industry because they're younger, and this is a young man's industry. Older, bearded, heavyset guys like me must not know shit, even though I''ve forgotten more about cell phones and computers than these cunts have ever learned.
</rant>
Anyways. I've always loved writing,and I'e gotten almost exclusively positive reviews from both anonymous readers and people who know me. I think I might actually have a chance, but I'm gonna play it safe and wait until i have a year's worth of wages saved up in a bank account before I quit my day job. Then it's all about making that grow.
>>7783150
Have you considered writing some short stories and submitting those to magazines and websites? It might help you eventually publish your novels if you can have your name in print for other things first.
in my mid teens, couldnt care less about a career but write a lot. rarely show my shit to anyone and dont even read it over.
my teachers fucking love though so i guess im doin ok.
>>7783031
it's going..
I'm submitting to two literary journals for the first time in about a week (if I can finish...)
my plan is to publish a few more short stories and maybe a novella, then apply for this writing fellowship that gives an unpublished writer $50k and a year to write the first novel
that's as far as I've planned; that's the dream
>goal to publish a book by age 25
>>7783119
i know that feel, good luck.
>>7783150
>I've always loved writing,and I'e gotten almost exclusively positive reviews from both anonymous readers and people who know me
well now you gotta post an excerpt
>>7783159
I've considered it, but I literally have no idea where to start on that one. I have a few ideas for some short stories, but my short stories always tend to evolve into chapters. I could probably cut them down to 2-4K words, but I don't want to write pro-bono.
I'm about 60-65K in to a 100K word novel, and I expect to be done with it by the time I've been writing for a year, which is July 21st. I've got a few short selections, and about 30K on another novel (#4 in the series I'm working on, recovered from an earlier writing attempt when I was younger).
>>7783184
Well shit. Since these are chapters, I'll give you guys a choice.
Sex scene, escaping enslavement, ambush scene, or vision of the gods?
>>7783194
Be careful how you share this stuff. I've gotten in trouble in the past putting sections of my writing online; it's made some stories I've written ineligible for publication.
>>7783202
Yea this, never share your mainline stuff, always throwaways
>>7783202
I have it on an author page of mine, which is completely controlled by me, as well as places like this where it vanishes after a period of time. Other than that, it's all private file sharing.
Though, now I'm curious... what would make it ineligible for publication?
After two failed attempts at writing a good novel manuscript (both ~70k words), I have learned that word count doesn't mean anything -- anyone can write tens of thousands of words in a few weeks / months, but not everyone can write an engrossing story. Story is everything, and it's best to write like you speak. Metaphors, similes, not to mention alliterations, etc., should be used sparingly.
>>7783215
That's exactly how I do it. I write it, then I read it out loud. If it doesn't read aloud easily, then I adjust it.
I have a day job. My writing is a side thing. So it's coming along at a leisurely pace. It's weird putting yourself in the shoes of a southern trans black woman in your spare time.
>>7783122
>me
>>7783215
Yea I've honestly spent more time deciding the right starting place for the story and defining characters rather than the prose, I know full well I can write functional prose. Its the content itself that matters
>>7783215
I speak with the tongue of men and angels, and every syllable drips with honeyed, sacharrine irony. That this too too sullied minimalism and verisimilitude to reality might fade; we could frolic midst powerful vagrant words, lost behind the tangled skein of meaning, with only you and i and no space between, the subject lost in passive objectivity, till human voices raise us from our slumber. If this is how i express myself in public, i daresay my prose, too, would benefit from it?.
>>7783247
i know right. Its way too easy to take "write how you speak" too seriously and lose so much potential for artistry with your prose.
>>7783194
ambush scene...
or the best excerpt would be the opening to your novel
also, ignore those other anons saying it'll invalidate it for publication; I bet they can't provide a single example
if you're really worried, just pastebin it or take a screenshot
>>7783285
Background is this: Main character is Elias, a freak of nature elf who, instead of being a shorter, slender, agile humanoid like the rest of his race, he is a giant, seven feet tall, four hundred pounds, muscled like Conan. He was banished from his home with the elves when he was the equivalent of the human age of ten, and has lived with the barbarians of the northlands for the next 65-70 years. He's roughly the equivalent of age 17, but enormous for his age and species. He has joined up with a mercenary band who is escorting a rich man and his carriage along a road to a mountain village. They make camp for the night, and Elias drifts off to sleep.
~ ~ ~
Smoke. Elias woke to the smell of smoke invading his nose. It wasn’t woodsmoke, either, it was different. He kicked back and pushed himself away from the fire, thinking that maybe he’d rolled in his sleep and thrown his blanket into the embers, but no, he wasn’t close enough for that. His eyes stung and he could barely see. He heard men coughing, cursing, and boots stomping around the campfire.
He started to rise to his feet, but strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders and bore him back to the ground. A bundle of smoldering herbs was thrust into his face, the smoke making his head spin, the embers inside burning his skin, the dried stalks scratching him. He tried to hold his breath and squeeze his eyes shut, but he hadn’t been prepared, and didn’t have the air. He swung his arms wildly about himself, striking his assailants in the dark.
He grabbed hold of the figure holding the herbs over his face, and hurled it away. He drew in a deep breath, but found that the rest of the air was no cleaner, and almost collapsed in a coughing fit. There was more activity now, yelling, cursing, and the sound of steel clashing. He cracked his eyes open just enough to see some figures through the burning and watering, though he couldn't make out anything but vague figures, and was unable to identify anyone.
The campfire was a glowing column of smoke, the coals freshly lit by flames that were starting to crackle on new material that had been thrown on it. In the haze, he couldn’t tell who was friend and who was foe, the smoke obscuring most everything in the wan moonlight.
He crouched to grab his sword, and was bowled over by the figure he had thrown away, his breath knocked out of him from the impact. As he gasped in another breath, the bundle of herbs was thrust back over his face, and he breathed deeply of the smoke coming from it. His vision seemed to explode into a million pieces, and the last thing he recognized before everything went too blurry to see was a hooded face seemingly made of cloth with two shiny disks where eyes should have been. He struggled to swing his arms at the figure, but his limbs refused to obey him. A numbness settled over his face, and consciousness was gone.
>>7783297
>Smoke. Elias woke to the smell of smoke invading his nose.
Don't. Don't do this when you're writing. It's a lazy way of making things seem abrupt and in motion.
>>7783349
Yaknow, I had considered that exactly when I was writing it, but there was no better way to introduce an ambush while he was sleeping than making him, yaknow, wake up to it. There is a section break just before it, like this;
--------
Elias and the rest of the men drew out their blankets as they had them, and lay about the fire, the cool ocean breeze held at bay by the low fire and the warm summer air off the mountains. The stars twinkled lightly, occasionally obscured by the passage of clouds coming off the sea. Elias wondered how the wind could be blowing out towards the water, as gentle as it might be, but the clouds were moving inland. He watched the slow, dark masses moving until sleep took him amidst the growing snores and breathing of rest of the men.
~ ~ ~
Smoke. Elias woke to the smell of smoke invading his nose. It wasn’t woodsmoke, either, it was different. (......)
--------
How would you do that transition?
>>7783372
Its actually ok seeing it like that
>>7783406
That;s kinda what I was thinking too. Excerpts are problematic, as they don't really tend to give a lot of context, and when reading long selections, context is -everything-. Things that don't work by themselves work wonderfully when placed/used in context.
I'm currently in university for computer science but I'm learning about english/writing on the side. Creative writing has been a passion of mine during random times in my life, so for the first time ever I've really been nurturing it and writing more. I've gotten positive feedback but only from family members/gf/professors, so I'm curious to see what strangers think of it. Are there any places to share/post pieces you guys would recommend? I'm pretty new to all of this
>>7783550
There's stuff like Wattpad and fictionpress
It's coming along. I sent my newest work to my professor. She said she'd give me feedback the next time we meet.
Note that the poem is written not to stand alone, but as lyrics in choir music.
"Insomnia"
Awake at nighttime
Slumber is afar
Rest a faint dream
Dreams were never further from life
Life never further from dreams
Scores of sheep pass me by
Under an impotent moon
Astray my flock wanders
Seeking shadowmade pastures
Sleep, hear my call
(Hear me, face me,
embrace me, engulf me)
Please, let me fall!
Let me descend into soothing realms of sweet, velvet night
I hope to become a writer so to fund a lifetime of alcohol abuse and give me a proper reason to be an absolute miserable bastard. So far it's going poorly. I don't even drink every weekend and I'm actually enjoying my own life.
It sucks.
>>7784607
Did you write the music, too? I've begun to dabble a little in composing. Nothing serious, and it probably never will be, but the idea of writing music fascinates me. I ordered a book from Amazon, I've used it off and on.
>>7785249
Yes. Go ahead and write, son. You have not only a right to compose music; in the case of talent, it is your duty to write music!
