Thread 24798397

So how is that book coming along, anon?

>>24798397 (OP)
I have not written a single word. I just have a few notes here and there, and often think about it, but never write anything.

I'm gonna go work on editing it right now.

It's done. Didn't have success pitching it anywhere. Happy I finished it.

It's shitty. I barely have inspiration to write a comment, let alone a book.

Great. I've been working on it on and off for 11 years. I've realized recently that stories about couples reconnecting in different bodies across generations is already pretty played out, as are magical girls and mysterious small towns, but I think the surrealist, dissociative tone I've been honing is pretty unique, and I haven't found any other stories that deal with two headed girls, especially two headed girls who are actually fragments of one single consciousness which the protagonist tries and maybe succeeds in reuniting in a quadrinity with their two single headed sisters. By the time I finish it in 2027 I'm confident I'll be able to get at least three or four people to actually read it and tell me I did a nice job.

I wrote a long commentary on the Organon that’s hundreds of pages long but it’s just for me, sorry.

>>24798425
You must have been pissed when Your Name stole your shit

>>24798442
Not particularly. Although it seems like a good omen that Your Name's creator was struck down with pedophilia and imprisoned.

>>24798397 (OP)
66K words written so far. So far have only gone through each chapter twice (draft zero and then a tidy-up/edit before moving one)

>>24798425
>I've been working on it on and off for 11 years.

>>24798483
If I'd released it 5 years ago it would have basically been low romantasy slop. It takes time to develop genuine literature.

>>24798397 (OP)
I've had a pretty good evening of writing, thank you for asking

>>24798397 (OP)
Kinda bad.
Keeps devolving into smut or body horror.

>>24798517
>It takes time to develop genuine literature.
But you're not doing that.

>>24798397 (OP)
Ya'll book writers are posting in LWC or saving your money shot for the camera?

>>24799015
I write short stories for comps and share some of those here but I've only shared parts of my novel with IRL writing friends.

I wrote 300,000 words years ago but the concept was unpublishable generic YA epic Dune-ripoff slop.

Now I want to write about half-inch tall people living near highway cloverleaf with several kingdoms, I have a lot developed about how they live and their culture and such. They're terrified of humans discovering them and capturing them to study them in labs, so when a human child discovers the edge of one of their kingdoms farther away, they consider killing him. Well, the kingdom that the child might does, and it is already distrustful of the others, so when they don't want to kill a child they accuse them of not honoring a pact, a huge war breaks out, and their fear of being destroyed my humans leads to them destroying each other, in le epic ironic moment.

>>24799084
Wow sounds great anon consider suicide

>>24799084
Breaking bad did it better

>>24798397 (OP)
61k words in out of 200k .

So far I love it, but I'm such a lazy writer. In fact I'm supposed to be sitting right now but I'm too busy procrastinating on 4chan.

>>24799093
huh? how so?

>>24799090
why? is it that bad?

>>24799124
I was just teasing you buddy. Gotta toughen you up a bit so you can be a real big writer.

>>24799124
When they steal the train and they get caught by a little kid. This tiny hidden world being discovered by a kid. (Walter white and his drug empire) and the big war that goes into the decision to whether or not kill the kid. (Jesse hates Todd for killing the kid) this “war” destroys everything.

>>24799124
Watch the episode dead freight with your idea in mind.

>>24798397 (OP)
60k novella and 30k novel in the works, 2nd and 3rd draft respectively.
had a story published in a mag recently.
all this despite a brutal day job that chews up way too much time and life force.
I’d say it’s coming along well.

>>24799241
*novel, novella.
potatoes, etcetera

>>24798433
For years I thought Organon was just the name of a steroid manufacturer.

>>24799157
>>24799161
oh shit you're right.
yeah I did see that episode and makes sense.

>>24799128
alright alright

>>24798397 (OP)
Does a novella collection count as a book?
If so, then well. Accumulated page count approx, 150, aiming for a bit over 200 pages.
And i started this year with no motivation

Sold zero copies

>>24798397 (OP)
It's not, I'm worthless

>>24798397 (OP)
I've got to present my bachelor's thesis this month so I'm not writing it. I'm only working on my thesis and a short monster girl fapfic for AO3

>>24798397 (OP)
Badly, why do you ask

>>24798397 (OP)
I'm writing a more accessible fantasy retelling of the Divine Comedy (as a travel through a cursed "Dark Wood"), that tries to capture its main moral and philosophical insights in a more modern frame.

But then I realized that the story needs to be updated for modern times, to reflect what has happened in modern thought. So midway through, as the Pilgrim is finally starting to understand the true nature of sin, he is seduced into abandoning his Virgil by two figures that represent the twin lures of skepticism/intellectualism (based on Ivan Karamazov and Hamlet) and voluntarism (drawing on Milton's Satan of course). And so now I cannot just stick to a set model but have to figure out how the Pilgrim should get "lost in Hell" and how he might be able to find his way out.

I figured his crisis of faith should come at the "Gates of Dis" where Dante encounters the threat of Medusa, since this is symbolic of the need to "have faith (trust in what is higher in us) that we might understand" (Augustine/Anselm).

The problem is that this is requiring me to rework in a background where the Pilgrim has already been exposed to the ideas of mechanism and natura pura (and empiricism and nominalism) so that he can have something like modern doubts. I do not want these doubts to simply be overcome though, I want them to be sublated into a stronger understanding that transcends the immanent frame (I'm hoping that Sophiology, Mariology, and Solovyov's philosophy of history can help out here). And while I want to capture the insights of the Purgatorio and Paradiso (life as the proper ordering of loves) I want to end the story with the Pilgrim rejoining his Virgil to ascend towards purgation (expressed as the transfiguration of suffering).

But there is also a story within a story to help deliver the ideas where the Pilgrim reads a famous book based on Boethius' Consolation (only now Boethius is a sorcerer vizier). But I now think this needs to have a modern spin where the Pilgrim is given a different copy of the famous book with an alternate ending where Boethius takes a Nietzschean turn by conceiving of the divine as a sort of Calvinist inscrutable will.

Trying to finish my first short story that's a mix between Robert Walser's feuilletons and a love story I just wait for it to grow by the week,

I shit myself three times today

>>24798397 (OP)
I've got a lot of plot lines ideas and characters I think are pretty great that I'm excited about, I've got a general concept, but it's hard to really nail down that central, unifying idea that gives it all a sense of harmony and inevitability. I can feel myself circling around it but I can't as of yet pin it down. I think the writing will be decently after that, but idk when/if that ironed out premise will come to me.

>>24798397 (OP)

Slow, but I’m getting there. I’m at about 90k and I think I’ll land at around 110k.

>>24800459
i think this is the first time i've seen someone other than me mention Walser on /lit/. good luck with the love story.

>>24798418
what was your pitch and how was the process like of pitching?

>>24798397 (OP)
how am I supposed to write a book when I'm working 12h per day nigga, im not Kafka nor Bukowski

>>24800740
Dedicste 5 minutes a day to writing, and by retirement you’ll have written a few pages you can turn into a novel.

>>24800740
Kafka worked in an office most of his (short) life I think. Lived with his parents. But then he did not write that much

>>24800740
> Using Kafka's name in the same sentence as a sleazy, degenerate, alcoholic, dirty old man like Bukowski
MAY A PLAGUE BE UPON THEE AND THY GOAT FOR THE NEXT THREE GENERATIONS.

I keep trying to write. But I have no ideas and I'm so stupid and useless and I hate myself and want to die.

I just stare at a blank page.

>>24801827
Write about how useless, stupid, and gay you are

>>24801827
>>24801837
also write about all the creepy stuff you do

>>24801827
Just think about how fucked up you are and how you're fucked up and later it in some kind of fantasy or something. 2EZ

>>24801837
>>24801849
>>24801866
None of that makes a story.

>>24801912
Yeah it does just plug in metaphors retard.

>>24798397 (OP)
Can't find a single beta reader

>>24798397 (OP)
I have 200 pages of notes for it but I can't continue writing it. It's just not right. The story is a metaphor for a very particular critique of modern society today but I'm unable to convey that metaphor. The plot is very loose and focuses more on dialogue scenes, romance drama, finding meaning in minutiae, etc to the point where I'm not even sure people will understand what the point of the story is. It's hard to figure out what to show and what to tell when you're writing. I'm bad at melodrama and bombastic plots. I want to make a modern Great Gatsby but I just end up writing stuff more akin to realism like Flaubert

>>24798397 (OP)
i just
deleted about
60 pages
but theres still
about 150
left
& imma write
a whole bunch
moar
2

>release book
>no one buys it
What now

>>24801827
If you could write, what genre would you want to write?
>>24802036
How long is it?

>>24798397 (OP)
I kept saying I'd do it during Nanowrimo for 16 years but never did, and now even that is gone.

>>24802155
75k words

>>24802167
what do beta readers do? if its not too crazy ill give it a shot

>>24798397 (OP)
I actually finished one but it is a porn comic...

>>24802180
You can only be a beta reader if you're doing it for a female while she fucks alpha Chad

>>24802091
you have to market it. it is impossible to sell a book without marketing

>>24802187
>pay for ads
>no one buys it
now what?

>>24802193
i said marketing, not advertising. marketing is finding, developing, fostering a market. in other words, building an audience. you can't sell a book. there are maybe 1 or 2 english speakers on earth willing to read a random self-published book with no readers but millions of books released every year and dozens of millions already released. you'd have a better chance winning the lottery than selling a book.

>>24802197
How do you get started with marketing then?

>>24802204
dude im not even being paid to market my own damn book, now i gotta do it for free for you too?
-go read other peoples stuff and comment on it (honest actual comments and not just to shill your own shit)
-try to build a network with other authors by soing editing or criticism or beta reads
-enter into writing contests and shit like that
-start a youtube channel, or a tik tok or some shit and build an audience, then, (again not by shilling), advertise your book to that audience.
There's probably a million other ideas I haven't thought of here but this is basic shit anyone can do. It's all lame and gay, i know, but it is the only way to sell books. Selling books is impossible without either being really fucking lucky, or putting in twice as much time being a filthy salesman as you do the actual writing. Or maybe more. Probably like five times as much time.

>>24798397 (OP)
Uhhhhhhhh...*gets distracted by literally anything*

>>24802227
This is how to become someone's thrall but not actually build your own audience.
Do you know how many orbiters there are who do exactly what you describe and have just as much reach as they would by self publishing and not telling anyone?
It's most people trying what you think works.

>>24802378
How do you propose someone build an audience?

>>24802394
Shill your book to the right people or be famous. It's that simple.

>>24802378
using method A, most people fail.
using method B, all people fail
there is no method C.
if you want to succeed, which option do you take?

Writing a book is really fucking hard. And writing a book that will stand the test of time is night impossible.

>>24803870
>night impossible.
Well, it certainly is for you.

>>24803960
What books today are going to be remembered in the future? You think a /lit/ user is gonna be the one to write a perennial classic?

>>24803988
>What books today are going to be remembered in the future?
Impossible to say, it's more a function of luck and persistence and making connections than it is quality, unfortunately.
>You think a /lit/ user is gonna be the one to write a perennial classic?
I think it's certainly possible, just not for you.

>>24804003
You do it then Mr. Genius

>>24802155
>If you could write, what genre would you want to write?
Pulp scifi and/or fantasy.

>>24804013
When you say you don't have any ideas, do you mean you literally have no ideas whatsoever, or no good ideas, or struggling to put vague ideas into words?

>>24804010
I'd like to. You won't catch me here throwing my hat up in the air, stomping my feet, crying about how it's impossible and defeating myself before I ever earnestly tried when there's a whole wide world out there that will do plenty to beat me down. Again, genius doesn't have much to do with it.

>>24803988
Writing a "classic" is a fool's errand. The only shit considered classics these days is modernist garbage.

>>24804032
I have no ideas. All the books and articles I read about writing and story structure say something like 'step one: write a one sentence summary off your story'. I cannot even do this. I have nothing.

My gf talks like she's 10 years away from being rich from her books every day but she's finished maybe 1 and it wasn't good. She is a good writer but I have a really hard time seeing her selling unless she taps into romance YA shit

>>24800457
based expanding upon earlier ideas, would read

>reread a book i wrote long ago
>it's so embarrassing
>can't believe i wrote this nonsense
>filled with rape, torture, sex, incest, and anime fantasy shit all over
what the hell was wrong with me??

>>24804151
>'step one: write a one sentence summary off your story'.
That's horrible advice, don't do that. Write characters, let them tell their stories.

>>24804367
Do people actually think this mystical bullshit is useful advice?

>>24804151
Hmm. That's a tough one. When you read fantasy or sci-fi books, do you ever think "Ah! They should have done this instead!" about the characters or the story itself? A lot of my ideas started out as something like that: a scene I wish had happened or a choice I wish a character had made or some thing I personally felt was missing in the books I was reading. It doesn't even have to be a good idea. As long as there's anything at all, you can probably coax it into being a good idea.

>>24804434
>When you read fantasy or sci-fi books, do you ever think "Ah! They should have done this instead!" about the characters or the story itself?

No, I don't think I've ever thought that. The story is the story.

>>24804468
You might consider trying to do something like that.
Alternatively, you have a character already: a man with zero imagination. Build something around that character. A world where magicians have to write their spells for them to work, but the main character can't write to save his life.

>>24804477
>Build something around that character.

How?

Something like
>A world where magicians have to write their spells for them to work, but the main character can't write to save his life.

is not a story idea. I can find random writing prompt generators to give me a million ideas like that, but it doesn't help me write a story.

>>24804487
>You just pet the dog.
>But how?

>>24799241
I write a chapter and then change my mind.

>>24804487
So you can come up with ideas, you just don't know how to turn them into a story? A story is just a series of ideas, connected by the information necessary to give context to those ideas. Take one idea. Then take another one. Then ask yourself how the character could get from Idea 1 to Idea 2. Jack has magic beans. Jack kills a giant. How does he go from A to B? Frodo is in the Shire. Frodo is at Mt. Doom. How did he get there?

7000 books are added to amazon every single day.

Surely I will outperform the 99.9999999% and earn minimum wage from my writings

>>24804499
>>24804494
I am a retard. I need an algorithm. Step by step instructions. Not 'draw the rest of the fucking owl'.

I do not consider 'vague premise' to be a story idea. I cannot work from that.

>>24804518
>I need an algorithm. Step by step instructions
Then you're probably not a writer. That's okay, it's better to realize it sooner rather than later.

>>24804518
Okay. Let's assume you pick one of those millions or prompts you have access to.
One of the typical ways in fantasy for a story to start is you have an opening scene that introduces the main character, and also hints at the main conflict.
Place the character somewhere familiar and normal for him, and have something abnormal happen. Daily life is interrupted by not-daily life. Your prompt idea should give you at least some clue as to what the characters daily life is like, and also what the bad guy is trying to achieve as his end goal. Force the bad guy's plan to interrupt your characters life in some way. Then have your character either react to this interruption, or continue pursuing his own goal, but with this interruption in the back of his mind. If you chose the second option, you'll need another, bigger interruption to his life. Something that calls him to act and react to the bad guy's plans, while also keeping in mind his own goals. His reaction will be the Journey. He must go somewhere to do something. Chart the easiest path for him to do this. That is now his plan. Now, pretend you are a vengeful or at least mischevious god and put incidental roadblocks in your characters way. Force him to take different paths, enlist the help of strangers, make friends, maybe make enemies (smaller, more local than the big bad guy, with their own motivations). Show very little mercy to your character by making these roadblocks difficult to overcome. Then, take his side and figure out how a nice and benevolent god would interfere sometimes to help him along. Give him ideas for how to overcome the obstacle. Send a myserious ally to his aid. Give him a sudden skill or talent. Out a powerful and secret treasure in his path. Then, decide how Bad Guy is going to stop MC from doing what he wants, and how MC is going to kill or beat Bad Guy.

>>24804540
>you're not a dog petter
Just tell me how to pet dogs. At what angle do I position my palm?

>>24804618
Jesus Christ.

>>24798418
More or less this. One at 30k, two at 60k, one at 80k. All of interest to me personally, and unsurprisingly unpublishable.

>>24798397 (OP)
~120,000 words. Got about ~15,000 left to go, but I'm stuck on the ending. I haven't touched it since August. I'm also back in school, so it's been difficult to find time for it. I'm hoping to get back it in December when I'm out of school. Hopefully I can come up with how to end this thing by then.

>>24805114
The Old Man and The Sea is 27.000 words. Why do you need so many words?

>>24804720
Kek and kino too

>>24806040
Because I'm not Hemingway.

i'm tired of asking people to read it but i'm still glad I was able to write it