Tfw practice writing fiction daily for a year and still shit

>Not majoring in creative writing

There's where you went wrong

It's called "Money"

It's expanded his life span past the average, meaning he's going to look much worse than anyone you, the peasant, have ever met in real life.

yeah, but i can't imagine that the issue is completely divorced from his past coke abuse or whatever. he must have done something to counter that damage, and it landed him in the uncanny valley.

strangely, i've never seen anyone else comment on how fucking freakish the guy looks nowadays.

>daily for a year
ten thousand hours nigga

who could it bee?

hey guize

the fuck do you do with a degree in creative writing

Just read for enjoyment and come back every so often to write when you can. I haven't written for a month after spending nearly every day writing 500 words or more. I'm not anxious about getting back to it, because I know I always will go back eventually. Just ride the wave, user, we'll all make something we're proud of eventually.

>tfw writing is the only thing you're good at
>tfw you're still shit at writing

Isn't this just the problem of inquiry?

usually I just ask my dad and he tells me.

lol, why didn't socrates' ugly ass think of that? anamnesis my foot!

maybe he didn't have a dad

>tfw wrote a novel 2 years ago
>tfw only wrote two short stories in 2 years

Not that guy, but you dual degree with something actually useful. I'm going CS alongside it, for instance. I get professorial critique on my writing and fun classes exploring literary niches without the guilt of putting all my money towards a creative writing degree.

And this is why you'll need a "real job" when your writing isn't up to par for full time employment.

And when you need a "real job" because your righting isn't up to par you can just put a bullet in your head because you have a worthless degree.

dude, his dad was the polis

too bad his dad killed him ;-(

>righting

I can see you're putting those classes to go use...

Extremely go use.

>you dual degree with something actually useful.
If you think it a useless degree, why get it in the first place? Just stay a hobbyist writer if you think it so degrading to have only a writing degree.

>500 words daily

Do you think that's a lot?

How the fuck can you learn without proper mentorship? How do you guys know what to learn and how to move on? I've heard that getting a creative writing degree is not necessary but at the same time being on my own makes me confused as to what I am supposed to do in order to get proficiency at writing.

I've been writing a lot but I can't see any meaningful progress, so for me being self taught seems like something that isn't really real, at least not in the literal sense.

...

why do you guys waste your time trying to get into a field that's based around a star system where two dozen people get all the money and everyone else is poor or not working at all

Seems like the most useless audiobook of all time. How can it possibly give you any advice without being about a specific field of study?

He's less creepy in motion.

Because you're not a real writer unless you're published.

Don't you want to be a real writer?

no i have no interest in being a writer

I would bet it's more than the vast majority of would-be writers do. I prefer to set the bar pretty low and do at least that no matter what than aiming for the 2-5k range and always going at it on-off. Small word counts add up. I set the goal of writing at least 800 words a day October 1st of last year and since then wrote a 240k words novel, another 120k one and a few short stories. There is still a lot of revision to do, but that's still better than I did most other years.

>you're not a real writer unless you're published
It depends. Simply getting published doesn't seem especially hard with all the small and borderline vanity publishers. If you're serious about writing and working at it daily, I think you can still call yourself a writer, even though you're not a professional one.

Because we want to do something good user. Why do sculptors sculpt or painters paint.

All good writing is the product of extensive rewriting. There are some amazing examples of this in On Writing Well - he shows you how the book you're reading started off as crappy writing and became good through several rounds of rewriting. A writing group can help SO MUCH. I like the Online Writing Workshop - it's a mixed bag but you usually can get some excellent help there and it's free and online

>Why do sculptors sculpt

that reminds me i really need to install zbrush on my laptop

>All good writing is the product of extensive rewriting
Apart from a few freaks here and there, that's really the truth. It's too bad that it's a lot more fun to write than to revise though (I just started rewriting in the last year and I thought I was doing a lot better before I started to paying close attention to what I actually had put on the page, lol).

Read lots of literature! Learn to notice how authors achieve their effects. Is a book scary? How is it made scary? How is mood achieved? How is characterisation achieved? You have to learn to notice. Throw away your Warhammer books and read real literature and over time you will learn

-know the basics of your genre (classical short story structure, etc)

-analyzing what you read (is the prose any good? Why? Why not?)

-copying what works and avoiding what doesn't

What you're going for is the ability to recognize whether your work is shit or not. If you can do that and point out the errors, you can always copy an esteemed writer's solution to the problem.

When I recognized that my images were weak and that I went into purple prose territory, I singled out a descriptive part in my work, and opened A farewell to arms. At first I ditched half of the adjectives, and rewrote my paragraph that way. After that I copied Hemingway's sentence structure. Then I tried to keep as many adjectives as possible while keeping that sentence structure intact. I kept going until I had a dozen pages full of a single paragraph, rewritten over and over. I compared them and looked for the one that fit best into my work. This is what worked for me.

Jesus, how long does it take you to finish a single page?

It took like 5 or 6 hours of writing until I "settled on a style" by doing what I described, so about a day with breaks and other activities. It went down from there as I got used to utilizing what I've learned. Now it's about 15 minutes if I already know what I'm going to write, not counting editing.

I used this method to find the right tools to use, I don't need it anymore. I'll get back to it when I try something that's new and unusual for me.

Have people read your work, people you trust to give you honest, constructive feedback. The less feedback you get about what needs changing, the better you're doing.

How can you tell the difference between someone who just doesn't understand and someone who actually has real concerns?

If those teaching you creative writing we're any good they'd be publishing great fictional books. It's like retards who waste money on acting lessons, if the acting teachers were good they'd be actors.

>How can you tell the difference between someone who just doesn't understand and someone who actually has real concerns?
Get it read by a few people. If no one understand, they're likely not the problem. What your intent was when you wrote doesn't matter, what matter is if it works or not.

>If football coaches were good, they'd be playing football

This is how retarded you sound

Football revolves around the freak of the freak athletes who have gone through physical meat grinder for a decade. It's different

learning is an unconscious process

And (good) writing revolves around the freak of the freak storytellers who have gone through the mental meat grinder for a decade. It's the same.

Even though it's less visible, good writers rely as much on genetic lottery than good footballers. It might not be outwardly visible, but I really think it's true. It's possible to have all the technical knowledge in the world without being able to write anything worth a damn.

Look for online courses. Listen to writing podcasts. Learn from writing blogs that mentor other writers (MonkeyCollective, Making Writers Become Authors, etc...). Make sure you are letting other critique your writing and go from there. Mentorship is easy in the age of the internet. It is everywhere and sometimes even free.

Also read. Understand how you favorite authors write engaging stories.

No. Because you can write until you die. Freddie Roach would be boxing if he was still in his prime . In all coaches is an ex player who was not good enough to be a superstar.

Is it better than it was a year ago?

If it's the exact same shit, are you continuing to write the exact same shit over and over again? Or are you trying new things, challenging yourself, even if you fail still sticking it through and writing it to the end?

If no, it's no real surprise why you suck.

user, the book must wish to be created itself before you can write it. It will call out to you if it has chosen you as its maker.

>Because you can write until you die.

No, it's like football, where you can play until your body gives out, but in writing, you can write until your mind gives out.

You've never heard of dementia?

>In all coaches is an ex player who was not good enough to be a superstar.

So we're agreed that good teaching and good playing are two completely different things?

How do you know if your work is better than it was a year ago?

>How do you know if your work is better than it was a year ago?
You should know it from looking at it. Often you will write something that you think is genius, then you go back to it and it looks clunky as hell. That means you are technically better or more knowledgeable now than you were then. That and outside feedback/reactions/acceptance rates I guess.

Terrible advice. This is how people are still falling for the "MasterClass" scam. Let me guess, you've already taken a MasterClass?

So you have 8 years in sports and 60 years in writing. If you have a writing teacher that has been unable to become an actual author and was forced to teach students how to become authors then you are simply learning from someone too dumb to make it. The only possible teacher is someone who has zero actual soul which is incapable of original ideas or creativity like an Editor so they are perfect on technical aspects. In that case you do not need a creative writing instructor.

>You should know it from looking at it

>If you have a football coach that has been unable to become an actual superstar abd was forced to coach players how to become superstars then you are simply learning from someone too dumb to make it.

Do you not understand how retarded the things you type are?

You keep saying "superstar." Do you think that getting published is like being a superstar? A better analogy would be Nobel Prize winner, in which case you're an idiot if you think you can only learn writing from Nobel Prize winners.

You believe that creativity can be taught. What you teach is technical aspects and if you are not capable to become something after that then not one failed teacher can write a book for you. Having a soul is not something you learn like painting a classic is not something you teach. Can you teach to be like Beethoven or Picasso? No. They understand the working and they are set to create work. You cannot teach someone anything beyond technical aspects of the writing structure.

You take things too literally. A success is what you learn from. Those who teach are not successes as they would be producing work of value, not attempting to create students of value as they are not ones themselves. They are. Simply keep an infrastructure going. Brad Pitt is not an acting teacher because he can act. The same with Picasso.

You can have rare exceptions of fantastic writing successes such as Nobel winners but they write and teach a a part time because they have the ability to produce value.

>You believe that creativity can be taught.

I never said that. Stick to the original argument or stop talking. What you said in was:

>If those teaching you creative writing we're any good they'd be publishing great fictional books.

I'm simply pointing out how retarded that is.

>No writing teacher is capable of writing
What the fuck?

Almost every institutional creative writing teacher is published. I'd like you to try and find one that is not.

Also, Brad Pitt OFTEN gives lectures on acting and takes part in acting seminars? Does this mean he is not a good actor because he "degrades" himself by teaching?

Well, it's as if you asked "how do I know I'm drawing or painting better than a year ago". Writing is more abstract and can be harder to judge, but you should still be able to notice improvements. Even if you're very critical about your work, you should find that what you did a year ago sucks more than now.

I am pointing out the truth. You deny it. If I was capable of winning a Nobel prize for writing I would not he teaching it as a professor... And history would prove to me that great successes create and produce work, not teach others who will very likely will never be a success. This comes to the reality that great writing cannot be taught. You can teach the structure of writing. But this only proves that creative writing is useless. As you cannot teach a soul as you cannot teach Picasso to create a Picasso.

...

>soul

Published and forgotten, as they all are. Yes, Mr. Pitt. May lecture but he will never have his life consumbed by a life of mediocrity and forgetfulness of creation that professor's commit life to.

Do you believe Picasso would have been capable of becoming a great artist if he had not first gone to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

Or are you one of those queers who thinks "IT WAS FATE"

Picasso did not learn his creativity and artistic interest by a homosexual man with a brush and tupe. He may have learned the technicality of the act of painting but if you would have given him a painting arrangement as a child he would have painted work beyond many life time paint academic s . This is true.

>Picasso did not learn his creativity and artistic interest by a homosexual man with a brush and tupe.

And you know this... how?

Fate? Likely not. But he had an affinity for painting from birth. He did not get a teacher who has made many Picasso. There is only one Picasso. I am telling you this as a fact because I think you are of underwhelming intelligence likely sparked by a bout of a mother drinking too much wine

Does writing on Reddit help writing skills? I have been writing like short essays basically about politics everydaybut I'm worried that the experience might not be valid? Also does non fiction writing make you better at all at fiction writing?

This is the last 12 days of reddit posts added up, excluding any one liner responses, only including responses which were a paragraph or more.

Anyone else wanna post wordcounts?

>Also does non fiction writing make you better at all at fiction writing?

This is like asking if painting landscapes makes you a better painter of portraits

Meh well.. at least it must help get passed the initial "writers bock." A lot of people sit down and have a hard time writing even a short essay so there is some merit in being able to just vomit through your fingers onto the page.

I have heard Stephen King would sometimes practice by typing other people's work. He has hundreds of unpublished stories, some which he has no recollection of writing. Also, isn't L. Ron Hubbard famous for shitting out thousands of manuscripts just for the hell of it? There is something to say for coming up with vast quantity because then you may stumble on quality!

For example the "library of babel" is an algorithm which has output every combination of letters 3200 characters long. So, in a way, when we are writing we are discovering rather than creating. You can describe creation as subtractive synthesis.

Also, do you guys pay attention to your average posts on Veeky Forums and reddit? Like do you make a habit out of typing posts which are very eloquent? I noticed that much of my posts are very verbose.

Also, political books seem to be popular now for obvious reasons. How could one market and promote such a book without being an e-celeb. Is ghost writing a better option?

If want to be on the level of King or Hubbard, that's your own damage.

I, for one, don't wish to be a hack,

Well wouldn't it be better to write a few hacky books, get paid, and then write your masterpiece? Rather than spending two years coming up with nothing and *possibly* writing a masterpiece some day?

Isn't there something to be said for getting words on the page NOW?

And King wrote "The Dark Tower" series. The first book objectively being a masterpiece, and the rest of his shitty books made him almost a billionaire. So don't you think that his technique may have something of value in it?

Like honestly the best way to get money as an author is to write a book that hollywood buys, and isn't just writing massive quantities the best way to increase the probability of selling a script? I bet there is even an algorithm that someone could come up with which could predict a plot and characters which is most likely to be noticed by a hollywood producer?

>Hacks
>Writing masterpieces

Oh ho ho ho he he he

>Dark Tower
>Masterpiece

If the writing is hard you're doing something right

I think king captured the Clint Eastwood archetype perfectly and set him in a rewarding but mysterious fantastic world. Even if it was a bit random at times and King admitted he made it up as he went along, but the first book is objectively good.
>youtube.com/watch?v=RjFuN00yGzI

> The door ripped off its hinges and fell straight in, making a flat handclap. Dust puffed up from the
floor. Men, women, and children charged him. Spittle and stove- wood flew. He shot his guns empty
and they fell like ninepins. He retreated, shoving over a flour barrel, rolling it at them, into the
barbershop, throwing a pan of boiling water that contained two nicked straight-razors. They came on,
screaming with frantic incoherency. From somewhere, Sylvia Pittston exhorted them, her voice rising
and falling on blind inflections. He pushed shells into hot chambers, smelling the smells of shave and
tonsure, smelling his own flesh as the calluses at the tips of his fingers singed.

> The gunslinger felt it touch him — the spirit of the oracle, the succubus. His loins were suddenly
filled with rose light, a light that was soft yet hard. He felt his head twisting, his tongue thickening and
becoming excruciatingly sensitive to even the spittle that coated it.
> “Don’t patronize me, Thing. I’m stronger than you. What do they call you, then? Star-slut? Whore
of the Winds?

> His legs carried him in a sudden leap through the entropy that held him, above the dangling boy,
into a skidding, plunging rush toward the light that offered, the Tower frozen on the retina of his
mind’s eye in a black frieze, suddenly silence, the silhouette gone, even the beat of his heart gone as
the tresde settied further, beginning its final slow dance to the depths, tearing loose, his hand finding
the rocky, lighted lip of damnation; and behind him, in the dreadful silence, the boy spoke from too
far beneath him. “Go then. There are other worlds than these.” It tore away from him, the whole
weight of it; and as he pulled himself up and through to the light and the breeze and the reality of a
new karma (we all shine on), he twisted his head back, for a moment in his agony striving to be
Janus- but there was nothing, only plummeting silence, for the boy made no sound.

I think its pretty good desu. What do you consider a masterpiece?

>What do you consider a masterpiece?

Not genre shlock, that's for sure

Idk what shlock means but ok. I mean that's cool and all if you want to be pretentious...

Better pretentious than a hack

Cant a hack type something good once in a while or would that violate the laws of physics?

Whats not hacky to you? "Lolita" or something?

t. offended failure with a writing degree

fpbp

Let's start at the bounding line. Right on the "Not-Hack" side of the line, you have Ulysses.

I'm sure you can work your way up for there on what non-hack authors can create.

But it doesn't even answer OP's question.