So, how's the novel you're writing coming along?

So, how's the novel you're writing coming along?

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Just fine

I decided to read In Search of the Lost time first, since my novel deals with a similar subject.

F*ck.

I havent tried writing a novel yet. Still working on prose and research.

S'ok there's a ton of editing to be done.

I've written over 550 pages. 565 to be exact. Some parts of it have not been touched in years and need a good deal of editing. Sometimes I will find a part of it that I didn't know I had written yet. I have written just over half of Ulysses or Atlas Shrugged, and I estimate I am about 5% complete of a story that no one will want to even read, but that I am trying to write for my own satisfaction. It's a completely thankless endeavour because the story is still increasing in size, meaning that I have realized I will need to skip over large portions to even finish the thing. Linking up my massive fragmented manuscript is going to be a herculean task given that some parts are complete wank that I need to delete and other parts are actually good.

Someday I will leave it behind when I die, and if I am lucky maybe they won't throw it out when they clean out my apartment.

Nice work. I'm currently at just over 8k words and struggling to keep the story going.

Why would you even do this?

yay

I've started writing again after two years and a half. I started in 2014 but then thought "I should read some more to learn how to write better" and just recently I realised I can do both. I've read some, I'm reading more. I take some time at night to write. Perhaps when I'm done writing I'll have read even more and successfully edit it

I just got back into writing myself after writing on and off. I was hoping I can ask some of you for some advice.

What do you do when you feel that everything you write is terrible? I read that most authors and directors always feel that way about their work and are never truly satisfied, but i always feel that I can write better than I am. I only show my work to three of my life long friends and my old English teacher and they tell me my work is good, but I've reached to the point where I feel they are lying to me. What do I do Veeky Forums?

How do I start writing? What's the easiest thing to write about? And, in what format? A short story?

>What's the easiest thing to write about?
If that's a question you have, I don't think you're really cut out to be writer, buckaroo.

I don't think I am, and I don't intend to. I came across this thread and figured it would be fun to mess around. Rarely on Veeky Forums, but I do read somewhat.

i think i never gonna finnish it because my lack of self preservation and self confidence. and i oscilate between the "im not good enough" meme, or maybe i am a cloistered genius that never gonna try to up the voice to nothing but i have. or maybe i am a teenager with a body of 28 and i have to mature etc etc (this mature part it´s really painful)

If you think they are lying to you, post a sample here or in a critique thread. I can assure you that nobody here will lie to you if your writing sucks.

A lot of people recommend starting with short stories. You can work on your prose while also getting the elements of storytelling down before moving onto bigger projects. Really, it doesn't matter though as long as you just keep reading and writing, as whatever you produce at the start will probably be not very good and you just need practice.

Autism.

No seriously, the reason I am writing this is because the "story" is already in existence from my childhood. I've been continuing it in my head ever since. Around age 17 I started writing it. I wrote a huge outline that contains the entire plot (which is mostly boring to anyone except me because I "lived" through it).

I've had this in my mind since age seven and I feel duty-bound to write out as much of it as I can. This story gives me such feels when I imagine it, it's very hard to explain.

Your own life, I think. Take the sad / moving events from your own life and dramatize them. Post your writing here and it will be shit upon and you will learn to write better. You will not be satisfied with your own writing for a long time though. I've written a complete novel that sucked ass and plenty of shorter things and I am still unhappy with my style. Making someone people actually want to read is important though; you can have beautiful prose but that's just polishing a turd if no one cares about your characters or story.

Stay strong user. Remember it's quality that counts not word count. I'd much rather read a 5k word short story that actually has an effect on me than some 900 page tome that bores me to death. Word count only matters to me because I have a set goal I have to accomplish.

It goes slowly. This is my fifth novel and I'm still in the early stages, but I'm enjoying it a lot - I write every day, mostly as a means of projecting my own personal problems and thoughts onto fantastic genre settings. That makes them a little easier to work out. It does mean my work tends to get derailed by fetish shit sometimes (right now we're on older women and breast milk, wehey!), but I write for myself, not for anyone else.

Name of books?

Could go better. It feels like I'm only getting slower and slower the more I write. I used to be able to do a draft of 50-60k words in a month or so, and now with the newest story, I've managed barely half of that.

I'm also a bit troubled with the protagonist. I wanted to write a main character who is basically already maxed out from the start and rather than "can they find the strength overcome this problem?", the main draw would be in vividly detailing the methods, like, "this is how the problem is solved and it's not that hard when you think about it more".

But I'm worried all the audience sees is "nothing challenges the MC, they're dead as a character, there's no tension, this is boring, blah, blah".

I thought I'd offset this by not giving the MC that much focus, but instead developing the other cast members and their stories, but will the readers be too fixated on the MC to even care about them?

Maybe I shouldn't worry so much about what somebody will think. It's not like this is going to become a bestseller either way.

It's not...
Fucking life events getting in the way. Why did I decide to get married?

Basically, the easiest thing to write about is something you know about and are interested in.

Trying to write about something on which you are ill informed is a stupidly common mistake amongst those who have no conception of the work that goes into researching a good piece of dead tree.

You keep writing. Don't worry about editing until you've finish the ENTIRE first draft.

None published. Like I say, I write for myself.

Not good. It's never good.

Infinite Jest happened and English it's not muh 1s language and I'm getting pleasantly struggle. But I worked out on when I took an IJ-break.

Still not motivated enough to start but I have a lot of story in my head.

Also, I have enough content for three books and the first part which is developed the farthest could fit into three books already so if that's the case with all three books, the whole story would be equivalent to nine books of 300 pages each, so a roughly 2,700 page book or three 900 page books.

That's just way too overwhelming for me at the time.

About 75k words into my second novel, which is maybe 50% done. Going back to finish the first 14 chapters.

Would be a bit easier if I didn't feel like I am dying most of the time.

Finished it. ~100,000 words after a two year endeavor. Now I don't know how the hell to get the thing published.

Working on a novel in this day and age is retarded. Whatever your reasons is, it doesn't matter. Your novel will have no impact, and even if it does, it will be localized or minimal, and soon forgotten. And to be honest, if you post about it on Veeky Forums it's even more obvious that you will achieve nothing. Be honest, the media game has changed, the way ideas and information is moved about has changed.

Yaaaawn

So what kind of story is it?

Find an agent. There's actually a book that gets put out annually that lists them. Can't think of the name but it should be an easy enough Google job. It'll list them by various criteria and location. Good luck. You will get rejected by 99% of them at the very least.

...

writersandartists.co.uk/

I'm thinking of an actual book that is essentially a register. If you trust that site though, by all means.

coulda swore that was the site with it. i'll search around some more

pw.org/literary_agents?perpage=*

This isn't what I was talking about but pw is respected as well generally speaking.

Literally just write. Form will come later. Put words down

Idiot. Pour your every kubit blood on the paper, or don't ever write. Hail crowley!

Guide to Literary Agents 2016
Herp Derp

thanks homie

Finished a novel and novella, both of which are in dire need of professional editing but are available online. Incredibly basic and cliche sci-fi that nobody reads, but damn if it wasn't enjoyable to write.

How are they available? Did you self-publish?

Editing my second novel. First one is online and the second one is out September. Then subsequent volumes every 4 months through 2018

I just used the Amazon e-book publisher thing, plus another site that I don't remember which links with Amazon and can offer full-print versions. Fairly simple to use.

I don't know if that counts as self-publishing.

Not too bad, too slow for the pace I should be writing though. I think by the time it's done it will be novella sized (ie 100 pages or so). I want to use this novella as a stepping stone into the novel I really want to do.

There are no more reliable gate keepers of literature. I hope you all are writing just to write.

I could type the whole thing out but it's easier to upload this.

Good luck to you if you make it all the way through it, it's very long and convoluted and boring. Keep in mind this is something I created to entertain myself and each of the story events has some real world context so my memories of it are a lot more vivid than some autistic GoT summary in greentext image form.

I also have this illustrated version with my middle-school-tier art, mostly so that I could show what each character looks like.

I've written a bit of the "prequel" which takes place before the story in my head started, and has Peter and Emily living in a valley isolated from the world until the lice attack. The problem was I loaded it up with unnecessary subplots and made it retarded so I need to work on that.

There's some stuff from the Woebarren war I've written as well but I have to retcon so much stuff I feel like I might as well just skip over most of it.

Same with the Macalavay section.

Once they get to Sarengarth there is some actual plot but honestly the whole story just lacks depth for the most part. Scrapping it would be stupid because then I wouldn't write at all, I have nothing else I really want to write about save for a shorter novel I work on on the side.

My plan is to leave it all behind when I die like Henry Darger. I have a small photo box full of hundreds of autistic drawings I made for this world. Maybe my heirs or friends will discover it once I am gone.

If that's the case no one will publish them now in the traditional way. They will see it as self-publishing.

>I hope you all are writing just to write.

I see no other reason to. There are too many books out there anyway.

Just finished my novella thing. Time to edit.

Good job, friend. Keep it up and good luck.

Thanks dude. I'm glad I finished it, its one I've been wanting done for a while now.

What's it about?

Some immortals have been trapped in a tower for some hundred years. Many have already gone stir-crazy. One guy keeps looking for a way to kill himself, and fails, but ends up contacting a phantom that makes him a sweet deal. From there things get a little carried away.

It's the first in my sci-fi series, chronologically. I've already written out a novel that I plan to heavily revise, and perhaps split in two. I wrote this one as part of the cool-down from the novel.

Halfway through the novella. Not sure when to start the other three novels.

It's weird that I see you across various boards over the years. I remember you got a lot of attention in a thread on r9k last year. I think that gave you a hard on and made you more into your story, at least it made you share it more often

dfaiojsdf4

I'm doing okay. I fixed a plot hole by making my heroine get into an church lock-in. I'll need to give her character by have her be restless in a church.

I've decided to start my short story. Depending on how it goes it may turn into a novella. Just outlining the characters tonight since it's very driven on the two main characters and their love affair. Having to do a ton of basic research as well. Trying to pick a point of view though is proving somewhat difficult. I feel like third person would make the story, which is meant to appear very intimate, too distant while first person would make the emotional scenes ambiguous and the general descriptions of events more difficult as I'm not as polished with my first person work.

So how's the self-publishing going lmao

Was just looking it over. 3 pages in. Decent, but you know...

I think journaling is a good start. Everyone is interested in themselves.

Haha sucker. You fell for the meme hard.

But they will lie to you if your writing is good

I set out to write a near-future scifi story about the emergence of AI which interposes themes of Gnosticism, angelology, predestination, capitalism, diversity (yes lol), and idealism. It's turning out really good so far, the events and the dialogue connect with those themes in a lucid way.

I know some people so I feel confident about being able to get it published and then, more importantly, widely read.

i love that video kek

A-am I still a writer or at least Veeky Forumsrictian if I have several thousand words of plotting across 5 distinct works but recently decided to implement it as a comic/manga rather than a book

Unenviable, but good luck!

I've got the first two chapters down. let my friend since high school read them. He didn't think to highly of them.

Pretty good! I'm actually building a reader base.

Is it a waste of time to write a doorstopper epic fantasy series when you haven't already established yourself as a published author? Because I want to create a vast world with rich lore and a deep history. Yet, on one hand, I don't think people will want to put that amount of dedication into reading something by a new author; and on the other hand, I don't think I'd want to make some half-assed universe for a one-shot story, and my lack of want would translate to a lack of quality.

>You fell for the meme hard.
For real. Should have realized it's always better to just have a girlfriend around that I can have her leave when I want to take on more worthy pursuits.

Fantasy is generally crap so it won't matter too much. It's also a genre that publishers expect to be long-winded.

Have set aside my first series novel because I decided at the moment it was too big on an undertaking and probably needed a lot more planning. I'll pick it up again when I've got a clearer vision of what I want to happen and how it's supposed to unfold.

Instead, I've started working on a simpler book that Veeky Forums would probably call pleb-tier genre fiction but is fun as fuck to write. I reckon if I can get this published it'll be my foot in the door. I'm also working on several short stories for sale on Smashwords and available on the website I'm currently building.

just do standalone novels set in that world

I don't write novels

I write short concepts, try to keep it 2-4 pages long, and then switch to a brand new subject. Trying to have specific themes in each one.

There is nothing in my head worth a novel for, I have pretty severe adhd and I am not interested in managing characters and plots, I am interested in abstract concepts and themes. Or just recording whatever is going on in my head at the time I guess.

I am not really that creative I guess. Maybe one day I will find an excuse to write something longer.

this thread is pretty cringe

I used to think the same thing
but novels only have to be 200 pages or so

Just started outlining. I have around 1k words in the outline so far. About a black girl in Paris.

synthesizing a large amount of eclectic, unrelated concepts and themes into a cohesive plot in just 200 pages would be immensely difficult. I like short bursts of literature, a machine gun of spontaneous, lively reveries that can float unbounded.

They're all cringe

Did it steal your christmas?

>Self-censoring on Veeky Forums
You've got bigger problems than your writing, buddy.

>all that green text
Please tell me your story isn't written in the form of green text. I've seen lots of shit on this site over the years, but I'm not sure how to feel about this.

Consider submitting it for publication under the ruse of postirony.

There will never be another Proust. Don't try.

>including 1856540 characters in your novel
How many of them actually play a role in the book?

I don't think anyone would want to publish my work anyway, but can you tell me why this would act as a hindrance for them?

They won't publish something that's already published.