Share with us what you're currently writing, what you wanna write...

k this is some weird shit but I'll probably do it

I'm planning to hoax my college's poetry magazine by submitting some "13th century Persian translations" that are actually OC. I'm even writing a short fake biography on the fictional poet. I'm a Farsi speaker so I'm familiar with classical Persian poetry and its conventions. I'm inspired by Ossian and Sokal (lol) but this is mainly a means of covering for my crippling anxiety about sharing my terrible work/enables me to get away with writing ghazals and quatrains when it's the current year and no one takes form seriously unless it's supposedly old.

Advice?

>generally just raw ideas you've been sitting on
maybe a decent idea who knows:
>girl has depression, her father just thinks it's a phase. "get over it/feel better"-kind of father
>father, out of work, is descending into alcoholism and disillusionment with family
>daughter just thinks it's a phase (but still annoyed at him for thinking that /she/'s just "going through a phase"

Read Cervantes.

Twitter story, I want to experiment with how much I can put into a sentence and how much I can imply without being entirely vague.
So far its a feud between mad scientists and everything is dialogue but I think it's dumb.

Books:

Just finished: Book of Sanctimony, an edgelord tier semi-occult book

Want to write: Occult history of dragons, book on magical theory with examples

Look at @onlxn. He's probably the best twitter story-teller.

Essentially, two species on Earth, Sapiens and Novus. Novus are superior in intelligence, highly religious are attempting to reach a planet they believe is their Eden. In the process of doing so they abuse the Sapiens for labour resources leading to a revolutionary uprising. The story follows a factory worker, a Sapien his best friend a Novus, who inevitably betrays him and the Sapien's lover. More ideas to follow but that is the beginning.

>@onlxn
Thanks, I actually heard about him a long time ago but I forgot.
His style's a little much for me, I don't think I can do it and enjoy it, I'll have to think of something else.

I wrote a story but its not in english

>Last white man on Earth is sent to a mental institution for hate speech against Jews and women
>Head nurse is a Jewish woman
>Protag defies her institutionalized emasculation attempts by just bee-ing him self
>wacky hijinks ensue
>He befriends a mute qt Native American woman
>Eventually he sees past his racism and falls in love with her
>Protag is happy he finds true love, racism and sexism subside
>Becomes overly respectful towards women and other races.
>No more wacky hijinks
>Disgusted at the golem he has become, Native American woman mercy kills him
>Escapes the institution and lives happily ever after with her boyfriend.

The working title is "One Flew Over the Cuck"

Some more background, I am doing this paper as a seminar thesis and it'll probably be around 20-25 pages when it's done.

>Catullus, Gaius Valerius. Poems 61-68. Translated by John Godwin. Classical Texts. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips Ltd, 1995.

>Davis, P. J. "The Colonial Subject in Ovid's Exile Poetry."The American Journal of Philology123, no. 2 (2002): 257-73. jstor.org.proxy.libraries.smu.edu/stable/1561743.

>Foster, Stephen William. "THE EXOTIC AS A SYMBOLIC SYSTEM."Dialectical Anthropology7, no. 1 (1982): 21-30. jstor.org.proxy.libraries.smu.edu/stable/29790056.

>Fratantuono, Lee M. “Diana in the ‘Aeneid.’” Quaderni Urbinati Di Cultura Classica 83, no. 2 (2006): 29–43. jstor.org.proxy.libraries.smu.edu/stable/20546900

>Galinsky, Karl. Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1996.

>Griffin, Jasper. "Augustan Poetry and the Life of Luxury."The Journal of Roman Studies66 (1976): 87-105. jstor.org.proxy.libraries.smu.edu/stable/299782

>Horace. The Epistles of Horace. Translated by David Ferry. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

>Lucan. Pharsalia.Translated by Jane Wilson Joyce. Masters of Latin Literature. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1993.

>Lucretius Carus, Titus. De Rerum Natura. V. Edited and Translated by Monica Gale. Aris & Phillips Classical Texts. Oxford [England]: Oxbow Books, 2009.

>Nikolopoulos, Anastasios D. ""Patriam Mutare": Colonization in Ovid's "Metamorphoses""
Quaderni Urbinati Di Cultura Classica83, no. 2 (2006): 71-81. jstor.org.proxy.libraries.smu.edu/stable/20546902.

>Ovid. Fasti. Edited by G. P. Goold. Translated by James George Frazer. 2nd ed. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003.

>Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Rolfe Humphries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955.

>Powell, Anton, and London Classical Society, eds. Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1992.

its a pomo story of greg butterball, a nothing to do youth studying as a pre-greek major who finds himself having seizures and waking up at a military base camp for blacks. its a very smart outsider view on post colonialism

im very smart

Writing is something anyone can do. Few can do it well. Painting, writing music, dancing—most people can’t do these things. But almost everyone, at least in the developed world, can write. So people like me think some experience we’ve had is unique or worthy or other’s attention, and the only way we can bring it to them is by writing about it. And that’s why people like me undertake writing fiction and poetry. If we’re particularly lazy and/or a female teenager, we write poetry; if we’re a little more ambitious, we write short stories. Some of us try novels, but we soon realize we’re lousy at writing and storytelling, and that makes it hard to continue.

I've written about 70 pages of what I thought was a great idea, and I actually have a complete plot outline. But even if I complete it, it will be barely readable.

I set aside the whole day to write, and I've done nothing. Taken three naps, drank too much coffee, masturbated several times. This sucks. Should I go on, Veeky Forums? Or should I just give the idea to someone more competent? Perhaps I'll find out it's a crummy idea too. Strangely, that would give me comfort.

>I set aside the whole day to write
This is not the best way to go about it to be honest. Go about your day doing other stuff and then dedicate small pockets of time to writing when you feel inspired, but at least write every day for an hour at minimum.

You've probably just burned yourself out for now.

I just started to come up with a plot outline for my first attempt at writing something outside of a school essay.

It's been pretty fun so far.

Maybe you're right. Thanks for the feedback. I was doing that in the mornings, actually, and with good results. One half hour of time, unless I was on a roll, then I'd go as long as I felt like it. The problem was I would then get to work too late, and my productivity is bad enough as it is.

I am also questioning my motives for writing. If I write something utterly worthless, but it's because creating it brings me joy or satisfaction, that's fine. But if my reasons are base--fame and fortune, and the ability this would give me to avoid any sort of struggle--then producing something worthless is just, well, worthless.

I like J.K Rowling's advice on this: "Write what you're passionate about."

Now I don't know if what you're writing is something you're passionate about, and even if it's not you could find ways to include things that makes you passionate about it. Writing that first novel is the biggest step. After that you can concern yourself with getting published and possibly gaining fame and fortune.

Think in single steps and not what might happen three steps ahead of the one you're currently making, is all. Good luck!

Thanks for the encouragement!

Probably would not be a book, but rather the script for a comic or a TV series. So far it's just some raw ideas I just got some weeks ago:

>Narrative biography, slice of life, absurd comedy
>The protagonist: a young guy who dropped out college to follow his dreams.
>At the beginning, he is just a NEET who lives with his childhood friend in his apartment.
>He is then force to find to get a job or some way to get money
>Through several in unadventures on his life, he may learn some life lessons, in the good way or bizzare way
>But he will always try to find his way to accomplish his dreams and life goal since "it's the only way he feels happy"

And that's all, so far I've written one chapter and iym thinking of writing more.

Sorry for typos, I'm on mobile right now.

Post protagonist names and rate.

>Riley Carpenter

Hehehe let me guess, in the end of the trilogy you reveal that all of this happens in the distant past.

>want to write in a genre that I don't read

Am I being stupid?

Doubt it, you think anybody that writes biographies has read anyone elses?

Don't bother.

Why?

Cormac, is that you?

4/10

Seymour Butts

It's a stupid short story I have outlined in my head and in notes about a sort of precursor to American special forces (right after ww1) that are sent by the FBI to help investigate some WEIRD OCCURENCES in a small town. I have started writing it at least four times and barely make it past the opening.

I don't know if i want to write it first person like Lovecraft or third like Corncob. I am leaning towards corncob because I want it to be rough like the characters.

Not that guy, but I agree with him.

Given how you summarized it, the idea has been done to death and what you want to do with it is not unique or interesting.

Definitely not. Maybe this is ego-padding bait, but that's a more exciting prospect to me than if someone were to say, rather redundantly, "I'm going to write a genre I've read a lot of!"

I'm working up a concept of a story about a geologist who travels to an uninhabited island somewhere in the pacific to study earthquakes in this area. The island is part of a group of islands that are all inhabited by native tribes. All other islands are inhabited, but not this one, because it's said to be haunted. Navigation equipment is said to go crazy around the island and when the geologists ship arrives they have problems locating the island. Once there he installs a device called 'the pendulum, which consists of a metal sphere wich is attached to a 'vertical string of 2 foot length, wich itself is attached to a 3-foot-bar consisting of wood, the latter being horizontal.' The formal twist is that the geologist is completley unable to articulate himself without sounding way too complicated and unworldly. He also studies the local wildlife and gives them completly unpractical names, for example he names a endemic falcon 'eater of birds'. When a whale- or catfish-like creature gets washed up on the beach infront of his hut he starts having more and more livley dreams about the origin of strange spherical rock formations on the island and why the earthquakes on the neigboring islands don't seem to impact this one. He starts to think that someone or something is trying to comunicate with him through his dreams and he starts to give incredible meaning to trivial observations during his days. He's going to get mad but I'm not sure how the ending will play out. The whole thing is more about capturing that feeling of isolation and seclusion and the way it changes your perception.

No, read Menard.

Try tumblr. They LOVE dumb shit.

I'm still pushing my series.

I wrote an 11 volume science fantasy space opera epic for the teen\YA crowd. It has a love story, a revenge story, a redemption story, time travel, a competent magic system, mecha, catgirls, A.I.'s, robots, space pirates, an intergalactic war, hover craft racing, plenty of twists and an INSANE ENDING, oh yeah.. and jetpacks.

The series kicked off in May with volume one: Fusion Heart. Volume two: Flight of the Lazarus, just dropped in September. For the moment they're only in ebook form but Paperbacks should be coming soon. A new book will arrive EVERY THREE MONTHS through 2018. The first two books are available wherever ebooks are sold but it seems there's only reviews on Amazon and goodreads. I gave away FREE copies of the first TWO books to people on /b/ last week in hope I could get some reviews ion Amazon or goodreads in return. Some have delivered.
Shoot me an email at [email protected] with the words "give me free shit" and I'll do the same for you.

Pic related: a piece of fan art of a character from book 5 from a beta reader.

"Know your audience", this is the wrong place for your anime inspired SF thing. Have you tried pushing this on reddit or imgur? They'd probably respond more positively.

Sounds like YA

writing a kids show about a cow living on a farm

I'm writing some complex fantasy poetry, and am interesting in using the fantasy mindset to create new contexts and shape aesthetics without having to worry about realism. Here's the first poem I'm trying it with (so its rough)

The Dragon

The Tyrannosaur circles overhead, shining
like a star, no like the throne's jeweled eyes
Whirrring fast fast around around, centrifuge
Separating manna from nectar, Bosphorus
Cleaver, no like the lighthouse burning through
Forgetful fog, no like the glare of the sun drying
Water in the sand spilled by Saladin to mock
Crusaders, no like shine of a Seraph (surely
A dragon is a seraph blinding the world’s eye).
Whatever this dragon could be,
it burned like it was.
Then came the sounding.
Feel the shaking scream of that which glides
Down from heaven like the second coming.
Hear the heat twisting air in spirals, warping
Gusts to signify its coming. That howl of God.
How it breaks, breaks, breaks the

>asking Veeky Forums for life experience
>asking Veeky Forums for DATING experience

Holy shit you're dumb.

Just write whatever makes the reader feel good. Or bad, if you're going to pander to the depressed.

>tfw can't write worth shit
>also can never stick to one idea and keep jumping from one thing to another

>also can never stick to one idea and keep jumping from one thing to another
You might have ADD or you just haven't found an idea that makes any and all ideas you've had and will have seem but dwarfed in comparison.

write about that then faggot

Sounds nice brah. Write it

One of my stories is about a directionless Iraq War veteran who returns home and enrolls in [midwestern state university] on the GI Bill. Trying out a narrative technique where the MC is never directly quoted in dialogue. His gf is never directly quoted either. Silence is a big theme I guess.

Another story that's just an idea is about 1800s colonial Singapore.

I want to write about horror bordering fairy tales set in our world. They're small scale nothing that largely affects our world but just shows that there is strange things going on. They're all their own self contained stories but there's a few ideas and characters that dip their fingers between them.

First idea is about someone venturing into a mirror world like those dreams you have where you KNOW where you are while you're dreaming but when you wake up you're aware of how distorted that idea of your setting was. This story mainly deals with grief, acceptance of it and temptation.

My next idea's central characters aren't humans but little goblin/fairy creatures. I'm hesitant about writing something like that but I think it has a few good ideas and has a central plot of perception of death, and nature.

I've just always liked fairy tales more geared towards a more mature audience.

I'm writing my first short story for a class in school. I could post it, are posts in Spanish allowed here/would any of you read it?

Not even a reader desu.

I do need some writing advice. How can I make a good hook for my novel at the beginning?

I was thinking of doing a short prologue involving some very action-y stuff and then cutting to the main story but that feels cliche.

be ''''meta''''

i don't want to meta meme

The Zombie Knight(web serial) author does 400 words a day. I think he's pretty smart. For me, I have no life so if I don't write all day and then watch anime I spend all day on Veeky Forums, posting.
It gives me hope to see someone honestly trying to get their work seen, especially here where you're just asking for scorn. I'd try Royal Road Legends, maybe posting a few chapters and then linking to your story in the authors notes. Even I doing no promotion got 2,635 views posting only like eight times. It's definitely your audience too, top rated stories are fantasy/anime stuff.
I think with hooks you really need to understand the entire story to write a really good one. It should be your entire story represented in one paragraph. It helps if people can read that one paragraph and get the same effect and theme as your entire story.

I did a hook for my first erotica by starting at the ending. One character says something that implies something different is occurring than what the rest of the story shows is happening.
The guy takes in a injured orphan girl off the street and tries to hypnotize her into believing he's her long lost brother. He didn't actually intend to do anything with her sexually,
The hypnosis is implied to have failed so she thinks it's a trade off to live at his place that she has to do something sexual with him.

There's only hints of this in the story so it really isn't until the end that you see both of them are secretly taking advantage of the other.
I'd post it but it features an anime character.

I've got a general idea that I'm not ready to share yet. What I'm trying to figure out is how to begin. I wrote a few lines but I don't know where to go from there or if they even fit with my story. "Come now, Travelers, gather round me now and listen to a tale before you are asked to regale us with your own. Let the years fade your souls and forget the day's miles. Take comfort in my home as the hearth fires burn to embers and twilight fades to dusk as the sky becomes host to so many stars as I am host to you."

Keep writing, try to make a shitty story on purpose. That helped me, it was called 'Mediocre in Another World' and it got me writing better stuff. You can always edit it later, when you're not drunk off the writing high.
I personally try to get the copy looking 'right' the first time but then you have less fun writing. Just blow your story load out on the page and suffer over how much it sucks later.

Been editing this. I was going for a frank look at the lives of young adults in regional Australia but reading over it it's starting to feel like some mastubatory attempt to sound like Bukowski (havent read the cunt since I was like 17) combined with angsty oh so edgy bullshit.

Can someone just tell me if it's as fucking nauseating as I think it is?

pastebin.com/hK03jmMm

Honest question: How are you guys so comfortable with sharing your work here, where anybody can just come along and plagiarize it?

Dude, none of us is going anywhere.

Don't you write to be read?

I am working on the outline and concept for a fantasy novel. It may turn into multiple books.

My challenge is that I have very high standards. I am always stopping to do research, but also find myself constantly screening my own thoughts and ideas, making sure I don't sound like I am trying too hard to be "literary" and proper. I sense that there's hidden gold in myself, somewhere, waiting to be harvested and brought out into the written form, that will create a great story that many would enjoy reading, and would be more successful than the typical fantasy novel (maybe not financially, but artistically, which is my priority) — but I'm struggling to find that unique personal identity still.

And my job is kind of killing me these days. I didn't do well at finding something that would give me the time and energy I need to keep working on this novel... but I'm still trying to, even if it means just getting ~4-5 hours of sleep a day.

Because our stuff is shit. But seriously, the real answer is honorcode. It's either that, or become a tripfag like me to assign identity to your works, even if it is just a pen name. We also like constructive criticism from people we don't have to care about in real life.

It's as nauseating as you think it is. I don't get where you were going at all, feels like fluff and a bunch of dumb jargon that makes the piece worse. If you were publishing a pseudo-diary for the net it could pass for that. No emotional impact to me. What and why are you going for that frank look? What interests you about it? Don't just set the stage and go off stream of consciousness and expect anyone to tell you it's not shit. Reading it I thought it might as well be a diary.
Also I don't know why you chose to use "-" instead of quotations that just looks dumb to me. The 'yes,yes' lines and just anything about the phone felt it could have just been cut. If you're going for localspeak, you have to keep it consistent as well.

That's a good, positive mentality to have user. Even if your work takes time and research. Also good luck finding a job that will let you sleep more because 4-5 hours is going to put you in an early grave.

I do a webcomic that I've talked about in Veeky Forums in the recent past. The premise revolves around the Trueborn humans having enslaved the anthromorph animal people and having them free themselves after hundreds of years of bloody revolution. This ended a decade or so ago,so you have a bunch of ex-soldiers from both sides attempting to be politically correct but harboring ancient grudges.

A new character I introduced recently was the gadgeteer to the Anthro underground who shows up in the storyline with a farming tool with gun turrets. In the strip I am working on now,she very shockingly reveals that she has no problem with the invasion killing off the locals. She is a counterpoint to the "racist" human priest who considers anthros as inferior out of habit and conditioning. Its created an interesting dynamic I will enjoy exploring.

Please read some books on how to draw comics. Your images are an ugly, unfocused clusterfuck.

I was going to say it too, but I figured he knows already.
I suggest you think about cutting down on the dialogue and reading Bones for a better understanding of how to pace things. I've read comics with dense text before but they always limit it to a few scenes. There's that infamous image of Medaka Box where a yandere confesses and it's two pages almost entirely of text and is supposed to hurt the eyes on purpose.

Actually I kinda like them. Not an art-style you see often. GTFO

Keep doing what you're doing bro. I'm not a fan of furry, but your art is good. Though I'm not following, one thing. Why would it be shocking that she has no problem with her Anthro people having killed the local human inhabitants before? Also, link to your twitter?

>Not an art-style you see often.
That's because most art that you see is done by artists who have learned to draw. They're just messy, sketchy images done with a ball-point pen.
I'm not trying to be unpleasant to him, he would benefit a huge amount by reading Scott McCloud's book on doing comics and maybe some How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way sort of thing to get some idea of how to frame images and use perspective. He doesn't have to draw like they do, he can adapt his style to be less scribbly eye-rape.

AH my mistake then. I apologize. Carry on.

Any German-speaking Veeky Forumsizens here to read my creative writing project?

pastebin.com/VYLFJ4QT

Seriously. The harvester thing looks cool and is nicely drawn but you have to concentrate to tell what's part of it and what's the background. Same with the first panel, there are so many shapes and lines you can't really tell what's going on. The leap from the second panel to the third is abrupt and would make more sense as a new page or chapter instead of just suddenly being an entirely different scene.

Here's the beginning to a story I've been writing.

Any Critique would be appreciated.

pastebin.com/7deqVxiS

I'm about to start my first piece that isn't fantasy. It's a Nightcrawler-esque film about a teenager who covertly records his friends and the bad parts of their lives that they go through. He's not a sociopath per se but he has a very sensitive and skewed empathy; he sees his friends anguish or happiness, or, whatever, and thinks that the're so great and deserve to be seen on film. So he directs a movie where they're the unknowing actors, and eventually his masterpiece reaches real cinema. It'll explore the repercussions of his actions and whatnot in deep depth.

user here. Woops. Story, not film.

Alex Kaschte tire

Really it’s so loaded with pretense that it’s a bit hard to read.
And it lacks, I think, something to get us interested in the story. Apparently the woman is supposed to be the main character, but we don’t get to see much of her actually in the first two paragraphs: It’s more about a guy she hates. (I think, At least as a reader you really don’t like him!)
So at the point where she thinks "Ich will ein Zuhause", we haven’t yet gotten to know her and hence don’t care so much about what might become of this story.

>Alex Kaschte tier
Ouch that really fucking hurt, the pretense was basically a injoke, I'm not that much of a faggot haha.

I read 2 stories like that. in 1 the girl becomes a zombie and gets her shit together and in another she goes on a trip with people from her mental hospital, reconnects with her Mexican roots and is meh about her dad.

>Actually I kinda like them. Not an art-style you see often. GTFO
this sort of self-excuse is incredibly detrimental to your work please dont do it if you take your "art" seriously

It's bad. Rambling sentences are just confusing, it doesn't make it seem more "real"

Can I get some feedback on this? Looking for ways to make this piece stronger, with more impact maybe.

Pieces of yourself are left on your journey.
Your ghost can linger when your body moves forward.
It's entertained by memories and whispers and echoes.
Granting dreams to some and nightmares to others.
I've tried to drag mine along.
Grasping at air in futile attempts.
I continue forward, wandering further away.
And when my ghost catches up to me again,
I'll give it my attention.

I'll be sure to spend our time alone.
It will admonish my failures
and regale in my success.
I'll keep it's interests with
my own frightening tales.
We'll share our stories and
Converge in the dark.

Yeah when thinking of it I noticed it alluded to The Depressed Person a little too much

>What and why are you going for that frank look?

Most of what I write is about North-East Australia. It gets a bad wrap here and so many people living here are obsessed with "culture" and how there's none of it. I think in regional Australia there is plenty of culture it's just not the kind about museums and graffiti walls and quaint shit all over the place.

You said don't just set the stage and leave it there but desu that's what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to present the area as is, with as little interference from me as possible. Where I'm at now is figuring out how to do that.

Thanks for reading it through mate I'll screenshot your post to remind me.

A short story about memories, rape and suicide
Sounds edgy, and it kind of is, but not so much, my fourth time trying to get it right

I'd stop to think about your audience. Try to dumb it down a bit, I'm from mid-america and that kind of writing just makes my head spin. If you're writing for aussies then it's out of my depth.
I'll give my impression. You might as drop 'yourself, your' for me since you use "I, my" for the rest of the piece. Rereading it like that I thought it was more personal. All the poem's I read try to shy away from reference so you concentrate on the words you want rather than identifiers, that's more of a prose thing. I think it's fine for the first line though, for context sake.

I think you can drop 'memories' in line 3, it doesn't add anything that 'whispers, echoes' doesn't and messes with your evocative tone. "I've..along" doesn't feel like it matches with the tone you're going for there. If you want to bring up despair or troubles, I'm sure you can do it in a more interesting way. Think evocative tone, maybe something about ground. You're using informing there and that's not consistent with the rest of the piece. Don't use the 'I've' this time.

If you want a more prosesy type then you would have to rework the rest of it, right now the top is heavy and the bottom much lighter which I think is a strength of the piece you should preserve.

We sat on the cold sand of the beach, our heads looking above us at the starlit sky. I turned to my right and whispered in her ear. It doesn’t matter what I whispered, I don’t remember what it was, but whatever I said made her giggle and give my shoulder a push. The abrasive smell of salt spread throughout the air around us. I got up on my feet and shook the sand off of my back and onto Vanessa before pointing at her and the horizon in front of me. Then I took off running. I looked back and saw her lying on her side, waving at me with those tiny cream hands of hers. I looked down at the footprints that trailed behind me and I felt like I was leaving my mark on the planet. In thousands of years, anthropologists would look at my footprints to discover some trait about their ancestors that we think arbitrary. Then the water rolled onto the shore and washed everything away. There I stood, transient once again. Maybe when I die, I thought, my body will be fossilized; that’s the best anybody can hope for, really. I realized that I’d run so far from Vanessa that her body was just another grain of sand in the distance. I got down on my back and stared at the ocean. It must be wonderful to be a fish: everyone cares about them—except, I suppose, other, bigger fish. I decided that I would lie there and wait for Vanessa, and when she got to me I would tell her about how I’d decided to become a fish and how I loved her and how I wanted her to join me. I knew what she would say. I knew that she would swing the strands of wheat atop her head across her face and purse her lips and, in the way she always talked, ambiguous between asking or telling, say, “But I’m already a fish.” My thoughts began to dwell on her lips. I wanted once again to press them against mine. My chest began to burn the way it always did when I thought about kissing Vanessa, and I decided I wanted to see her at once: to proclaim my love for her and kiss her the way she would never let me: with full control. With every step I took I thought about her. Her bright blue eyes that could drown you if you looked at them for too long. Her small rounded nose that looked as though it had been perfectly stitched into the middle of her face. Her large breasts that strained against the swimsuit top that she was wearing, and her generous thighs that slid a bit against each other like satin sheets on a late night. Vanessa would tell a joke and then laugh softly; her voice cracked with every word she spoke as if she were in constant apology. My face could feel the buzzing hum of her allure with every inch I gained closer to her, and soon enough Vanessa was back in sight. She was lying at the edge of the sand, half in the water. Of course, I thought, she was practicing for our future as fish. Then I was just feet away.
Vanessa was lying at the edge of the sand, her head and arms in the water, her swimsuit bottom pulled around her ankles, and her body still.

I've been stuck in an editor-mode for way too long for my writer friends and I haven't been able to put anything meaningful in ages. Last thing I wrote was a page long ramble of a shitty horror/unease idea that was in my head for a while.
What are your tips for getting into the mood to write? I've got the ideas, I just can't seem to get out of the broad strokes and focus on the important nitty gritty.

Journaling if you don't do it already is always a good idea. Changing POV with journaling helped me as well, I have two going at once one written in a journal and one computer. Otherwise, I've found writing a purposely bad story or trying to make what you did that day into a story helps. Prompts can help, but if it doesn't get you writing then you're fucked.
What got me finally writing my journal was I set aside a certain place and said to myself that I had to fill up one page everyday at the place where the journal was. I left it open as well.
YA/10 impossible to critique for me. I'd blame you for using semicolons and the shitloads of commas but I'm not sure if that really makes it better because you're consistent with it. It doesn't seem like you're aiming for YA audience anyways so I wonder who exactly you're going for here, trying to evoke youthful memories in older readers is my guess. Maybe 'nose...stitched' in the lower half can be changed to match the whole nature theme that's going on there for consistency, that annoyed me a little.

Wrote this in class today first draft sort of thing, not sure where it's going or what it's about but whatev:

But most of all, he worried love had eluded him. The feeling he had flirted with in his youth now mocked him behind every corner. He was still a young man, and so he feared loneliness with the anxiety that only youth could muster. At night, on those terrible evenings when he found himself in bed with only his thoughts, they drifted about aimlessly before always settling back on this dread. More often than not, he would live in the fantasy of the times he had almost given into love, those times he had almost caught her. Yet with every passing night, the faces became less and less real to him, like the fading photographs in old, dusty yearbooks they had become.

Life had not been unfair to George Sharpe. He relished in its frivolities, and however much he feared being alone, he had never once feared for being destitute. He lived his life with a lavish nihilism, never betraying to company his heavy heart. Perhaps this was his greatest fear: that anyone could stumble upon his inner turmoil as if one night, a guest will find it at the bottom of an empty bottle of wine. For all of the gifts Sharpe had been born with, none, in his heart, could make up for his shortcomings. For this reason alone, he had thought it upon himself to make enemies with God, the one he cursed for the sin of giving him life. In Sharpe’s mind, God had mocked him from birth, by giving him a charmed life paired ostensibly with a general malaise he could never escape. Still, the idea of atheism held no interest to the man, for the simple dismissal of his foe held no barb. It was no victory to Sharpe; if anything, it was to make a concession, to admit that man could never triumph over God, so one might as well ignore him.

No, he desired something more, something he could not possibly describe to you. If he was being honest, he could not describe it to his own self, but it was there, a force somewhere in his gut that convinced him it had a plan. Perhaps, Sharpe often thought, this was his god, this overwhelming force that guided him. But it forwent worship, and so he found himself in a different type of temple. He was no fool though. Sharpe did not really worship at the altar of his own gut-feeling, he simply found it more benevolent. No god is worth worshiping, he thought to himself , sitting in his pew, least of all not mine. His eyes fixed themselves on the central piece in front of him, past the frail, robed elderly man speaking to the silent figure of anguish. The wooden man nailed to a wooden post, who was to have forgiven our sins. Yet, who forgives the sins of the Father?

I've got a story, a scifi that goes something like this:

>alien ship lands on earth
>kills guy, woman, kidnaps child
>FOR SCIENCE!!!
>sold to researcher
>tortured
>cybernetic mods
>researcher killed or holding out payments
>bitch escapes
>joins mercenaries 'cause unorganized intergalactic government
>does some shit
>does more shit
>eventually goes up chain of command as people die
>captain of ship
>find ship that kidnapped her
>xenomorph-esque infestation
>dead
>end story

I dunno, prolly been reading too much scifi and fantasy

My big problem with prompts is that I'm usually the one coming up with them for my group, so I'm terribly ineffective at writing them now.
I feel like I don't do enough interesting things in a day to warrant a day-to-day journal.

Do you have a bad story example? I could use a giggle.

>something he could not possibly describe to you
Felt like the whole thing to me. It's readable. I'll give you that. I imagined he was one of those superfluous men from russian lit, thats probably where you got it from.
>prolly been reading too much sci-fi and fantasy
Genre fiction isn't the problem, it's a symptom of the problem. That said it's fine at long as you do decent work, whatever it is, and I can't even see the joy in your summary there. Usually when I come up with a story its 'I want this this and this, and then this happens and it's awesome because this'. Maybe you need to explain why you like it in the first place.
Also, as a favorite of mad scientist characters I think no one should ever do anything 'For science'. The scientist is doing it because he's mad, not because the science. Of course that's the reason for the meme so just remember that.
I kind of wanted to share the pastebin to that erotica I wrote but then I realized I'm actually proud of it. Then I remembered my first story where a guy has a cringe inducing conversation with his sister who he idolizes as she sacrifices him to god. He was still into her. I rewrote that one, too painful.

But I saved this one, beware even I don't want to read it:

Villain? Villains! Villains?! I Wanna Be A Final Boss
pastebin.com/hn54Lhrd

As for interesting things for a journal, 'interest' is just psychologically what you believe is helpful for what you are doing. Your feelings are very important to explore if you want to be a writer, and journals help with that a lot. It helped me discover lots of things about myself I didn't even know, just by jotting down what my thoughts were and considering them. Even the most boring person still has dramatic thoughts within their heart if you look hard enough. They have desires, boredoms, unfilled dreams. it's just a matter of stating in out for yourself to see.

>I can't even see the joy in your summary there
Yeah, I'm having a major confidence problem, probably because I never wrote before recently. I really just wanted to make a scifi universe. The character is supposed to search for a way back to Earth, but never finds it. Its supposed to be a short story within my universe. I'm trying to build it in a way that's not human-centric. Though I've become really attached to a race of bird people I made