Is anyone here actually a writer...

One meagre Brown literary achievement award and a couple national awards. But still haven't got that one written yet, you know. It irritates me to no end. I'm just not really a writer I guess. Back to journalism I guess.

sounds intriguing, mind sharing an excerpt?

I do, as it's incriminating as all fuck. Amazing get though.

Incriminating how...?

I'm a published author, and I don't see how anyone who read my work would care that I posted on here. That said....I never post my stuff on here, even shit I've actually gotten published. Not that I care to be associated with this site, but knowing that majority of responses are going to be negative. I mean even if you got published in the new yorker at age 16, if you posted on here you're going to hear nothing but, "LOL! guess the meme new yorker lets any old shit in!!!"

Not that it's necessarily bad, I've always liked the negativity of this site, but it definitely has drawbacks.

Is it another white dude walks around city and has deep thoughts novel?

Hey uh....you mind if I maybe run with that concept?

Spend five more years reading and writing rigorously and then start looking for literary magazines that are to your taste.

Send your absolute best stories to those magazines without spergy cover letters. If you get personal rejections from any of them, keep submitting, if not, spend another couple of years reading and writing, maybe mix things up, then repeat. Basically just follow the instructions on the "submissions" page of the magazine. Always simultaneously submit. Don't submit to a place more than once every six months or so unless you're invited to submit more.

If you haven't been reading a book a week and doing serious writing/editing, don't expect it to take less than five or ten years from now for you to be any good at all. You are probably worst than you think you are. Most of the people on Veeky Forums need to write a novel's worth of material at least and throw it away.

>without spergy cover letters

That's a good tip too. A cover letter for a short story or poem should be like two sentences.

Please consider my story, insert very short description that sums up the tone of the story as well as the basic plot that's like maybe 10 words at most, and yes I realize this description is way longer than 10 words. Thank you for your time.

That's it.

Editors read hundreds of letters at a time, and believe it or not the short ones are generally the ones that stand out the most.

If you don't think you can enticingly sum up a short story in less than 10 words, then you got much more work to do.

>It's about my mental illness being misdiagnosed for ten years and the fallout there after. I've seen some shit.

are you me

I've written lots of stuff. Novels, short stories, screenplays, poems, etc.

At the moment I'm doing a lot of shit. I've got a lot of unpublished short stories that I keep sending out and waiting for word on; I've also collected most of them into a short collection and am trying to find a good small press to submit that to.

Meanwhile, I have a five-book fantasy series mapped out, the first two books of which are written. I'm currently revising the beginning of the first book based on the suggestions of a friend. I've struck out querying a lot of agents about the first book, but with the revisions I think I'll get back on the horse and start querying again. I have a really good feeling about both books and the series as a whole. I only just finished the second book a week ago, too.

Now I've got two things planned. I have an idea for a kind of "universe" involving a group of girls at an all girls' school, kind of a world in which I write short stories. I've written a few already, and I think I'll write a lot more now and then try to get them published as a collection of short stories for young people, kind of like those old Wayside School books. Meanwhile I have an idea for a literary fiction novel, one about a girl at an Ivy League school. I've just begun really planning it in earnest, and I'll start writing it when I'm done with the short stories I mentioned just now. So I have a lot I'm working on.

I went to my writer's group today and wrote in longhand for three hours. I'm restructuring most of the fantasy world I've created for my first novel. This isn't that big of a deal because the story is character-based and the characters and their dynamics are easily transposed to other environments. I've given myself another year and a half to finish it. Then I'll look for an agent.

I have an English degree with a writing emphasis. I took two years of poetry writing classes so my prose is good. Dialogue is also easy but I'm working on deep characterization and plot hooks.

I have one manuscript at 120,000 words, haven't sent it out yet. Some higher-ups at my college read it, though, and gave me a grant to write another one, which is currently at 40,000.

I'm honestly scared to send my first one out. I think it's good (and all of those who have read it confirmed my suspicions, from said college profs to those whom I have sent samples to) but I don't want to get rejected, because my writing is all I have going for me. Lost my friends and social skills three years ago, and I'm writing not only because I see some truth in my literary perspective, but because it's the only thing I've got left.

My plan, as of right now, is to finish up this second one as quickly as possible to make good on my grant from the college, but then I'll set it aside in order to make final edits to my first novel and then send it out to agents. I feel overwhelming dread regarding my own future.

I've written a novel and about 20 poems. Done nothing with them. No one bar my girlfriend ( who I sometimes write poems for) has seen them

Can I see a sample of what you'd consider to be some of your better dialogue?

Are you a girl? Otherwise, how do you have enough intimacy with the female mind to write exclusively about women (in both your short-story series and your literary fiction idea). I have to keep most of my characters male because there is such a massive politik involved with writing women that I'm afraid of either portraying them as I actually feel they are or else playing along with whatever fantasy women hold about how women are. There's no middle-ground without keeping your narration either male-subjective or third person limited.

Personally, I'm working on a piece that centers around a mtf tranny muslim who has to drag herself up the stairs to her isolated ranch's veranda because her WW2 vet grandfather didn't make it wheelchair accessible. After every step she reaches, she mutters "so it goes," but her thoughts are never revealed by the narrator. That's it; that's the whole fucking novel. In stores soon.

>There's no middle-ground without keeping your narration either male-subjective or third person limited.

I write almost exclusively in kind of a quasi-limited third person perspective, so that helps. Even so, I write about a fair number of men, and my female protagonists all tend to be rather distinctive. I also had the benefit of growing up around a lot of women; I won't say this makes me some kind of expert about them, but I don't feel out of my depth depicting them.

>so what are you doing
I have left the car & the driving instructor on an intersection 15 minutes ago; the car kept turning off, an entire column spawned behind me and all of them couldn't resist blowing that horn like maniacs. I'm drinking coffee now and contemplating suicide because the fact that I am too mentally handicapped to drive might as well be the last drop. I am done.

wrote about 2000 words for my long story/novella today. not as many as it felt like but really really good stuff that i'm still proud of on rereading (rare). i've been up against a wall for a while and i briefly broke through tonight, we'll see if the progress continues

What are lit approved magazines

What publisher are they wanting?

If it's a division of Random House, you're lucky as shit.

how do you lose social skills?

very easily. not the guy you're responding too but as soon as i finished university where i was forced to interact with people i reverted to my aloof and awkward high school self. it could happen to you.

Browse Veeky Forums.org/lit/ everyday.

just drive automatic or go to an industrial estate and figure out how to use the clutch properly so no one's around. lots of people struggle with manual driving early on, especially hill starts, it's not worth getting too cut up over

Being pressured into isolation by both external circumstances and your own spiteful nature. Being alone and neurotic, then, for three years--when you're only in your twenties. I had a posse of friends and admirers in high school, and an even bigger one for the first two months of college.
After that, I began to shut myself in. You really start to forget social queues/norms, and even how to tell when people are joking or being serious. You become so worried about saving face after each social mishap that you reach the conclusion that the best way to save face is to not show your face at all, and be completely emotionally unavailable. I'm not agoraphobic or schizophrenic, I can go to bars and clubs and have a decent time, but I go out of my way to be user in real life.
You'll only engage in pleasantries with other people, mostly cashiers at grocery stores and gas station shops: "hey, howsitgoin. Have a nice day." You'll run out of friends one by one, as the connections you once felt with them begin to fizzle out, and you'll be consumed with the same paranoia regarding them that you feel when you're talking to anybody else (They HATE you because you fucked up and have nothing to offer!). You'll have nobody left, eventually, so even the small bits of practice you were getting over teamspeak comms start to fade. On the off chance you do talk to somebody (and it happens. Like I said, not a social agoraphobia: I'm not fearful of interaction, I've just forgotten how to do it), you'll spend so much time thinking of what to say that you won't be able to say anything at all.

As you can see, it's a downward spiral. I'm doing my best to get out. I'm decently attractive, which makes me lucky in that people will approach me (since I've started going on a daily run this past few weeks, I've had a noticeable spike in randoms literally trying to converse with me at coffee shops and bars). Some do not have that luxury (naturally unattractive or do not make the effort to look presentable), and are caught in their own traps permanently.

My loneliness has led me to Veeky Forums, not the other way around.

Fuck off piece of stale shit

>lost social skills three years ago
>this lead you to Veeky Forums

didn't know newfags existed anymore. i am feeling some serious superiority over you rn. get out faggot

This

I'm writing a comedy that I intend to include a bunch of illustrations in. I'm probably just going to createspace publish it and release it for free desu.

>release it for free desu
this is the only reasonable thing nowadays

Yeah, anybody who doesn't already have a dedicated following is fooling themselves charging money for their stuff. Gotta let em sample the goods first.

Indeed

I'll never quit writing because I enjoy. It is however really sinking in how much I suck. It's a bitter pill to swallow.

First off, never base anything of /lit's/ tastes. If you were a true litizen you'd know that.

Second, find magazines that are right for YOU. mags that publish the sort of stuff that you write.

I know of this pain. It's the realization that when they say "You'll get better at things you practice" is a damn lie.

Maybe your approach is wrong. Are you reading books on writing or taking classes? Are you getting solid critiques on your work from other people?

My current novel is one I actually feel like I can finish. I don't know if it's even publishable, but the prose just flows out.

The reason I don't know if it's publishable is because it only makes sense if it's read in a particular way. It's supposed to invoke the feeling of a vivid dream that builds on itself, and it reads fundamentally different when read outloud or subvocalized than when read traditionally.

But it's fun and enjoy writing it. Hell, I'd be happy with it getting published and making no money, just to share it with people when it's done.

Are you literarily retarded?

press K for krill

Written two, drafting a third (with two more planned).
Also waiting on first publisher's response due in 2-3 weeks.
Been finished with that book for 3 years.
Only just started trying to get it published.