Writing General

ITT we give each other writing advice and tips to better encourage daily writing habits. This can include anything from writing prompts to critiques to just general advice.

How does Veeky Forums like to write?

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I typically jump through a couple different stories I'm writing. I guess they suffer since I can't focus my full capacity on each one, but at least I don't find the experience dull. I'm also just writing for my enjoyment, don't really plan on publishing anything.

Show don't tell it's a great way to start but isn't the end (Hesse and Melville tell more than show)

He smelled the unmistakable scent of burning flesh as screams of agony drifted through the air. The villagers, the sleep still in their eyes, in various stages of undress, ran around like panicked ants every which way. Most of them quickly dropped limply and lifelessly to the sand below. His Comrades fired endless streams of bullets upon the sea of attempted escapees, lit by their muzzle flash in an otherwise pitch black night, all of them looking identical. Black armored full-body suits, tinted helmets hiding any human face, metal spikes protruding from their shoulders. Usually it was the look of a warrior—here it was the look of an Exterminator, which he was.

Other Comrades circled the outside of the perimeter, orange and red flooding from their flamethrowers and igniting the mud, wood, and, rarely, brick shelters and houses compacted together in the tiny village. The Exterminator heard a sudden succession of thunder as some Comrades threw aluminum canisters into the mix. Wispy light grey smoke dispersed through the air, mixing with the black of the burning homes and draping itself over the people within while the towering fires swirled higher and higher into the night sky. The sights and sounds and textured formed a rich symphony of carnage and he was witness to its genius composition.

A woman came running out of the town, somehow evading the heavy gunfire of his Comrades. Her dirty and ash-covered face was streaming with tears as she cried and yelped running from the destruction behind her. Her clothes were rags at this point and he could see from the blood covering her body that she’d probably been trampled in the chaos. He lifted up his muzzle and fired rapidly, watching her hit the ground before him without a fight.

He spotted the Sergeant standing further back, arms folded, surveying the scene. There would be no way of knowing but the Exterminator had a sense that the Sergeant was filled with pride at his work. He walked over to him.

“Sarge,” he said in casual greeting. His leader simply nodded slightly in acknowledgement.
“You really think he might be in one of these villages?”

“Almost surely not,” the Sergeant said gruffly, shaking his head. “There’s no evidence of any sympathizers or revolutionary cabals here. The idea of a galactic dissident of his caliber hiding around isolated from any friendly organizations on some worthless little moon is laughable.”

The screams had died down as the villagers thinned in number. Soon the gunfire stopped and the crackling fire was all that could be heard. A small mobile excavator dug clumps of earth from the ground and laid them in a pile off in the side, forming large trenches. Those would be the graves.

(1/2)

He reflected on this new knowledge. “So why come here at all? Wouldn’t it make more sense to go and clear out high-priority areas first?”

The Sergeant hesitated. “Well, you never can be too careful. Might as well go from closest targets to furthest. And it’s not like money is any concern; we’ve got one hell of a budget, y’know. Besides; these clean-ups send a message.”

“Message?”

“Yeah. When rural and agricultural workers all over the Allied Systems hear about our liquidations, you think they’ll cause problems for us or want to help out the dissidents? I say not bloody likely.”

The Exterminator thought about this as he watched the crumbled rubble collapse in on itself even more and his Comrades picking up and dropping bodies in the trenches with unceremonial carelessness. The symphony was over and all it left were chills running down his spine.

(2/2)

thoughts?

How do you guys plan your stories?

I always have problems with things like that. When i write I only wrote about big turning points and barely focus on the little things.

Also, can someone recommend me a book about writing? Something that can teach me about metrics and fluidity, that kind of thing.

Warning, pure neurotic self-spillage

I feel completely lost. I overthink everything. I never feel as if I am writing "properly", and can't decide whether this is a completely baseless notion or if I really need guidance. I have OCD and depression. Should I just write whatever? I feel worried that I waste my muses when I write about things that I want to express properly. Knausgaard said he wrote as if possessed by a demon, trance-like and uncritically, but also mentioned, if I'm remembering right, the experience/maturity he needed to write his confessional books. Should I write about my life and what I know? Will I spoil and alter my memories? Are there things I should let ripen?

"Suddenly... all hell broke loose as the weather became a prologue!" I yelled and said descriptively!

There is no book that will teach you how to write well. You just need to read things more analytically.

Lot of redundant descriptors in the same sentences, a definite lack in coherent narrative voice and tone, lack in fluid rhythm, and the allegory is extremely polarized between heavy handed and completely absent at different parts.

Few things, you need to simplify the action in the story to both paint a better picture to the reader, show narrative tone, and improve the rhythm. You have big problems with using commas and trailing with "and" extension. Don't say
>Most of them quickly dropped limply and lifelessly to the sand below.
Say
>Most of them dropped as lifeless ragdolls to the sand below
Where you can combine different adjectives into a single descriptor. I just used a simple simile here. The more you can combine like concepts into a single descriptor, in general, the better the picture you can paint for the reader. It's not that the story isn't clear, it's just that I could be so much more if you added more details

>TFW you cannot help but edit everything youve written before continuing
>TFW when you spend the next hour staring at a paragraph worried about flow and if it makes sense instead of worrying about where it is taking the reader

Why

Writing is a passion, user, whatever drives you to it is more power to you.

I likewise only write when I'm in semi-possessed state where my imagination goes wild.

Why did you post such a terrible image?

I like this.

Thank you very much, user. I'm seeing it with a fresher pair of eyes now that I know what my main problems are.

this is what people tend to do when they have nothing to write about.

you are probably a boring person.

Nah I have an entire story planned. It's just getting it out.

>you are probably a boring person
Can't argue with that tho

>The call came from out of the blue. But maybe that's a little too strong. After all, we're talking about my father here, who maintained the right to call his daughter at any moment around the clock while she was studying abroad. Emphasis on "any moment"—the phone rang at the strangest times. Usually, it wasn't for any particular reason; he would return home from a night of drinking, or finish a night of work in the early dawn, and impulsively think to call that daughter who had gone overseas. But I wasn't allowed to be flippant with him when I picked up the phone. If he didn't like the way I was responding, he would go into a tirade: What are you doing studying in America, anyway? My voice couldn't betray any sign of sleepiness or a bad mood. But at the same time, if I was in too high of spirits, he would give in to dark suspicions: Are you on drugs? And so, I had come to anticipate these calls from my father. Every time the phone rang, I picked it up with some degree of trepidation. If I managed to make it through the phone call without incident, I would set the receiver back on the hook with a deep sense of relief. All of which is to say, this is the same father who blurted out to me, "I'm in love with someone."

beginning of a short story

Damn bruh, fire critique

On keyboard, any other form is plebian and servitude.

No, that is what a beginner writer does since they're self conscious about how they come off as a writer. Spoiler alert, typically those anxieties aren't all wrong.
It's about sticking to it, and graduating through the phases of becoming a better writer. I highly recommend taking time from prose and really diving into poetry's deceivingly deep waters. Becoming even a decent poet will help you become quite skilled with prose. Poetry forces you to find not only the right word for the image, but the right word for the rhythm as well. >Think 'blue sky' fits the image perfectly? Too bad it's the last metric foot of the line, and you're writing trochee not iambic. Try again!
But when you return to prose you're not limited to rhythm, only diction. And having clear diction becomes nearly effortless without rhythmic restraint. Not to mention your vocabulary will have become much more refined as well.

A good enough writer can do all those things and get away with it

Here's my best advice,

your story has to be more interesting than Veeky Forums. Or twitter or whatever website compels you to waste a day spamming f5.

this would be better in a dialogue between them instead of having to explain everything.

yes but most people aren't good writers. any list like that is intended for beginners.

I want to write a nonfiction essay but don't know where to start. I feel like I need a prompt or something to get started.

How do people just write thesis papers or pamphlets?

You have to know the rules before you can break them well. While amateur attempts are laughable, the real slog is reading a mediocre writer who thinks they're good enough to go around the rules.

Find a subject you don't mind researching for an extended length of time. Most student papers suck because the student picked something at random and didn't care enough to pick a topic they cared about. Search about and mull over a few concepts you want to learn more about and feel like you can expound upon.

Please do NOT bully.
Bitterness. The heat almost burned his tongue. It was how he normally drank it - black. It wasn’t that he hated sweetness, or that he was some sort of crotchety hermit who could never taste joy; he simply couldn’t be bothered to tear open the sugar straw, risk spilling it all over his hands, carefully peel off the lids of two tiny packets of cream, and then spend a minute stirring it all. It just didn’t fit into his schedule. Besides, Norman Wells was not one to trust anything he didn’t make himself. He knew all about artificial sweeteners (the only “sugar” provided by the small café on the corner of Oak and Main St.), and was convinced it was a one way ticket to cancer. Could he be bothered to look into these claims? His schedule was tight, and better safe than sorry, so again, he drank his coffee black.

I've always wanted to write, so I decided to stop wanting and start doing. The problem I'm facing now is that I don't actually know how to write. I end up writing short, useless vignettes based off of stupid thoughts after hours of sitting there in front of my keyboard with writer's block. Nothing even worth sharing with anybody else. I want to write short fiction, but I don't know what I'm doing. I have loose ideas, but I don't know how to turn them into a narrative.

Can anybody give me any advice?

Should I buy an electric tyoewriter y/n

I have neuroses about technology and hate screens and a major tendency to write pages, decide they suck, and then delete them rather than try and find ways to improve them.

I also inevitably get distracted on a computer.

Yes. I do my best writing on my manual typewriter because I have to think more about what what I'm going to write, and I'm stuck with what I write until it's time to write the next draft.

Cool
Any one you would recommend?

I use a Brother 100 Correction, which is the only typewriter that I've ever used, so it's the only one that I can personally recommend. It has limited features compared to other typewriters, though.

Hi Veeky Forums, am I completely retarded if I want to use this writing format? (being completely serious and unironic)

Extremely retarded, yes

why? tell me why

I'd give critique but I'm too bad for it. So here's my stuff:

Ever thought about how funny life is? One day you have your darling that you smooch and cooch, and the next you both avoid each other on the street and even just a mention of their name at a sitting is enough to ruin the mood. By that point you're worse off than before you met. At that point you'd be better off if you never met. A random stranger passing you by hates you less.

And it's always the smallest of things that ruin it. One moment of doubt, and it's gone. You could punch a stranger on the street and they'd never remember you enough to avoid you two weeks later or care if they heard your name. But one word to your dearest can be enough to create more bile and poison than whatever you could ever barrage someone with out in public. Sometimes it's not even what you said but what you left unsaid, Jesus!

No seriously, just think about it: you shared a part of your life with someone. A part of your inner hopes and fears, your most intimate moments. Your soul. And then you two are worse off than Jerry who insists you can't refund that badly crumpled cheque or Joe who spills gas on your car cause the pressure is too high and he's a new employee. Would Mike, Assistant Manager ever give two craps if you sighed with the wrong tone or made a joke at a stupid moment?

I mean shit, even the symbol of the greatest feeling ever, the greatest amount of trust you can put in someone, marriage, is just a teeny tiny metal scrap. Would a bank care if you tried to put it for collateral? No, that won't do, unless it has cut diamonds on top. They want a house or a car. Something big, important. Expensive.

But with humans the make or break lay always in the small minutiae of things.

You could do everything you can to prove someone how much you love them, but one mistake and you may as well have never even tried. Worse, it's precisely BECAUSE you tried that the mistake is now fatal.

Morale of the story; never try. Because nobody gives a shit about people who never tried. Only those that tried and failed garner hate. The closer you get to love, the more it burns.

Would anyone care about Hitler if an entire nation never fell in love with him and his ideas? And really, who wants to be Hitler? Fuck love.

>to better encourage
Don't split infinitives.

Pretty good. Some grammatical mistakes here and there. Drop the last line about Hitlel, the one above it is fine enough as a finisher and unnecessary Hitler references are stupid.

Don't give up the day job.

>I have OCD and depression
That's been done a million times. Try to be more original.

How do you come up with stories, characters, settings, etc?

I have a grammar question. Let's say you have a character quoting someone else. Is this correct?:

"And I said to him, 'Yeah, that is a shitty post.'"

Mainly wondering about the punctuation

Agreed, but instilling the idea that there are unbreakable rules of writing will ultimately hamstring amateur writers and ensure they can never progress

>thoughts?
You're a teenager who reads comics.

Maybe
"And I said to him: yeah that is a shitty post."

I guess if you went autistic you could use double ""."" but that just looks ugly imo.

You could go the Faulkner way and do it like this.

"And I said to him, Yeah that is a shitty post."

can you just please use the traditional method? that is really cringy

Unnecessary visual noise. I don't need to be told the speakers of the third and fourth spoken parts, I can infer it from context, so putting the names is a waste of space. Using Italics to demonstrate actions could be forgiveable, although it's often used to show thoughts. Since you have the italics to indicate action, the meme arrows serve no purpose other than making me think of a Veeky Forums post. You have a whole blank line between each dialogue, the amount of white space created is kind of a waste of paper, you'll end up making any printed book considerably thicker and heavier while offering no advantage.

Everything you did there can be done clearly using the standard writing method for dialogue, you're simply reinventing the wheel but with more disadvantages.

Damn dude, I gotta figure out how to write stories. I feel like i have a basis of writing skill that I can start with, but coming up with a plot that isn't a 2d sci-fi allegory seems tough. Maybe I should embrace that, just to get going.

when ever i write something my friends tell me it is too predictable. but when i change it to something different it feels too random and unnatural. how do i fix this?

Who was in the wrong here?

It's from /tv/

I self-published my first proper book today, it is a collection of short stories on birds.

Here is a little bit (if anyone is interested I'll link):

A good rest was all I needed. Now with my tired old back stretched out, I can tell another tale for you. It’s a tale I’ll need vigour for. Vigour and strength are required because of my obligation to punch anyone who calls me a liar, or questions the true events of this story – doesn’t matter who speaks out, a pirate, a prince, a pauper or a poet – be it man, woman, or child - I’ll wallop them. Especially the children! They’ll need to hear and learn from the journey of the Great Gnesher - that is if they want a chance at surviving the jaws of this vicious life which we have all been involuntarily thrown into.
The strange adventures of the Great Gnesher and her fearsome crew have been argued about for the past two decades, from sailor inns to princely halls across the globe. I am sure many a fist fight has been fought over the facts and events of her journey, I am sure because many of them I have started myself. Decidedly, I am getting long in the tooth and my fists merely bruise fools rather than break off their jaws. It is time to set down what I saw as a crew member during my time on the Gnesher. Hopefully, when I pass onto the next life there will be room at the Great Feast for a writer - because I fight today with pen and paper rather than sword and axe.

Can we talk about genre fiction here or just "literary" stuff?

I enjoy both, but I mostly enjoy things that blend the two (Le Guin, McCarthy, PKD, etc.), and that's what I'm trying to write.

As reddit-tier as this advice sounds, you are right, just keep writing and you will learn more than anyone could tell you here. Not to say you shouldn't be self-reflection in that process tho

I think your prose is nice but the subject is boring as all hell.

To me at least.

I feel the same way, and I must persist. Reddit or not, I'll put it to use.
Appreciate your advice.

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but it seems to be the most appropriate one to ask this question in; there is a book about literary theory and criticism, written conjointly by two authors.

If anyone could point be to the name of the book, I would be very, very grateful.

Stupid anime bullshit.

10/10

damn lit, you guys are savage

i thought it was pretty good

Would read

Oh yeah, no this is real helpful. Great critiques guys, you're really the fucking Siskel & Ebert of the literary world. Spot-on, in-depth analysis.

Fuck you.

Hey Woody, we're tired of your schtick. Retire pedo

George left the steamer at dawn, and wandered through the docks - thoughts rushed, his worries, as they often did, took possession of him. Helen was back at the wooden cabin, sleeping calmly. How would they get out of there? The atlantic voyage had been long and tiring, and walking itself made George sick, bring memories of the terrible winds they had faced just after leaving Liverpool. The world was different down south. Many had gone to the North instead, and regret is always a possibility. The deed, however, had been done. The tickets back were too expensive, and even then, leaving would be cowardly. A good man does what he must do to provide his woman. There was much talk of work in the sheep pastures in the southern provinces. The climate was less arid than the regular, cold and bitter plains of central Argentina. Buenos Aires was not an option; serving caudillos and their cohort of admirers and brownosers was not an option for an englishman. They are above these things, these peripherical places and arrangements; they had been in Empire, these people run their country like a town, marry eachother and produce inbred children for generations over and over.

yeah, fuck their "critiques"

i thought it was fine. nothing particularly wrong with it. one thing i would suggest is to extract cliches and other attempts at poeticism from your writing. phrases like: "The symphony was over and all it left were chills running down his spine" or "The sights and sounds and textured formed a rich symphony of carnage and he was witness to its genius composition" are found in the head of any genre writer and aren't good.

also "ran around like panicked ants". seek original images and metaphors

Thank you very much, user. I'll keep those in mind in the future. I do have a habit of falling back on cliches when I can't think of unique imagery and I absolutely need to work on that.

I do like being critiqued, but it has to be something I can work with, like your post. Just telling me that I suck doesn't help anybody.

just write a screenplay you faggot

OK but a lot of obvious exposition crowbarred in...'the atlantic voyage' etc, I shouldnt feel im getting backstory so obviously. Also the last two sentences are a little incoherent. Is the main character an English aristocrat down on his luck? Not sure but thats what I got

You do suck though. Sorry. The fact that your brain goes to Siskel and Ebert when you think 'criticism' is a strong indicator you're not well read enough to write anything of worth.

dont listen to pseuds

providing 0 critique in critique threads other than "you're shit" should be a bannable offense

Good sense of voice, I feel like I get a good sense of who this character is just from the asides. I dig it user

I feel like I've gotten worse through time. In the past year, my stories seem to have become meandering, the sentence structures awkward, plots dull, descriptions unneccessary.
What am I doing wrong?
Not native english speaker, btw (and I don't write in English)

I buy them online

I don't read literary critics because I'm not a fucking moron who needs other people to tell him what his opinion should be.

I am worried to write stories from a perspective that is like my own, or deals in thoughts that I've cultivated from my own perspective. I don't know if there's as much of a distinction there as I feel it, but basically, I am worried to write from a first-person, close-to-my-own perspective. Why? Because I feel like it could get dangerously close to self-insert territory, or some kind of proclamation of grandness or uniqueness... Pretentious, when I don't want to be. But I guess that's sort of unavoidable as a writer.

I just get nervous when I start to relate to a character or default to a perspective close to my own as the MC/narrator. Makes me want to write in an omnipotent way, and I haven't got ahold of that style yet.

Anyone else have/had this anxiety at one point?

Someone begins to say something, but DeMarne raises his hand to them, whispers into their ear,

“He will explain the process, please let Mr. Gelderman concentrate,”

“Imagine,” says Shearer, “that you are taking off in an airplane. Leave your arms on the armrests or in your lap. Imagine that a weight is building at the top of your head. Allow the weight to bring your head wherever it should go. Go slowly. And with your eyes closed, visualize the color blue. Form an image in your mind of the color blue. And now objects which are blue...the sky or a car. Make up your own…”

The coolant pump finishes its cycle.

The room drops away from Gelderman into a silent garage in Nijmegen, all of its articles washed out but for the frame of a bicycle, the plastic handle of a shovel, some sections in the paint of a cabinet which have not flaked away, the label on a bag of potting soil... Beneath the cement floor is a bird with blue feathers. She is singing and the notes are being written in blue ballpoint pen on the back of a napkin…

“Now you visualize red the same way...and now green...and now you walk through a door. You have been here before. Many times. The smell of something is coming from inside. Something is cooking. Something you haven’t had in a long time. There is a plate of it on a table inside. Come to the table. The rest of the room falls away. There is only the table, the plate of food on it, and a chair. The chair is the chair you are in. You are already sitting in it. Reach out for the plate. Eat the food,”

Fulmer and a few others exchange glances.

“Now count from zero up to fifty again. As you do, you continue to eat from the plate. Each bite you take does not disappear from the plate...you have eaten from this plate before. You use only your hands, but they never need to be cleaned. And now you are full. You stand. The room returns. The smell of the cooking remains. Now you return to the door. It is open. You walk outside and you close it behind you.”

The coolant pump cycles on.

2lazy2write but good at editing and brainstormer af, is collaborating an option? I am totally okay on sharing a publication, not sure how to start though.

>never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

I completely disagree. Which sounds better,

"Fuck you!" Henry said.
"Fuck you!" Henry shouted.

Honestly, I feel like dialogue tags should be used relatively infrequently to begin with.

If the reader can't tell who's speaking, something is wrong with the writing.

>lifeless ragdolls

As if live ragdolls existed. Omit redundant combinations of nouns and adjectives.

Blogging

You use the phrases "by that point" and "at that point" one after another, might want to fix that. Also I would cut out things like "no seriously" and "I mean shit" because it implies what you are saying is crazy. Other than that I enjoyed reading this very much.
Tone seems kind of inconsistent. I chuckled at the walloping part but then he goes on to make a philosophical statement. He sounds like a comically violent character, I would push that more.
Good but I'd like to see more visual description. Last sentence kind of reads awkwardly. I would split it into two different thoughts.

Here's my shitty story excerpt.

pastebin.com/ANg7hvfS

I'm pretty sure that this specific list is a joke, however. I agree that there ought to be rules, but not these ones. The only thing I really keep in mind is why I write. One's intentions ought to dictate one's style. That's it.

Honestly, show don't tell is fucking AWFUL advice, to the degree that I seriously suspect it's a means for more competent writers to poison the well of budding new talent and keep the competition thin.

Show, don't tell invariably produces tryhard writers who end up not fucking telling anything. Just describing random, banal events ad nauseum because they feel it's somehow necessary and that telling a story like a real person would is way too naive or obvious or whatever.

Fuck "show, don't tell." Good writers tell far more than they show.

I write because I desire to be loved and feel like I ought to do something to deserve it, I write because I want to do something that I would love and thereby be permitted to love myself. If I truly loved myself I wouldn't write at all. I would find myself a career and a wife and stop pretending. I write because I hate myself, and have come up with the best way to prolong my suffering, an impossible goal, an unreasonable demand, and no plan B.

nice awful advice again

the real advice is:
>tell a bunch with little if any showing in scenes of low tension or zero tension
>show in scenes of medium tension, and maybe tell some things
>show as much as possible in scenes of high tension

Anyone got any writing prompts? I want to write a short story but don't know what to write.

Thanks, I'll definitely think about this. I want the book to be taken seriously after all

>not doing
>"Fuck you!"

Christ, that first sentence alone.

>that pic
>rules in writing
>rules
Hahahaha.

How about you provide some critique instead of giving some vague condescending remark?

I am planning on writing a piece of fiction heavily inspired by my real life in a first person narrative. However, I'm thinking of calling the prime character of the story nothing but "You" throughout.
There are several reasons why I am doing this, the two most important ones being You's significance to my story and an implicit reinforcement to my obsession with You.

How viable is this?

Does it become too cringy after a while?

On a search to find out why my writing sucked so badly I learned about Motivation-Reaction Units (MRUs) and how prevalent and effective they are in writing. I believe it could help me tremendously but I cannot write using the MRU method naturally, but when I try just adjusting my writing to the MRU format during the editing process, I feel as if I end up completely destroying and dismantling what I've written and more often than not I'm stumped on how to take what I've written make it work in an MRU format.

Anyone have any experience with practicing MRU and have tips/advice for me?

I've seen it done in short stories, but I honestly have no idea how it'd work in something full length. I do think that perhaps it might get distracting, but I don't really know.

I've thought about doing the same thing though, so you're not alone with that idea.

I don't know what the other guy's talking about. I liked it quite a bit.

Some notes: Third-person present tense isn't very common and I suspect it's because it's fairly awkward to read for long stretches. I would strongly suggest at least considering the past tense. Secondly, I think the pacing is a bit sporadic. It starts off fairly slow and then immediately dives head first like a roller coaster and into the scene change; I'd recommend either stretching the scene out or cutting quite a bit of the first half's descriptions. And for a final super small nitpick: A Soviet astronaut is a cosmonaut.

So since this is the xteenth time nobody has given me feedback I'm just going to offer some general advice since I guess nobody wants to demonstrate how one can do better.

If you write for the express purpose of being rich, cool, or otherwise successful by some metric, stop right now and read a book.

Writing is not fun most of the time because "doing" good writing will force you to examine yourself at some uncomfortable level and you will often not like what you see.

OP's picture is just okay. It can be (it has been) defied and IMO very little good writing has been accomplished by obeying some set of rules. Nearly all really great writing has been made by flauting some rule in such a way that it makes a point. Rules are silly in general, but if you don't have a (well articulated) point, then you are just being a kid if you loudly oppose them.

If you are a "rules" person, I have nothing against you, but I do have some advice for you.

Rule number one is that you need to go outside and listen to people talk and you need to talk to them. Go talk to a stranger and listen to them talk to you.

Rule number two is to dedicate writing time to yourself every day. It doesnt matter how much time as it's every day. It will not always be productive. You will probably waste more than a couple hours.

Rule three is to simply pay attention all the time to the world around you. This should be rule one probably. If you aren't actively thinking about the world around you, your life, the newspaper article yoy're reading, or the people you interact with, then what are you going to write about? Pay attention. Things are always happening. How much "something" is happening in you right now? What about that guy next to you in line? What about all the people who will stand in the same line today?

You will not be some crazy ass Joyce (or whoever you venerate) lady or gentleman on your first (or second or hundredth) try.

Less is usually more.

Always tell the truth. If you can't do that, then tell *your* truth. And if you can't do that, then portray something at some point as the truth.

You can't go wrong with expressing your love for something in clear, concise terms. Either nobody in the world loves that thing you love and you can feel good or you will attract people who love that thing you love.

He'd made an impressive stockpile of potboiler blog posts on his favorite website and compiled the ones that he believed were really worth it into a single document with the aims of eventually dropping it dramatically onto an editor's desk and exclaiming "Cut this down, I dare you!" in a triumphant bravado he had never before. The important thing about them, even more than the perfect prose he'd spent more time on than he could even try to count, honest, ...wait, what? ... was the well-known and self-evident fact that they were, in a word, correct. Right. They were the Truth, the answers, the big fire that finally blew out the flame war, these posts, ya see, were his long past responses to online arguments, posts which navigated into the "reasonable" aspects of both sides and found that well hey, they're more or less the same thing man, how bout that, although one would swear they were more articulate when one authored those wondered-over mindward wanderings. Long time ago.

I've been reading a lot of Pynchon and Nabokov.

I suppose I'll have to go along with it and see how it works out. Thanks.