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VIB
Brazil3567 Posts
 I thought you guys had some kind of weird asian keyboard or something with no Shift. But then I notice you do use it sometimes and not other times and I'm like wtf O.oAnyway.. Do you have some kind of ritual you do when you need to come up with ideas quick? Say you need to write something on a deadline and you're out of ideas. You need to come up with something. What do you do? | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
On July 14 2009 02:53 benjammin wrote: thomas pynchon, apart from just finding his work entertaining, i am in constant awe of his writing, especially his absolute fearlessness and confidence in his methods. when he gets going, i don't think there's a better sentence writer in english. the best introduction to pynchon is "the crying of lot 49". it's short, but you get everything that makes pynchon great in it. if you like that, you can move on to "V." and his epic "gravity's rainbow" i have not read proust, but people rave about "in search of lost time." iirc, it's like a million words long and over a thousand pages, and i've never had the time to commit to it, though i would love to Pynchon is amazing. Here's a question, as a person in college still taking creative writing courses and the like, would it still be worthwhile for me to attempt to get published? I've written something like 50 or 60 poems and several short stories. I could submit to the university's literary magazine, would that make sense, or should I aim for something larger? (I'm almost positive I'd be published in it) Oh, here's one question I've always wanted to ask someone who is published. I have one story in particular that's a very awkward length - 13,000 words. It's too long for a short story, but too short for a novella or even novelette. What should be done with works like this? | ||
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Chef
10810 Posts
I have one story in particular that's a very awkward length - 13,000 words. It's too long for a short story, but too short for a novella or even novelette. What should be done with works like this? Just make it shorter or make it longer :O | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
 the best advice i can give is just to refer again to writing every single day. you'd be surprised how prolific you can be when you force yourself to work no matter what. also, being a voracious reader will definitely help, you can find an idea just about anywhere. i've had a lot of success reading poetry and just extrapolating something i find in there. i'd also recommend keeping a memo book of some sort with you if an idea happen and write it down before you forget it. something we used to do in a writing course i took was to open up a book, flip to a random page, and blindly place your finger on a sentence in a page. take the sentence you point to and use that as the first sentence of a story. it's surprisingly effective if you are completely out of ideas and pressed for time. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
On July 14 2009 05:56 Chef wrote: Do you live off your writing or is this one of those "published" but doesn't sell type authors? :O Just make it shorter or make it longer :O I'm actually trying to write a counterpart of a similar length to it, and combine the two of them into a novella. Or write several counterparts and make it a novel. | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 05:52 Nevuk wrote: Pynchon is amazing. Here's a question, as a person in college still taking creative writing courses and the like, would it still be worthwhile for me to attempt to get published? I've written something like 50 or 60 poems and several short stories. I could submit to the university's literary magazine, would that make sense, or should I aim for something larger? (I'm almost positive I'd be published in it) Oh, here's one question I've always wanted to ask someone who is published. I have one story in particular that's a very awkward length - 13,000 words. It's too long for a short story, but too short for a novella or even novelette. What should be done with works like this? it's absolutely worthwhile to be published. as they say, publish or perish. a university's literary magazine is a great place to get your feet wet, but there's no fault in aiming high. your odds of getting published at a great publication will only increase when you submit something. if you are submitting poetry, most places will want your best 5-10 poems. novellas are historically the hardest things to get in print. watch for publications running novella contests, i know glimmer train will take submissions of 2,000-20,000 words a few times a year. but, since they are published so infrequently, getting it in print is going to be prohibitively difficult. best of luck! | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 05:56 Chef wrote: Do you live off your writing or is this one of those "published" but doesn't sell type authors? :O Just make it shorter or make it longer :O i'm not sure what you mean, literary quarterlies just pay you to put your work in it. they send you a check and that's it, it's up to them to sell their publication. there's not a great deal of money in it, as i wrote before. pretty much everyone is just jockeying to get a book deal by getting their work in print, that's about the only way to make a living off it. | ||
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anderoo
Canada1876 Posts
when did you first decide on pursuing a writing career? (I realize you also have a second job, but still) How often do you submit stories? (ie, how many per year) Do you believe in natural writing talent, or is it all up to practice? | ||
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zulu_nation8
China26351 Posts
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 06:14 anderoo wrote: are you discouraged by the publishing industry's decline? (I'm not 100% how bad it is but I've often heard it's really bad) when did you first decide on pursuing a writing career? (I realize you also have a second job, but still) How often do you submit stories? (ie, how many per year) Do you believe in natural writing talent, or is it all up to practice? i'm more discouraged by the lack of people reading these days. i'm not sure if i can point the finger of blame on the publishing industry as a whole, but it's undeniable that book sales are on a rapid decline. the kindle and e-readers are pretty interesting, but i'm afraid that the publishing industry is just going to repeat the RIAAs mistakes as new technology emerges. i think i said this earlier, but when i was about a sophomore in college i realized that writing was the only thing i really cared about doing and cared about what i was outputting. that was a pretty big hint. i try to finish a story every month, then submit that to a dozen or so publications. i wish they had some special postage rate for writers. hm, i wonder if i can get that tax-deductible... there are two sides to this issue: no amount of natural talent will make up for hard work. i don't think i'm too naturally talented, but i am committed to working harder than everyone else. i think jaedong has a similar philosophy. however, it's very difficult to get far in writing without much praise early on. it's not impossible, but the people who end up pursuing writing were probably the people who had others telling them they were good at what they were doing when they first started. i think talent might get you rolling, but talent alone won't get you very far. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 06:27 zulu_nation8 wrote: i've been reading the new yorker for the past 5 years yet my writing is still terrible. How can I write better? that's really an impossible question to answer, but reading the new yorker can't be doing any harm. my first suggestion is just to write more than you have before, but also pay special attention to revision. also, having someone willing to read your work with a sharp critical eye is invaluable. i am friends with a professor from my undergrad days who is still my first reader of all my work. it's a great tool to have, but make sure they aren't afraid to be brutal. the worst thing you can do is have a family member or a very close friend read your work, as they'll never give you the same feedback. also, if you're really committed, look for writing workshops in your area. they usually aren't too expensive and can be very useful (as well as very brutal). you'll mostly get old ladies and star trek fan fiction writers, but writing in a structured setting and getting honest feedback will be worth it. | ||
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anderoo
Canada1876 Posts
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 06:36 Nevuk wrote: Oh, here's another one : How important to you and your writing is it to read other author's works? indispensable. the thing about writing is that there's always something to learn, if a writer ever says they have nothing to learn they are a lazy and, most likely, poor writer. i would say the author who's had the most profound impact on me was john cheever, an absolute master of the short story form. check out his collected works, but specifically "the swimmer" and "the enormous radio." | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 06:42 anderoo wrote: what is your pre-writing process like? do you outline religiously, or freestyle for the most part? pre-writing is something that i think is probably unique for every writer, and i'd recommend finding whatever works best for you. my process is pretty scatter-brained: i normally outline the individual scenes in a story, but those are always flexible. from that point, i write dialogue first, as it's usually what i struggle with the most and the most important (to me) to really solidifying a character. i like to work this way because too often i read stories where a character's dialogue seems inconsistent with how a writer has characterized them. typically, it's a character sounding too profound in a certain crucial moment of the story when nothing has really been established that would make anyone believe a character was capable of that statement. it's something to try, at least, and i think it helps the credibility of a character since i can work backwards. the negative side of my process is that very often i'll have gaping holes in my story where something is supposed to be but i haven't written it yet. a lot of times, these holes will linger and slow down the finishing of a draft. there's definitely merit in writing the story the whole way through, but it's just not what i do. | ||
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lac29
United States1485 Posts
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29 fps
United States5725 Posts
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 11:30 lac29 wrote: What newspapers, magazines, etc do you read or subscribe to? What are your opinions on the whole Klazert thing? here's the current list.. newspapers: new york times - best book review on earth washington post - next best book review on earth magazines: the new yorker - needs no introduction the atlantic - nearly as famous poets & writers - a great tool for any writer, especially as a resource for finding out about grants and contests up for grabs, as well as having good content the writer's chronicle - similar to p&w in mission, and it comes on these fantastic oversized pages etc (these are mostly literary quarterlies, alphabetically organized): AGNI American Literary Review American Short Fiction Antioch Review Conjunctions Five Points Glimmer Train Stories Iowa Review McSweeney's Mid-American Review Mississippi Review Missouri Review North American Review Quarterly West Western Humanities Review Zoetrope i should see about getting that stuff as a tax write off too... i can't say i know too much about the klazart thing, and i had never heard of the website he was using to drum up support for his book. if publishes aren't biting, i'd tell him to keep revising. what's the story there anyway? | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
On July 14 2009 06:44 benjammin wrote: indispensable. the thing about writing is that there's always something to learn, if a writer ever says they have nothing to learn they are a lazy and, most likely, poor writer. i would say the author who's had the most profound impact on me was john cheever, an absolute master of the short story form. check out his collected works, but specifically "the swimmer" and "the enormous radio." That's encouraging to me, as I have an odd system that during the summer instead of writing I tend to read something like 3-4 books a day, I have the time to do this and find that reading an excellent work of art inspires me to write, and also to aspire to that level of writing. Even if I'm somehow roped into reading something terrible I try and figure out what I can take away from the writing (because lots of really poorly written stories are still entertaining, or I may attempt to figure out what not to do). I 'll look into John Cheever, "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis is probably my favorite short story. | ||
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benjammin
United States2728 Posts
On July 14 2009 11:58 29 fps wrote: how do you get a book published? a whole lot of luck, first off. but seriously, the best way to get a publisher to notice your work is to shop your work around to different literary agents. they represent you and your work and then shop the work around to publishers. most major publishing houses won't read unagented work, and most decent literary agents won't represent bad work (they make more getting your book sold than they do if it doesn't, so they do have an incentive to help you). the agent is sort of like a gatekeeper between you and the publisher, and typically does a lot of the legwork for both you and the publisher. your work gains a lot of clout by having someone representing you, although it will always cost you money. | ||
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