/lit/ - Literature

Below you will find bog standard, cliche, everyman self-pity.

>dipping my toes into the online dating scene and it's destroying me.
>I have given so much of myself away to so many random people.
>physically and emotionally
>starting to think I should just withdraw into myself again.

I have very rarely heard of someone having a meaningful, adult relationship from these things. It just breeds conditions where personality is completely irrelevant and people just project what they think the other wants to see. It also creates some hyper competitive reality where people are always trying to find the perfect match. Even if this one is ok, maybe the next will be even better, so keep your options open.

After way too many stupid hookups I thought I had found someone who was prepared to try and build something or at least give love a chance. I genuinely liked her, stopped talking to other girls and then we went on a few dates and then she told me it wouldn't work out. Fair enough. The clear communication is plus, and we have all been on both ends of that so I can understand.

But I am a human. I have feelings. I have emotions. I don't turn on and off like a plastic fucking light switch. I'm hurting bros. This desperation must be humming off of me.

Anyone who reminds me of myself.

>>16581026
I just someone interested in what Im thinking and how Im feeling. Friends obviously fill the hole mostly but the intimacy is always lacking. Those first months when you're with a girl and she's genuinely interested in learning about you is always pure bliss.

I actually credit fanfiction with my development as a writer. I don't think you should stay writing fanfiction if you want to seriously develop as a writer. But fanfiction is a pretty low-stakes, consequence-free environment in which to develop certain traits that it's useful and good for writers to have, even writers of original fiction.

I don't understand why writers like GRRM are so pissy about fanfiction. I see it as a good thing. And at the end of the day, a lot of it is just people having fun, so what's the harm? I've seen people say that it stifles real writers, but I think if you are, or are going to become, a "real" writer you were always naturally going to outgrow fanfiction anyway. Nobody who's a "real" writer will be content playing with other people's worlds and characters the rest of their life. The stronger the writer itch becomes, the greater the impulse gets to strike out and make things of your own. So I don't think fanfiction impedes "real" writers at all. It may even be very good for them.

woke up to find this lil treasure.
you flatter me, gents :)

now curious why the fuck my threads are pruned but this isnt, though.

When writing fiction, how do you tell if your themes/philosophy are any good? I’m not worried about plotting, every story is already told and all of literature is built upon stealing ideas. Themes and concepts are much more difficult for me and not just in a “did someone else cover this more thoroughly” sort of way. I have a lot of question like:
>How do you tell if the ideas you want to convey aren't already obvious to everyone else?
>How do you know whether you just have a surface level understanding of the philosophy you are discussing?
>What if I’m basing my writing on the stupidest fucking hot take?
>What if my philosophy actually boils down to “we live in a society”?
>When does something stop being a work of fiction illustrating philosophy and start being an essay with window dressing?

Essentially is there a way to critically look at my own thematic grounding without just launching content out and seeing if people call me an idiot?

2010's are wrapping up quickly. What's your vote for the best novel that came out in the past decade?
Alternatively, what's the best book you've personally read since 2010? Can be any book, as long as you think it's the best one you've read in the past 10 years.

>>13870492
What a brainlet.
1. Basic physics, the only thing in question is what it going to shit will do to us.

2. ? why is this in question

3. I'd argue bad, but better than the nazis. Anything other than that is arbitrarily specific.

_Also_, this isn't goddamn /lit/ try again,

>>12094071

>Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam

Being British and living in Hong Kong most of my life, I was always wound up about the way Beijing kept dicking around in HK politics, thinking about how the UK was better etc. but after reading this and becoming aware of various evils and douchebaggery of the British government, I very cynically saw (and still do) all governments as completely identical; they're just amoral organisms doing everything they can by any means to obtain power to survive, and holding loyalty to one strikes me as utterly pointless.

That was more recent, and although not literature, 4chan has changed my understanding of the world more than anything else I've read. Discovering it during my uni years, it helped me to understand how people really thought behind the endless masks of politeness.

>>11366199
Because they have little power in the world. So any one who 'made it' try to pull up fellow sisters and feel it is their responsibility to do. Men don't have this problem so we don't have this culture

>>11308349
Go back to what you were. Embrace the insanity. The sane won't survive in this world for long, not any more. Look at all the fucking normalfags on Twitter and Facebook saying how much they hate the state of the world right now. Look at them all, suffering from depression and committing suicide.

The world belongs to the mad now. Join them.

>>11302568
I suppose I can't stop you, but at the very least try to do something that has some meaning to you before offing yourself. You don't want to arrive in the afterlife with regrets you can't easily fix.

Godspeed anon

As a writer, I worry I don't have as much power and ability as I wish I had. I worry I'll never have the ability to produce the sublime.

>>10903897
The main issue is my confidence, I think I'm impeded by it. Doubtless Blood Meridian or Gravity's Rainbow, for example, are great, and I did love the books. I feel as if I understood the novels in their most important aspects, but, as with most other great works, I feel as if I hadn't grasped them properly. I have found that re-reading is extremely helpful, given time in between, and reading Disgrace by Coetzee and All the Pretty Horses by McCarthy, I definitely grew more confident, but really only over those individual works.

tl;dr I realize re-reading is definitely important.

>>10757030
a man chooses, a pleb accepts

Do you have a great project, writers of /lit/? Something you hope to finish before you die, that will be the summit of all your efforts as a writer?

>>10509605
Maps of Meaning is easily one of the best books on religion and the human condition out there. He has some cool lectures and gives excellent advice, in part because he approaches the question of how to live in a very literal and specific manner.

His crusade against "post-modernism" is, however, rather uninformed. He does not understand the post-structuralist philosophers in great detail. But there does seem to be a deep opposition if you actually know about both them and Peterson.

Peterson looks at the world through his categories of chaos and order. (Chaos and order are sort of like phenomenological "places", and possibly metaphysical categories, but he's unsure of going that far.) Peterson explicitly agrees with these philosophers in that the world is "slippery" and chaotic with no rational order. But Peterson, being a pragmatist, sees the practical solution as imposing order onto this chaos (which is basically the process of categorization), whereas the post-structuralists tend to question and may even want to destroy what they see as oppressive and arbitrary orders. However, Peterson does make great emphasis in Maps of Meaning on the necessity for both chaos and order, but chaos is only necessary insofar as it helps "update" order.

is there any audiobook that's worth listening to over the written word?

You know the drill