/lit/ - Literature

I haven't had much inspiration to write prose lately. I'm planning a script, comic, comedy set and VN right now. It's just not coming out as prose lately. Anyone else find themselves drifting towards other media? I miss it.

>inb4 pleb

>>6995061
Here's one of two ideas I have that I've yet to start (pilot for a TV show)

>Doug Farrow, entering his first year at the New England Institute of Art and Science, notorious for its reputation as safety school for Ivy League rejecties and washouts, pitches an idea to the university police department to go undercover into a fraternity to discern the extent of chapter drug dealing and general mischief, wearing wires and recording his day to day routine. In reality, the AV and math whiz sets up this scheme to legally obtain $5000 per semester while feeding the police disinformation. While he uses everyone for his own gain, he is secretly observed along with the members of Tau Beta Mu by a secret government agency who believe the fraternity is a front for an extremist group.

>>6995092
I'm trying to get a comic off the ground, unfortunately I can't draw for shit. I have the inspiration and the commitment, and I think it'd do well, but I need a real artist.

>>6995061
It is 12:49am, and Daniel is still awake. His face is flashing a glow from the computer monitor as he sits in wait. He is not sure what he is waiting for. He has been waiting for hours. The fan in the corner facing him lets off a harmonizing hum. Beads of sweat running down his neck are dried instantly. The sound of late night traffic fades in and out. A neighbor's dog barks profusely. Daniel's attention is quickly grabbed when he hears a car moving slowly up the driveway. He stands up to peek out the window. High beams on the car cast slow moving shadows on the wall behind him. The rusted metal suspension on the car gives off a soft popping sound, reminding him of a metal barge at sea. The engine pants one last time before the driver turns it off. Daniel is familiar with the sound of this car. He knows who it belongs to. They are coming for him. He figured it was only a matter of time before someone came looking for him.

>>6995101
>Following two failed engagements and several unsuccessful attempts to establish himself as a poet in New York City, Daniel Waters retreats to his New England hometown to fill a teaching position in the Social Studies department of his old high school. After he's kicked out of a friend's house for his rampant drug use, the wallowing and self-destructive teacher, unwilling to take his new life seriously, discreetly sets himself up in the very same high school to live rent free. Each of the three acts begin with a therapy session, showing his progress and overall mental decline over the course of the semester; the play catalogs his attempts to inspire his students while juggling two taboo sexual entanglements and the courtship of a childhood friend and chemistry teacher.

>>6995105
Stray observations:

It seems like you're giving the reader details but what's the purpose?

There's no real flow at all, just sentence to sentence without a conceptual harness.

>Daniel's attention is quickly grabbed
Come on, that's kinda sloppy, you can do better!

>He knows who it belongs to.
Redundancy, yo.

Periods. Don't. Add. Tension.

>>6995104
Yeah I can't draw for shit either. I'd like to lean, but I don't know where I'd find the time.

>>6995101
I'd be worried about it feeling like 21 Jump Street. How would you keep the plot from dragging? Season length idea?

>>6995113
I'd need to really like the character, he can't just be House.

>>6995124
Seconded. You're saying a lot of nothing, and the prose isn't particularly inspired for it to be enjoyable as is. Very flat. It reads like you haven't done much writing. That's fine, you just need to find a voice and keep at it.

>>6995137
I'm young and I'd like to jump into everything I can. I'm ghostwriting raps even, I can write but I can't actually rap and I no nothing about production. It's mostly DOOM inspired shit, but it's a start and honestly it's the most fun I have writing.

My idea was more a reaction to The Office. I came up with the idea of a mockumentary of a guy recording evidence to expose a government conspiracy, but being too inept and embedded himself to actually be a whistle blower. Very satire, very fun when I was in high school. I shelved it and came back and transitioned it to a hidden camera show about a kid in college making the most out of a series of shitty mistakes. The focus is the fraternity (based on my own experiences, but taking nods from Animal House) and I'll be filming the pilot this year with my brothers. The first two seasons can really explore the general outlines of greek life, both dispelling and confirming rumors about the lifestyle, but hitting hard and fast with other aspects of being young and in college. The show follows Doug, so really like Tony Sopranno, when he goes (graduates) the show goes. I already have 50 episode outlines and they're great.

Daniel is caught in circumstance but he's not entire tragic, he deserves about half of what he gets. He's not a sociopath, if anything he cares too much, and he finds himself drifting from failed dream to failed dream, arriving where he told himself he never would squatting in a school and buying drugs off his students. He's given one last chance at redemption in life by actually trying to do his job and finds himself a much better person than he keeps telling himself that he isn't.

>>6995167
Oh, one more part about TBM. The appeal of the idea was trying to strike a balance between the ever advancing plot of Arrested Development with the freedom of a sitcom. Following someone through college, from day one to graduation is what I consider that sweet spot.

>>6995167
>I already have 50 episode outlines and they're great.
Says who? Don't get so sure of yourself. It's dangerous - both for your ego and your wallet. I don't say this to be a dick, they might be the best I've ever read. I don't know, I haven't read them. Just know that I have a lot of experience reading scripts for studios, and most of them are awful and horribly up their own asses. People like to think they're funny when that aren't. That's a very common error.

I guess what I'm trying to say is get an editor.

>>6995183
You're right. I'm just excited and in order for me to actually follow through with it I have to tell myself things like that. It's more about building confidence and getting past my fears than it is egoism.

Stream of conciousness poem I did a week ago:

The day you came into my room
And your stomach was full of rust
And how it cuts you like fire across the woods
Like a million needles in your head
And you firmly grip my throat
When the stars collapse
When your mouth is red
And our lungs melt on themselves
The way you stare at the wall
When we are afraid the most
How you smell when you cry
How ugly we've become
I feel your teeth in my back
And I smile when I do
We are not an ending
We are whats left

>Writing Thread
cringe thread?

>>6995212
If that's how you choose to interpret it.

>Johnathon Markus was a prodigious-seeming specimen of humanity: tall, lean, and far more attractive than the average man. He was the youngest of his companions and the most mundane of them by far, so to counteract this he would mark himself with flashy clothing, ornamentation, and by pulling his otherwise ordinary brown hair into a thick and sprawling ponytail. In truth it was his crude and endless leering that really distinguished him, or at least distinguished him to women, and it was a testament to his anger that he'd momentarily forgotten that another occupant of the room was just such a member of that half of the species.

>>6995061
Jorah was a man of 17 years, well-built and powerful, some skill with a sword. Still, a child’s anger burned in him, the sort of fruitless agonizing rage that makes a little boy bang his fists bloody against a wall. If Jorah thought about it too long he might just begin hammering at his leg and foaming at the mouth, crying out into the morning sky. A great weight crushed his shoulders, he felt as if he was sinking into the beach.

He took deep breaths and kept his head hung low for a moment because he saw her turn and begin wading back toward him. He focused on the hunger pains in his stomach to relax himself, he didn’t have the energy to throw a silly tantrum.

a liar
in a confused stain of mind
maybe
a fully automatic
ballistic insult throwing
assault rifle of a human being
peace. conflict.
i am
everything youve never wanted

Just do I don't have to make a new thread, what books would you recommend to help me get better at writing?

I'm a complete amateur, i've barely written anything and I need some help.

vaporwave is the future lads

https://www.smashwords..

com/books/view/563309

>>6996895
Practice. Write down whatever even if you think it's garbage. It probably is, but at least you're writing.

Also read more, don't copy but learn from people who actually got published.

The keycard swope out of the thin slot and a single beep tore lightly and the door unlocked. The room smelled as it did the my first day here: like a fried egg and cold plastic; wet bolts, even. This nostalgia infused as I make a dragging trek along the dingy, thin-tiled flooring smattered with coal grey dashes and irregular strings of heel scuff, and scorched stickers rising in dirty curls at their corners. I saw him sitting at the end of the beer room, hunched over on his phone. I take one clear across from him, the only sound bouncing about being the tender creaks and the scuffing, rolling of chair wheels. Besides that, nothing. Absolutely nothing but a gulf of silence. And if we were to strike it right, perhaps when our breaths are drawn - in due time - at the same time, I can hear the pallid drone of ether, as if silence itself could not exist in this rivet of emptiness, and what I hear - what we hear - is the unnerving hum of human energy.

>>6996914
So writing guide books are useless or something?

I will keep writing and reading.

>>6996982
I read Stephen King's "On Writing" before and that's about it.
I'm just regurgitating the stuff I hear from other people.

>>6996982
You'll soon come to realise that literally no experience is useless in relation to writing, that said those sorts of book are not necessary and tend to hinder creativity. Read them if you want, but don't expect to be any better for it.

Eyelids flicker and flutter. A ballet of every hue and shade; un torrent de couleur. The sun's peachy morning breath flows over the row of pecan trees and a flood fills the room, drowning all the dark but the shadow of a bird. With its somber coo, the pigeon beckoned him to the window. He wills his body to move but he's glued to a porcelain pillow; it knows of the plight that lies beyond its embrace and so holds him tight.

Is this melodramatic?

>>6997043
>Is this melodramatic?
Yes.

>>6997095
Bad?

>>6997043
>>6997119
If this is a satire of amateur writing (waking up scene + purple prose) then nicely done.

If, however, this is an attempt at being sincere, please stop. You're clearly not without talent, so apply yourself.

Where were all the cars going? A good walker can imagine a car’s path, the black line it makes whenever it drives here and there. She watches the line as it starts in Detroit, crosses the continent of North America and then makes intricate squiggles all over a small city. She sees it jut out occasionally at Uncle Andy before resuming its tireless back-and-forth, sometimes carrying six packs and sliced bread, sometimes a weary laborer to his bed. Just once, it meanders over to the hospital to bring a baby home. The baby becomes old, the black line stops its wild meandering at last.

>>6996612
i hate you so much

I watch you, thinking, considering.

No.

That isn't supposed to happen. In what world is it natural to seek out purity, to destroy it with the best of intentions? The mother who abandons her family for some children who will never care? The girl so perfect she's destroying herself for others' happiness?

Purity shouldn't exist, goodness is asking for destruction, corruption. No person is ever that good. I hate you as much as I want to love you.

And so, I think. Wondering how to keep you close, to show you the folly of your actions.

>>6997173
???

The boy came to his senses when he noticed his arm got tired from letting his shepherd pull on it during his lapse. He swapped the leash in the other hand, maneuvering his body behind then beside his shepherd so he could put himself between the street and his shepherd, who began to take advantage of the boy’s carelessness. This meant more hold-ups with the sidewalk foliage, which changed the nature of the walk noticeably to a more traditional one, as the boy felt a tightness in his lower back, and the setting became more sprawled, as endless concrete and shrubs like band-aids dominated the landscape. Cars passed non-stop on the two-lane highway as the night crowd was making it’s way back to the suburbs. They were speeding and the boy flinched at every doppler effect while regretting his present state of being in a loneliness that was on display for everyone to witness on that empty sidewalk. The boy’s iPhone 4 buzzed in the slouch of his jogger pants and he felt a familiar adrenaline. He wondered if his mom woke up to him gone; upon reading the text he would have preferred that to be so.

I just had a chat with some a recently married couple of my quasi roomnates
They caught me on the side of the loft writing in my briefs and after the male got close and made a point to say 'there's no problem' in regards to my decency (my mom told me they tried to initiate a 4 sum with her and her ex) I made a joke about quitting my job to write before going into some of my ideas. Toward the end, when I was basically shoving an unrelated stream of thoughts down their throat it started to get kind of awkward
Despite the female graduating from a good college, having lived a semi interesting life and knowing some semi interesting people into some of the things I was saying, I don't think she's too bright and I encountered some dissonance that I think ultimately came from her not having a real opinion on much of anything. When I switched from universal health care into a mafia approach to working (basically unions) the male almost hostily told me to ask my grandpa, a former port plumber, about that; clearly trying to brush those two culturally competing ideas away
I realize I don't actually talk to people enough and I can sometimes be too much. I should've gone more in depth on singular specifics
>what degree did you get?
>where do you work? (I've never asked)
Actually connecting to people in insignificant ways is a lot more fulfilling than desperately trying to on more I guess perceived topics, trying so hard to start something important

I wouldn't have minded a 3 sum

>>6996895
Your mileage will vary with writing guides. They might work; they might not. I wouldn't recommend bothering.

Just reading more and writing lots and lots of shit will do you better than a couple of guidebooks will.
We don't really like King much around here, I know, but On Writing is a reasonable cross between guide and memoir, so it's fairly entertaining if you're set on a "guide".

Honestly though, just read some good books, and understand and accept that you won't be able to match them right away. If you've any inclination towards writing at all, then a good book will birth some inspiration in you.

>>6996922
"Swope" isn't a word.
The biggest issue here is the tone, I think. It feels too dramatic, and while context may justify that, I don't have it.
Your tense is also skipping back and forth a lot. Pick past or present.
It's good to experiment with punctuation and all, but yours still needs some work. Get yourself a better intuition regarding semi-colons and hyphens. They're great tools, but misusing them can quickly break a piece. Also, commas - use 'em.
Lastly, check for repetition of words. Sometimes it can be used for emphasis or dramatic effect, or whatever (eg, "...nothing. Absolutely nothing..."), but sometimes, it just looks slacky, like: "...are drawn - in due time - at the same time..." and the usages of "scuff"/"scuffing" and "silence".

Read it out loud, and the problems will be more obvious. As it was, I had difficulty making it through.

>>6998350
Thanks for the critique. I'll definitely keep these things in mind. How did you feel about the flow of it? I know the grammar may have hindered it, but do you think the prose could use some cutting down, or more? Is there anywhere you could say read well?

>>6996895
Write, write, and write some more. You're gonna write a heap of dogshit before you write anything half decent, but you have to keep going. A writer is first and foremost a critic, once you can easily recognize "bad" writing, you're on your way to actually developing yourself. Style comes with time, don't try and force it, write in a way that feels right and natural.

I think the most important part of writing though isn't writing. It's everything else. I try to write as little as possible because good writing doesn't come from meeting quotas or reading certain books, it comes from heart, truly caring enough about something and giving enough of a damn to pour your soul into your words and having real experiences to back up what you say. You aren't going to be a better writing sitting in your house, so get the fuck up and do some shit, things that scare you, things you told yourself you'd never do. Fuck a stranger, be selfish, buy food for a homeless person, just get out there and absorb as much of humanity and existence as you can, and when you find that fire inside you that's screaming and telling you to fucking write something down, THEN you can write.

To answer your question "On Writing" (Hemingway) and "The Elements of Style" are great. Hit up famous writers' advice, too.

>>6997151
I'm interested. Context?

>>6997043
No! It was like a flittering mawk opened its wings into a glittering teratoid heliotrope in my mind or sumfthin!

>>6995061
it had to be less than 100 words. Tell me what you think:

He was everywhere I went. Cafeteria, with a foot out to trip me. Classroom, ready to snicker anytime I raised my hand. In the yard, kicking the soccer ball around with his friends, laughing and shouting, while I could only sit and watch. I wanted so badly to kick that ball around. And here it came! — rolling over to where I sat. I picked it up. He decided my reward for that was a push into the mud. Laughter rang out. My blood boiled and my nostrils flared. I stood up, and threw the ball at his face.

"I don't think Kat really understood what she was starting there, you know? Like, it was clear we all understood just what our group had the potential to become, but it never seemed feasible for us to see it go that far.Think anyone else felt that way when they started their little fantasy revolution?"

The thing above my home wobbled. Its tendons snapped with the stress of thousands of tons of muscle and bones. The caustic green of the thing's skin hurt my eyes. A shriek erupted from below me. Miss Aziz was losing her mind. I honestly couldn't blame her.The thing was huge.

Hey, is poetry acceptable here or no?

At the moment im thinking about a torture scene, this is what i got.

>I told the guards to make him see everything, i was decided to make him suffer from what he did, i then grabbed a woman by the hair and pulled her in fron of him, it was his sister, she was pregnant and crying to forgive her, she was making too much noise that i cut her tongue, the only thing she could do now was sream while i started peeling of the skin of her legs, Narcish was crying while watching and was telling me to stop, for the final touch i decided to open his estomach and get the baby out, there was blood all over the floor and the woman passed out, whit the dead baby in mi hand i made him eat it, first the legs then the arms and so on.

Sorry for my bad english.

>>6999769
i don't know why but this made me kek, what are you writing?

>>7001360
Giant Ass monster above a city. It'll start by eating a specific kind of person, maybe big titted blondes first. It'll fuck off and the city will rebuild. Few months down the road it'll come back and eat skinny gingers or curvy black women or some shit. Main character won't fall into any of the first few categories of people and by the time they do the military or whatever will have developed some measures against the monsters. Gonna call it "Picking Through Us" or some such shit.

>>7001192
Totes dude.
Enlighten our punk asses.

>>7001409
wow, that's interesting, good luck whit that.

Recently I just finished my latest novel, a story about a young expat stripper in Tokyo who puts on a wrestling mask and starts a murderous revenge rampage through the city's underworld when her estranged father violently re-enters her life.

It's sort of a piss take, filled with gore and violence and gross sex scenes and digressions about the Khmer Rouge and the virtues of terrorism (and a bit where a young woman is beaten about the head with a Sega Mega Drive). I hope to self-publish it over the next few months, after some editing.

>>6995061
Ye have very smooth grammar. Ye deserve promotion, advertisements, perhaps a YouTube channel if yr willing to put in the effort.

Good effort! Really! What a fine bunch of sentences! I appreciate all of yr opinions and I like yr style.

SNFFFFFFFF: Yr prose smells fresh. I love what ye've done with the semicolons. Yr words are like a spring flower; beautiful and vivacious—it's like I'm writing vicariously THROUGH ye.

& I am utterly disarmed by your wit.

>>6995105
I really enjoy the way ye used the word "dog". Something feels completed in me. Well done!

I get the sense ye have legitimately witty Facebook statuses. Yr style rly works for ye, at least in this example. I actually like those words more than mine.

Nice motor control, overall—I'm not sure how ye got it all down. You have a good taste in websites, I'll bet.

Yr mouse told me that ye have very soft fingers and that yr full of youth.

>>6996922
I know yr the kind of guy that wears sick jackets all autumn. I like the way you move the reader through yr word world.

Ye have a good web-surfing stance, posting this here. Ye should be a poster child for poster children. And such nice language mannerisms!

I appreciate that Santa appreciates every mommy, as I'm sure ye do too. I wish I was yr authorial mirror.

I clearly found ye to be a fountain of inspiration. Ye have perfect structure and I disagree with anyone who disagrees with you.

>>6997382
Way to go! Have ye been working on this for forever? With your creative wit, I'm sure ye could come up with sweet compliments to this little excerpt.

I like yr typeface, it is so charming.

>>6997727
Yr writing reminds me of footprints in the sand. Yr tremendous! You deserve fistfuls of compliment and compliments!

Hello, goodbye. Yr word is breath taking. How do you get yr brain to look this great? It is quite strapping.

Two American backpackers stepped off the train at Copenhagen's central station. A policewoman with a drug sniffing dog had them stop and lay their bags on the ground, the train was coming from Amsterdam. Finding nothing she let them leave and they made their way into the city. Everything was clean, from the sidewalk to the teeth bared at them by Danish smiles. This agitated one of the Americans, it is a well known fact that nothing should be too clean. Checking into the minimalist hostel only agitated him further. When he saw the walk in shower he gritted his teeth. Somehow even the fish and caper dinner that evening tasted too sanitary. So he took a shit right in the middle of the main square and was promptly sacrificed by pagan Scandinavians as their teeth glowed bright from the burning pyre.

>>Not OP
>>VIrgin

Whilst remaining fundamentally agnostic in both religion and philosophy; my mother had crafted our home into somewhat spiritual sanctum. One of which even the greatest of Freudian thinkers would only circle- perhaps taking notes after settlement nearby?
I grew up in a household governed by crystal rocks, a void of influence lay the foundations for true freewill. Mirroring the alchemic transformation period of renaissance times I prospered.
I’m not too sure about living long since I smoke 12 cigarettes a day. Getting a fuck is difficult because I’m short and beta but… I got a uni degree in print media so I prospered?

>>6997043
Ooh my, my eye lids are a flutter, babbling and blushing like gossiping girls--and there comes the sun marching with a militant poise and delivers a stern knock on my forehead: he tells me, Don't write again what Pope did well, and before I can even begin to contemplate what he meant--there goes my tongue a wagging again like an indolent worm vying for attention in class: Listen here, voice in my head, he tells me, I call the shots around here so don't go round thinking up things to happen--to which I replied in thought, But surely we must come to some development, or some thematic exposition--I won't hear it, says the tongue, rising with anger as if it to get out of his chair, the medium is mellifluous prose, the end: a pleasant and quiet waggling of my compatriots; it's how we meditate.

This was all very strange I thought, and was close to interject when--wheeling whirlwinds stir the bedsheets, and lifting like sails they brought to life the air's voluminous being: that invisible substance shaping the hollow of my swelling chest, swelling with--Now please for God's sake, you've had your fun--I'm not quite done, said the tongue, I've really got this metaphysical thing going here entirely by the rhythm of the language, just listen: the air lunged out of my lungs with bayonets ready, spearing electrons with blades hot from the source and kernel of my life, deep in the smithies of the--Now we really are testing the limits of this prose business--No, I'm telling you, he said with an angry and emphatic spasm, pure beautified essence will issue from this crystalline prose; it'll be so crisp you could have it with milk for breakfast. Now where was I? Oh yes: the core contingent upon some indefinite and spaceless whole, partless and fused as a sphere that spins and gleams like a drop of winter's water; that immediate and timeless form unravelled from an endless yarn, swivelling on the pin of my—I think I’ve had it—Shush!—the pin of my pupil’s point.

The tongue relaxed here, at which I immediately seized the bugger and threatened him with a pair of scissors: Look here, I thought, we’ve had no plot, little to no character, no suspense; the whole thing’s in a terrible disarray!—Weww dahs wah yoo ding—Well I’ll tell you what: let up this funny business about the fireworks and I’ll let you off with just a warning? Deal?—Deew—Splendid.

I awoke early one morning to find the pleasant issue of waking or sleeping present itself to me in the warm and gentles rays of the sun.

They escaped the weight of darkness to forge a path into the marrow of the spirit. They chose to drown in a deeper vacancy, an emptiness that quells the null... A choir for the forgotten. They escaped the weight of darkness, to drown in another.

>>7002430
Here's more:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

>>7002430
overwrought, pretentious wording

>>7002454
this is better, pretty sure it is Thoureau though

>>7002430
WROUGHT HARDER

>>7002430
>to forge a path into the marrow of the spirit
Holy mixed metaphors, Batman

random excerpt from something I'm writing, not sure what it'll turn into
The silent age has settled down into the lower city. Never understood why they called it that, no one here seems to sleep anymore. I just cut-up, blackout, and hope for the- “keep that film and book in the back room”. The command was issued by Jeremy Van Biddyer, and I was trying to ignore it. “Keep em there, keep em there, and lock the door!”, he said, darting into his office before I could even look up to see him. The man moved only in jerks and shuffles, and spoke breathlessly. Pure neurosis that must secrete from every gland in his body. He was the owner of Nebo Archives, an utterly pointless establishment that sold old media. It was all a bit too Japanese for my tastes, the whole idea of it.

And then, the uncommon sound of stone grinding against stone. Another shout: “Back room ain't good enough for em, get to the vault!”. I gave the book another look over. It was red, its pages gilded in a flat red as well. No dust cover, which usually rendered them worthless. Must be something different about this one. Or maybe it was just another one of Biddyer's delusions.

“VAULT!”; that one seemed especially frantic, he's wound up today. The film was the same, a red disk in a plain red box. No words or markings of any kind on either. When I brought it down to him, he was standing in the threshold, bathed in sweat. He grabbed the box containing the book and film and strafed into the cavernous room, quickly yet carefully setting it down. I'll never forget his bulging eyes when he stood there, holding a sort of nervous stoic stance. Before walking back he declared to no one in particular: “This place shall remain unknown... until the knights of faith bring the truth of earthly happiness to the light... or the Lord brings the light to them”.

I sat at the pier and watched snow fall into the ocean. Like in boyhood, only with my silly sympathy for the snowflakes that would drown before being given the chance to hide anything ugly gone. Anyway. It was a yearning for the crescendo, my rising melancholy seemed to imply, that brought me back here. I have returned to play out the dream of every man who sat at the shores of a feral sea and was washed away. The quest for home, act III. This was my Ithaca.

I had grand and poetic visions about this day- meeting old friends over a beer and, after some awkwardness, continuing just where we left off. Like traveling back in time- only with a few more stories to tell and the old ones deepened a bit by wisdom. Exchanging meaningful looks with a long lost love. The ideal outcome, the happy end, dream logic.

But the suitors have begun their work even before I was gone and Penelope is now gone too- drowned in PTA meetings and tacky antiques shops. Although the reality was not so bad either; home gnawing at me with it's stalactite teeth, like a welcome back kiss straight trough the formality of flesh and into marrow. Walking damp streets, this time in a nice coat. Smoking in front of old haunts and seeing flashes of times past trough the smoke, feeling too silly to go in. Being bothered by no one. Not seeing a single face you want to and ignoring, despite brief flashes of recognition, the ones you don't care for.

Anyway.

Back then I thought God made it snow to cover all the ugliness. Maybe it was inspection time for deities. Maybe the stern main office guy would park his astral-chariot around Neptune each year around this time. And God would freak and hastily throw some frosting on Earth to cover the unsightly bits. Like a modern housewife when the in-laws come knocking. Made sense.

ITT:
>Tooo looooong senteces
>semicolons.. A LOT
>Abundance of totally useless adverbs

>>7002733
Ok Ernest Vonnegut King... get it?

Pleb opinions.

>>7002298
Pretty good.

>>7002430
Don't like it.

>>7002714
What is going on?

>>7002714
I enjoyed this. I'd read more.

>>7002720
> Like in boyhood, only with my silly sympathy for the snowflakes that would drown before being given the chance to hide anything ugly gone. Anyway. It was a yearning for the crescendo, my rising melancholy seemed to imply, that brought me back here.

This is terrible. The rest was okay though. I'm guessing this didn't take you long.

>>7002947
Sorry if it's unclear, like I said it's a random excerpt from something larger. The setting is vaguely dystopian, some time in the future (but I'm trying to avoid going to far into science fiction territory). If you look up "Nebo" (the name of the store) and note the first name of the shopkeeper then you'll get a hint of one of the main themes of the story.

>>7003005
Thank you very much, when I have a bigger chunk of it finished I'd like to post it.

CHAPTER 1

Fucking shit, mother wants me to wake up early again. It's pretty fucking early and I fucking hate this shit to be fucking honest and fucking shit mother why, just why.
She tells me we are lunching out today. Fucking shit

CHAPTER 2

Fucking shit this car trip is lasting forever.
Fucking shit this shit food tastes like fucking shit my fucking God, I wish I had stayed fucking home my fucking God, I could be sleeping right now fucking shit I was having such a fucking nice dream, that chick I like was there fucking shit, why the fuck did mom wake me the fuck up.

CHAPTER 3

Ineluctable modality of the visible. What the fuck!?

CHAPTER 4

These people all look like idiots for fucking fuck's sake the fuckers just seem like fucking robots I hate everyone I hate the world fucking parasites.
—"Oh look at me talk I'm so great!"
—"Yes, you are! You are ahah!"
—"Keep paying attention to me though! XD"

Fucking fuckers, fucking fucker motherfucking parasites.

CHAPTER 5

The fucking sky is cloudy and I can't spot a single blue spot on it today, this day is absolute shit.

CHAPTER 6

That girl over there looks fucking cute. I wish my mother wasn't here right now at this shopping mall because we are at the shopping mall right now, and that's where I am seeing or saw the girl that is fucking cute.
I would fuck her right in the pussy.

CHAPTER 7

All these girls look fucking cute my fucking GOD this is fucking Heaven, mother GET THE FUCK AWAY from me, please.

CHAPTER 8

These girls dress like whores. Fucking whores, everywhere.
I am glad I am getting out of this shopping mall to go back at my grandmother's house and then return home after we have supper there.

CHAPTER 9

Grandma die already

CHAPTER 10

Actually this food's pretty good.

CHAPTER 17

What was good about your day?
Nothing.

What did you like most about it, then?
Fucking shit I hated everything.

What did you like least, then?
Fucking mother. I mean, not fucking her but fucking shit someone cut her throat already and let her to fucking bleed to death, that fucking parasite.

What parallel courses did
What the fuck!?

CHAPTER 18

Finally I am back to my bed the day was fucking shit I was having a nice dream about this girl she is a fucking decent human being the fucking girl unlike these people I have to talk to all fucking day and it makes me fucking sick in my stomach if I had a knife I would fucking slaughter them all except grandma shes cool but for fucks sake Im pretty serious here I want nothing to do with these people Ill just fucking get a fucking job already and move and for fucks sake if mom doesnt stop messing with my life I will just tell her to fuck off and yes I will tell her the word fuck for the first time in her life and shell hear it and shell have that word in her mind for weeks with my lovely voice attached to fucking it and maybe then shell learn maybe then shell learn I want to fuck my mother what the fuck what the fuck

>>7003070
if not bait, lol

First two paragraphs of what I'm currently working on, I'm actually cringing already:

Space, an endless ocean of stars teaming with life from far beyond the earth. Countless lives being lived out across the galaxies. The universe never sleeps. But of course all this was of a little interest to Bolton Natch. He watched the Earth shrink as the orbital elevator ascended, there was no wonder or amusement in his eyes. Bolton stared out at the stars, all he saw was the black void he’d be working in for the rest of his life.

Next to Bolton sat his father, puffing away at a cigar. They rode the elevator up in silence, along with several other passengers. All of them were headed toward the gates. A floating ring far above the Earth’s equator, The Gates acted as a very expensive toll booth. Not only did they control what went to Earth and what left, but they also paid for themselves. More importantly it was where Bolton would begin work as a Gate Captain.

>>7003111
teeming

>>7003127
Yeah, I probably should have taken a better look at this before posting.
Thanks anon.

>>7003111
Have the character describe space and make it more interesting and personal than an ocean of stars with teeming life. If he doesn't give a shit about the stars then show it.

A wealthy landed West Egg gentleman smoking a cigar in a space elevator is a nice image though.

>>7003044
It's an attempt at combining two things I wrote today.

> Like in boyhood...
That part was tacked on to get them to mesh. Maybe sequential is the way to go.

>>7002714
Liked it a lot until the last line for some reason.

>>7003111
i like it. would read

>>7003111
Very cliched.

>>7003111
Why is it rife with grammatical errors?

>>7003304
Because I haven't really looked at it since I first wrote it, see >>7003136

My family were on holiday recently (me and my parents) and a lot of our stuff was stolen. My mum really cracked up about it and we had no idea where all of our stuff had got to. I wanted to write a novel where it turns out I had done it all, somehow subconsciously. I dont know how to do it though.

>>7003312
I see.

>>7003111
It seems written well enough but as the first two paragraphs it's really dry. I mean what's so special about this piece of science fiction that I haven't already seen? Maybe develop your universe some more, really nail something that'll give you an itch as soon as you start reading.

>>7002720
>yearning for the crescendo
>quest for home, act III
>my Ithaca

ew.

>>7002149
this screams randumb but i kind of want to read it anyway

>>7002454
Henry go to bed

I was trying to write as complex as possible without it becoming ridiculous and unbearable. If I failed please tell me: I need to know. Please inform me about any grammatical errors as well.

A gunshot echoes into the night, away from its epicenter, where a crimson pool, a smattering of gray matter, and the twisted body of a young boy lie in the street, brightening in the headlights of cars as they approach, and darkening as they pass, uncaring. People around the corpse slowly stepped back: blood flowed towards their feet through cracks in the asphalt, forming red spiderwebs, scarlet neurons. A shoeless woman knelt next to the boy, her bangs falling in her eyes, her tears glinting under the sodium lights, dripping over the swell of her cheeks, around her open mouth, off her chin, through the air, onto the remaining part of the boy’s head, which lay cradled in her lap in the shape of a crescent, the smaller arc dripping ichor, darkening her pearlwhite sundress. The crowd stood silent as her tears dropped and her shadow quivered: no response entered their fractured thoughts...

>>6999683
I think you don't know how write with intention, but that's okay, most people don't. I think you have the basic frame but you need to really want it to be thrilling in 100 words. Pacing is precise and diction is everything, every single word has to be ideal.

>>7003354
>I was trying to write as complex as possible
...why?

>away from its epicenter
as opposed from where? it can only echo from its epicenter.

>smattering of gray matter
this seems too much, you could word this simpler

Overall I don't think it's bad, just strop trying so hard to "sound complex" and write naturally.

>>7003378
>...why?
Just to see where I am. It's not my normal writing style.
>as opposed from where? it can only echo from its epicenter
True, but I felt it was necessary because it clarified where the blood, brains, body were
>this seems too much, you could word this simpler
I could have, but I couldn't really come up with something that gave the same image I wanted.

What were the specific parts, if any, did you like?

It's been a week since the thermometers started hovering above zero again. Just enough to melt down the 2 meters of snow that had been choking the city for over... a month or perhaps two... I think, to less than half it's original size. The monolithic white blanket started crumbling under its own soggy weight. People and cars were crushed by the dozens by ice falling off the rooftops and the first patches of concrete and shingles started emerging again. Since this morning buildings, roads and people no longer seem like relics of an old, long lost civilization faintly peeking out a sea of white.

No longer were the streets dotted by men shoveling furiously at minus twenty degrees to cut paths toward food and other supplies. No longer was the neighborhood forced into camaraderie by necessity. Spring could be heard dripping, sloshing and droning for mates. The coldest winter to plague Europe in this age set off and took all that pathos away with it to the sinking pole.

Time out was over.

Three teenagers arrive at a McMansion in the Dallas suburbs, one of them carrying a case of Coors Light. Hearing sounds from inside they let themselves in to meet a group of thirty or so peers in an open interior. Some were gathered around a tile island in the kitchen flipping red plastic cups, others could be seen through a glass wall lounging under florescent lighting around the pool outside . A smaller clique had formed around a television and bong as four bloodshot eyes exited the bathroom wiping their two noses. As the three approached the island there was shouting, the emptied heads all turning towards a hallway. An adolescent was backing away down the hall from a volcanic red face and piercing pointed finger. From the commotion it could be understood that the receding teen had raped the unconscious friend of the prosecutor. Others gathered around, emotions led to the rapist being pinned on the floor. It was decided by drunken, stoned, tweaking teenagers that to insert a weight bar in the rapist's rectum was the only fitting punishment. The scene doesn't need to be described. The three left the house stone cold sober and decided that it would be better as a movie night.

>>7003639
>friend of the prosecutor.
>a volcanic red face
>the emptied heads
A bit much for me.
> towards a hallway
I guess down the hallway would make more sense.

I started a short story that I want to make longer but the thought of planning a novel is daunting to me at this point as I'm only used to writing articles.

I was thinking about doing a weekly anonymous blog of the story as I write it and create a whole social media persona around it. It's spooky related so that's why I feel this would kind of work.

i just wrote this in a bar.

a man walked miles in the Mojave desert. he yearned for penance for the wrongs he has done, and retribution for the wrongs done to him. thirsty thirsty, his tongue rubbed the roof of his mouth like sandpaper. a lone biplane flew above, reminded him that there are still others alive. he began to drag his feet, the sun beat down upon him. he fell near some cacti, and feasted in a last ditch effort to survive. as the sun began to morph into new shapes and colors, he surprisingly felt content in his plight.

I'm in a bar my friend wrote this.

Doin the grind, the same every day with no end in my own sight, but there is a light

I do not recognize the light but I know it is there, inside, not to be touched, but to realize it's there.

I see it now, with this knowing I finally feel free from the black

>>7003840
>>7003851
Honestly, both seem aimless and pretentious.

>>7003840
>>7003851
What is grammar?

Short story about a twenty-something waitress working at a bar with a bunch of other twenty-something year olds. Herself and a few of thither staff members are college graduates who are unable to get employed in their area.She watches as a romance unfold between a glamorous party girl bartender and an attractive, charismatic clerk. Throughout the story the main haracter judges the shit out of them, viewing them as beneath her because they didn't go to college and have no interest in it. She relishes in the fact that even though they're both attractive and seem like they're enjoying life, their lifestyle is reckless, hedonistic and unsustainable. At some point, they'll have to pay for it. She is smug About going to college. She thinks that she insured herself a good future. She makes good decisions and the others don't.

Anyway, the boy ends up getting the girl pregnant.
Cut to a few years later. The bartender had the baby and continues to work at the bar. The main character still works there too.

>>7004081 here


>>7003322

I love the first two sentences o this post. Would legit keep the wording the same and use it as the opening to your story. Write it in the first person.

theindiscriminateconsumer.WordPress.com

Well, seeing as I've given up on so many projects, I won't give up on my latest until it is done. Sadly, however, I can't write much at the moment regardless of the idea expanding, too much of myself is being devoted to gut-grinding negativity with my situation and my writing is coming out more forced. As a compensation, I've started a blog project that encompasses my reading and other forms of entertainment consumption, maybe as an attempt to get in touch with what I really like. It's a review blog. My first review was written
today.

>>7003169
>Liked it a lot until the last line for some reason.

Just wondering, why exactly? Because it felt jarring and out of place? Or because you just don't like that theme in general? Or something else?

John Titor tells Okabe that he can't fully decode the SERN files without an IBN 5100 computer, a rare model that he finds difficult to track down.

I wrote this for the Qixi Festival today. Tanabata, if you prefer Japanese. How good/bad is it?

When to the seventh night they flock,
Joy-birds across the silver stream
With wings like glockenspiels that beat
And ford the waters, dock to dock,
Allowing us to meet—

Your sunset clouds signal to me
Anticipation, in their weave
Of colour threaded through with heat
Beneath their studied lethargy,
As ev'ning airs blow sweet—

And till the morning you'll be real
No bright star, distant: human warmth
In hands, cheeks, eyelashes adorn,
Beauty to see, your pulse to feel.
I'll hold you till the morn.

So when tonight the bridge is born
Allowing us at last to meet
I'll come, as ev'ning airs blow sweet:
I'll come to hold you till the morn.

http://pastebin.com/mTjZ1PJY

Be brutal

4serpents: the devil walks the post revelation/ post rapture landscape searching for his purpose now that all normal humans are in paradise or hell.

"Your thirst. I've seen it before. A long time ago." Satan paused to look to the sky now choked with clouds. "The sunlight. It beings you pain?"
"It burns like fire." She whimpered. "I have to get to the village. I need to feed before they move on."
"I can see that. I have no qualms with you feeding on your fellow man but the one behind me is not to be touched. I can offer the shadow of my wing to keep the pain at bay if you'll allow our company as you travel to the village."
"I have to feed soon." She gasped, her throat beginning to sound horse. Satan reached down, grabbed her by the pit of the arm, and yanked her to her feet. Her legs wobbled with weakness but steadied. With a sound that mimicked a sail unfurling, Satan's wing unfolded, it's silhouette enveloping the woman and the area around her.
"Then by all means," he stepped out of her path. "Let us be on our way." The nephilim walked along with them as satan provided shade for her. He walked on Satan's other side, keeping his distance from the strange woman. After many minutes of silence, he spoke.
"Master?" He asked. "Is she like me? A nephilim?"
"Like you? No. She's an abomination of a different color. Her hunger is different from yours. Yours stems from the fact that everything you touch rots or decays before you can eat it whereas she is already a thing of decay, a crypt orchid, a member of the undead. Few have ever walked the earth

>tfw I write all my short stories in Scots because I'm afraid my standard english prose is shoddy

>>7004629
Doesn't really sound like something someone would "declare to no one in particular." Also is the place unknown or is it an establishment that sells stuff? Just seems like forced foreshadowing to me..

A gardener told me some plants move
But I could not believe it
Till me and Hannah Hunt
Saw crawling vines and weeping willows
As we made our way from Providence to Phoenix

A man of faith said
Hidden eyes could see what I was thinking
I just smiled and told him
That was only true of Hannah
And we glided on through Waverley and Lincoln

Our days were long our nights no longer
Couning seconds, watching hours
Though we live on the US dollar
You and me, we got our own sense of time

In Santa Barbara, Hannah cried
And missed those freezing beaches
And I walked into town
To buy some kindling for the fire,
Hannah tore the New York Times up into pieces

If I can't trust you then damn it, Hannah
There's no future, there's no answer
Though we live on the US dollar
You and me, we got our own sense of time

I'm sat here at eleven o'clock at night - in my room; my jail, waiting for all my cells to stop dividing. The bare fat of my stomach has the texture of hot plastic. My bin is full of wank tissues. My shelves are empty - apart from the bottom one, which is covered in coke cans. I think there's a sob waiting just behind my eyes, pushing against the floodgates. I want to scream, but I can't anymore. I remember I was part of a drama group when I was younger and I loved a girl there - if what I felt was love, I mean I hope it was love. We once stood in a line with our jumpers scrunched against our faces, and we were told to scream into them. I stood next to her. I tried to scream. I think I heard a muffled laugh right next to me. I think she may have laughed at me. Anyway that story ended months later with her saying "Sorry, I only think of you as a friend" and my legs giving out; I muttered my apologies and my gaze was fixed on her body as she walked away. God, I learned to love her walk away. I still dream about her sometimes. I belong in a grave. I'm sat here at eleven o'clock at night. There's a girl who works at the cinema who I want to be with. My brother doesn't believe I could ask her out. Nor do I. I'm sat here at eleven o'clock at night. I wish I could tell the whole world how much I loath myself. I wish I could scream. I wish I could be let into somebody's universe - all their little habits and in-jokes and not being forgotten. I wish I could find the grave where I belong; a planet of graves.

How is this for the preamble of a fictional constitution?

The European state, officially the Empire of Greater Europe, is a federalist absolute monarchy established on the principles of autocracy, meritocracy and justice. The European state officially assumes the legacy of the Roman Empire by virtue of its rule over the imperial city of Rome and the reconstituted Imperial Senate. The European state assumes sole ownership of the titles of Roman Emperor and Roman Empress by virtue of its de jure status as the continuation of the Roman state.

>>7007666

> I'm sat

>>7007675
Sorry.

Niggas wanna try, niggas wanna lie
Then niggas wonder why niggas wanna die
All I know is pain, all I feel is rain
How can I maintain with mad shit on my brain
I resort to violence, my niggas move in silence
Like you don't know what our style is, New York niggas the wildest
My niggas is with it, you want it come and get it
Took it then we split it, you fucking right we did it
What the fuck you gonna do when we run up on you
Fucking with the wrong crew
Don't know what we're going through
I'ma have to show niggas how easily we blow niggas
When you find out there's some more niggas that's running with your niggas
Nothing we can't handle, break it up and dismantle
Light it up like a candle
Just cause I can't stand you
Put my shit on tapes like you busting grapes
Think you holdin' weight
Then you haven't met the apes

Is y'all niggas crazy
I'll bust you and be Swayze
Stop actin' like a baby, mind your business, lady
Nosy people get it too, when you see me spit at you
You know I'm trying to get rid of you, yeah I know, it's pitiful
That's how niggas get down, watch my niggas spit round
Make ya'll niggas kiss ground, just for talking shit, clown
Oh, you think it's funny
Then you don't know me, money
It's about to get ugly, fuck it dawg, I'm hungry
I guess you know what that mean, come up off that green
Rob niggas on ravine, don't make it a murder scene
Give a dog a bone, leave a dog alone
Let a dog roam and he'll find his way home
Home of the brave, my home is a cage
Aiyyo, I'ma slave 'til my home is a grave
I'ma pull capers, it’s all about the papers
Bitches caught the vapors and now they wanna rape us

Look what you done started, asked for it, you got it
Had it, shoulda shot it, now you're dearly departed
Get at me dawg, did I rip shit
With this one here I flip shit
Niggas know when I kick shit it's gon' be some slick shit
What was that look for when I walked in the door
Oh, you thought you was raw
Boom, not anymore
Cause now you on the floor, wishing you never saw
Me walk through that door with that .44
Now it's time for bed, two more to the head
Got the floor red, yeah, that nigga's dead
Another unsolved mystery, it's goin' down in history
Niggas ain't never did shit to me
Bitch-ass niggas can't get to me
Gots to make the move, got a point to prove
Gotta make them groove, got'em all like "ooh"
So to the next time you hear this nigga rhyme
Try to keep your mind on gettin' pussy and crime

>>6995061

First of all, to address your piece, OP:
Your punctuation and grammar need some attention.
Your descriptions are inconsistent. In once sentence she wants to appear wealthy and is enjoying sailing on a yacht, next thing you know, she's rather humble and doesn't care about material gain. She is a poet capable of winning grants and prizes, yet she is described as having given up on her art receiving acclaim long ago. Huh?
Just pick one theme and stick with it. Your paragraph is confusing.

Now here's my contribution: a short story called Wanted. I would love to get some feedback as I haven't shown it to anyone yet and I'm ready to begin editing it.
http://pastebin.com/wsN7UJKy

Where do you guys write down your ideas? Do you carry a notebook or do you write them to your phone?

>>7007895
Critique my story >>7007887
and i'll tell you my secrets

Why is the machine made
With pulleys can only be
Touched by a woman's hand?

Poor, to lack a running hand
Must be joined, or rust –

I went to run, but the wind was cold
It said, “Alone? Your fathers and theirs led to this,
And theirs, and all this world of running in the sun
And you alone?”

An hour of serotonin,
But winds blow strange

this is for you plebs

Unso...
Black up. Night's nigh.
Get your cool who shyne and sate ready for sore.
And how we wage? War on the pink ore;
inside and out, through and through and true.
Rough the thrust intwoo. Wassail the ladeye with a wail;
the mirror unmarried. Are you talk king to me?
Now point the gone at sher.
Unload in tasty womb to tomb a million lie(v)s.
O dog's lioness, how one we grow!
(Pivot of heels and knees...)
The Mex Sasheen is perfect to measure pleasure.
Más and mais and more and meer!
(Sweet Nurse give us something to ache the tear)
There must be more than boobs and boners,
but I want none of it. Step on her landmind, then,
x-plaud! There will be time to clean and drean.
Until then, how do we do it? Us, the α-romeos?
We seek loving, they love fighting;
we fight laughing, they laugh kissing;
we kiss hating, they hate thinking;
we think feeling, they feel tempting;
we tempt daring, they dare waiting;
we wait taking, they take giving;
we give thanking and they thank seeking
as we seek loving aroun the cyclagain,
as born to learn in lore of love
we live and wile by rule o'ruse
to wive the rose within the truce
of spikes and thorns that swift the noose.

>>7007906
i would have, but just to check how much was it i saw the last line. "I loved her". Sound cheesy and overused, but WHOM AM I TO JUDGE?

the beggining seems too much like an '95 american movie. Red hair, blue dress.

Overall don't stop writing, yet I didn't like it. I believe someone will appreciate your writings.

reddit did me no good.

my writings are liked by my friends but it feels like they're just saying that to make me feel good

>>7007887
It was kind of boring. Guy's uncle comes over. Guy googles uncle. Uh oh, he killed someone. Guy calls police. Police arrest uncle.

The diction was very bare-bones and there wasn't really any character to the tone or voice of the story.

Posting a really, really rough sample of a climax sketch from a story I've been roughing in my head for a few days.
Don't expect great writing, I don't expect great reviews. Will post a brief outline of the concept, if anyone's interested.

For the first time in days he felt no fear, no hesitation. The solution was before him, as simple as any action could ever be: an unstoppable reptilian jolt travelled the depths of his spine down into his fingers.
No resistance.
No argument.
Without a thought he pulled the trigger of the gun and watched as the path before him opened. Where had once stood another living being there was now nothing - the gun had taken care of that, removing first the parts of man necessary to life, and politely carting away the debris soon after.
As the man stepped through the doorframe his previous companion had until recently occupied, a thick metallic wedge filled the gap, dividing him from the gray cocoon that had been his home for the past hours.
No longer bound by the weight of the plummeting hallways and chambers behind him, the man at last let out a deep breath.
He had found wings.
Wings to take him across space.
To take him away from the doomed world below him, and the executioner behind.

He emerged.

>>7007895
I kind of write a rough draft in my head and, when I have time, I put it to paper, editing a few things here and there. For example, here is something I thought up today with no editing done:
A tumultuous sea: blue facets. Gaping faces roar as they rise and fall from the waters.

>>7007933
good.

Well, here's the first page (all I have) of a story I'm thinking about writing. I've never really attempted creative writing outside of school, so this is probably absolute shite, but I wanna see what you guys think. As you can probably tell, I just read Ulysses, and indeed it's pretty much the only serious piece of relatively recent literary fiction I've read, but I certainly plan to catch up on that. So I get my indebtedness out of the way on the first page. Anyway, is this in any way coherent, or if not, at least enjoyable in some way? I'd be happy to explain what's going on and my plans for the story, but if nobody can tell what's going on, maybe I should abandon it, since I've probably not earned my right to incomprehensibility yet. Anyway, it's in the next post, as otherwise it's too long.

>>7008719
By the way, the italics I put in are probably lost:

Come out of it, Deaconling Dedalus (you’re not even Christian). Beauty is not there. Waaah! waaah! war! went the baby. Don’t be pretentious with a birth a story business: a (I see him crosswalking alacritously) middleager, let’s say, with greygreen hair was...oh rocks, tell us that he was walking in Plain English!
The searoad was he along walking, travelman, Everyman, and he was thinking about work (war) and business and: says he to himself says he: Walk 30 seconds 30 dimes on the clock on the dollar bangbangbang tramcars of Dublin chiming in on the 00’s New York like a rrrrrdringadring! on the oh shtfuckdamncuntgooseeggs there it is vibrating again a lady’d like that, like me or like me n - Oh, hello Joe, yes I was just wanting to get Bach to you on that big important account business item thing (streetmusic of the crowds see so the Bach all works out but let’s stay focused on the middleager narrative shall we) about suchandsuch. See, now you’re getting the hang of it, Deaconling Dearest.
Maa! Maa! Mommie Dearest! Again shitslime diapers my son, no! The grey towers watch over the hussybussy the wheels on the bus in everyone’s heads subconsciously: the Jungian Philharmonic Organstra. Angular solid unmoving grey watches round dispersed verymuchmoving tans (Jan Stefansson, bald age 30: a tragedy) and blacks (Mbutu Africa Ooga-Ooga, renowned performer of Negro New York Spirituals, inspired by Casablacka and other All-American classics; black at age who gives a ramble: a comedy) and blondes (Stacy Tracy Gracy Macy Lacy Racy Gacy Necromancy Alchemeister, Hochlippenschtickprüferdoktorkommandantess von der Bïmböuniversität; gold by red at age Forever 21: a morality), and. [Everynobody, Ascend to the Heavenlights (Billboards) at age To Be Announced but anyway JJ has them covered]
Have you ever read James Joyce (voiced postalveolar affricate doubly voiced with harsh relish on the double: Judge Joodgy) because I’ve read James Joyce and he’s my favorite author daaahling and isn’t he your (unrhoticized: a New Englander: pretentionized) favorite because he is so deeply deeep with the daddysonnyfilialholyghost business though I’aven’t’read that fa (singsong) as of yet but he just my favorite daaahling. whatd u say? jamba juice??? ya i looooooove it lets go ovah dere! :P. No no, I said Judge Judy.
Wait. Rewind rereel frrrrrzzp. We’ve evolved past Joyce and experimentations. Focus stage left on zoomzoomzoom. The one who said. The one with Internet. The one who said Jamba Joyce. That one, the red by Brönzëbïmbökömmändänt. Her. Red snowfallen bloodred manfallen hair to her breast for to suck and she sucks you dry. For her. To kneel unto her to just for a second I want. Of her. Wombwearycuntcunning: Boobbubblynippleripple-like-a-river. Her. Latin tensing, she doesn’t know it. Jamba her Juice, eh? Hee.

wew mates

The old suburbs - glows a million windows in the 6pm dusk, rich with laughter o' man or television, clattering and banging to the preparation of a white mans meal, trudges home the shirted workers of the fateful 5pm, ringing high to a optimistic Thursday glee. Yes.. surely these ol' workers need no leisure, for it is these hours where hunger is met with meal and loneliness is met with family and boredom is met with purpose and parent is met with child and lover is met with the empty kitchen to a meal for one. For certainly sadness burns as vague as these lit windows – mysterious with the lives of the inhabitants but to them, the lonely, sadness towers all human possibility, a street light of artificial blue, the lingering blues shadows the lines of the faces and amplifies the furrowed brow. Poor old luckless loveless lovers, their hands pocketed with clenched fist and their bottom lip never comfortable, always bitten and moving and by god surely their time will come. But never mind that for if life is suffering then suffering can be escaped and so they do and overhead the trains rattle the loveless lovers onward into the arms of one another, equally down trodden – their eyes fogged by drink and The Loneliness of the 11pm.

>>7008725
i think you got a decent ear for joyce-isms but you lay it on really thick, esp with the finnegans wake-type gibberish

>>7008734
not bad brah, I'd stick to developing your own voice instead of aping Joyce's though.

I just scribbled this in my notebook this morning and I might flesh it out and the first line to a story:

>The sun was blood and it fell all over the savanna and everywhere there was light and everywhere there was decay. Dogs marked by emaciation and mange moved in packs across the terrain, traveling eastward without pause, refusing all rest and and respite and without acknowledging the bleached bones of cattle and man.

>>7008735

Well, and keep in mind that style ceases after the selection you just witnessed. I plan to do some research on the "alt lit" crowd, and then write from the perspective of the young lass who speaks in Internetspeak in a sort of corrupted version of the alt lit style. But I still need to find a real driving force for the narrative: what the overarching goal of the thing is. But I'm just hoping that'll come out as I write.

>>7008738
>developing your own voice instead of aping Joyce's though.

I've read only Dubliners like a year ago and found no inspiration in that at all

>>7008746
>>7008754

gets to a point where if you got enough clout you can get away with fucking anything, up to and including mimicking authorial styles or writing a novel about a middle-aged man crushing on a preteen. knock yourself out, we all gonna make it bruh

>>7008774
yeah nah fuck up

>>7008735
>>7008746

By the way, do you suppose I should make that section longer before I switch styles? Because basically what I'm thinking about doing is starting out with a big hustling bustling cityscene before zooming in (that's what the last paragraph is) on a particular individual and writing, roughly, form their perspective. So the dilapidated hipster youth with red hair, ignorant of anything other than the indie/Internet culture of the last 20 years, gets and uncapitalized, rambling, tasteless alt lit style, and so forth. You see, it's the ambiguities of perspective that perhaps most fascinate me in Ulysses, and I wanna imitate that without totally aping Joyce. But I'd really appreciate more comment: if it's totally indecipherable, I'll tone down the Joyceaness. I should probably make it at least a couple pages before I change the style, though, huh?

>>7008774

We're two separate people, you know. The guy who wrote the shorter selection isn't me.

>>7008796

gets AN uncapitalized, rambling, tasteless alt lit style*
Also, I should mention I plan to pan back out to the city (not necessarily the same city, either - this one happens to be New York, which I've visited a few times so I feel like I get the "feel" of at least certain parts of the city) after going into the perspective of each character. But that way the somewhat pretentious, overblown style (which itself, by the way, is somewhat linked with the Deaconling, but again not quite: presumably he's constructing a narrative about the greyhaired everyman he spots while the actual story loses its attention and looks back at the baby he notices) of the city is a constant throughout the story. Is this making any sense? D'you think it's a good idea at all?

Just typed this up. It's the faint echo of a story I daydreamed up on a bus journey into college one morning about half a year ago. I can't remember how it originally went but this is close enough.

On the Noinu coast there's a grand old tree. In over a century it's never seen any wear. The strong sea winds don't seem to abrade it's strong skin and no storm has been powerful enough to uproot it. For as long as anyone living can remember it has always leaned over the edge of the cliff reaching towards the ocean. But there are legends. They say in the local village that the tree didn't always live at the top of that hill.

It's said that the tree was planted by a powerful mage to watch over his garden. The mage vanished suddenly one day and the tree was left alone to watch over his flowerbeds. But lacking management the garden soon turned to ruin and the tree no longer had a garden to guard. It had only itself.

Then one day a vegabond passed through the village. He asked for the old mage and upon hearing of his assumed death he went to visit his home. There he visited the old mages garden and maimed the tree, stealing a limb to use as a staff. The next day he was gone to cross the sea. The legends say that the tree tried to chase him, slowly creeping it's way out of the village towards the coast. Each day moving only an inch.

Ever since, the tree has been waiting on the coast for a path to open across the sea. Superstitious foke say that one day wings will sprout from it bark and it will fly across the sea. Others say the tree waits for a powerful being to carry it across the sea. People suppose many different ends to the legend but they all agree on one similarity. The tree will find it's way across the ocean no matter how long it takes.

>>7008734

I'm the poster above you, and I must say I think this is quite good. Nothing revolutionary but nice: the only thing is I'd get rid of "o'" and "ol'": there's no reason for those archaeisms to be in there, it seems to me. Where do you plan to take this? That does have something of a Joycean ring to it, though: I think you might like Ulysses a lot. What do you think of mine, by the way?

>>7008815
either way, since you're not a master (and no one on /lit/ really is), you're gonna be sacrificing intelligibility for style, which is not too bad if you know what to do with it. I'd tone down on the superfragilicious shit and just worry about hitting on that kind of really lucid, vivid writing you see in Ulysses.

i just started reading Ulysses myself and there's lines I wouldn't attempt in a million years, but joyce makes it work cause he's a boss. you've got a decent grip on the sound of his prose but you gotta be firing on all fucking cylinders if you wanna pull it off. keep hacking at it. don't get bogged down on plot outlines, just go.

>>7008851

So it's not intelligible, then? If so, frankly I think it's back to the drawing board, because the whole idea was to make it pretentious and Hyperjoycean but still comprehensible with some effort, as contrasted with very different, often lowkey, styles attached to other characters (or perhaps even other things or times or places, etc.). I mean, do you think it's fine if the shit only goes on for a page or two at a time?

>>7008849
Thank you man. It's the first paragraph of a few I typed I, will probably stretch it into a few pages of a wandering kids thoughts on the suburbs good and bad etc.

I'm refraining from reading Joyce until I'm confident I can digest at least the bulk of the references - as I see it it's pointless for me to power through a book understanding only the face value.

I find yours entertaing and refreshing but I don't know how I'd swallow any more than a few pages. If there's underlyinh references or tone then I didn't catch them but consider that more my fault than your own.

>>7008870
I don't really read stuff like that for intelligibility tbh. Just for the flow of the language, which I think is serviceable except for the gibberish.

>>7008885

Nah man, as long as you've read the Odyssey and some Shakespeare (particularly Hamlet), you can go for it. Just get a guide as well: I used the Gifford annotations, and I highly recommend it. No need to wait so long as you have some rudimentary understanding of literature.

>>7008891

Well, perhaps once I have at least a few pages down I'll post it in a google doc or something up for /lit/ in its own thread to see what people think. But as for plot development, I understand the "just write" thing, but I've found that if I just write I get caught up in stylistic masturbation that never goes anywhere at all. That's why I'm desperate to find some real driving force, so that I know what I'm aiming for at all times. But I figure the next best thing is just to change the style up with some frequency, so as not to get too bogged down. I think I'll give this one a real shot.

>>7002720
Gave this a quick rewrite tonight. Better, worse?

I sat at the pier and watched snow fall into the ocean. I came portside immediatley after dumping my stuff at a cousins place. Didn't bother to take a cab - it's a short walk trough town from her place. Still figuring out why I'm back. I guess I wanted a go at playing out the dream of every man who sat at the shores of a feral sea and was washed away- the belated homecoming.

I must admit I had silly ideas about this day for a long time: meeting old friends over a beer and, after some awkwardness, continuing just where we left off. Only with a few more stories to tell and the old ones deepened a bit by wisdom. Exchanging meaningful looks with a long lost love, following her into the misty night only to have her waiting around the corner of an alley. Everything sorting itself back together like someone hit rewind. The ideal outcome - dream logic.

But the suitors have begun their work even before I was gone and Penelope is now gone too- drowned in PTA meetings and tacky antiques shops. Fat, too. Although the reality so far was not that bad either; home gnawing at me with it's stalactite teeth, like a welcome back kiss straight trough the formality of flesh and into marrow. Walking damp streets, this time in a nice coat. Smoking in front of old haunts and seeing flashes of times past trough the smoke, feeling too silly to go in. Not seeing a single face you want to and ignoring, despite brief flashes of recognition, the ones you don't care for. Being bothered by no one. Better than awkwardness that just drags on and melts fond impressions that were frozen for so long. Better than stalking a fat housewife whose decay comes on all at once instead of day by day.

Twenty four (damn...) years ago I would spend a lot of winter evenings in this spot: then I thought God made it snow to cover all the ugliness. Maybe it was inspection time for deities. Maybe the stern main office guy would park his astral-chariot around Neptune each year around this time. And God would freak and hastily throw some frosting on Earth to cover the unsightly bits. Like a modern housewife when the in-laws come knocking. Made sense: it snowed heavily and regurarly 'round here, and this was certanly the kind of place you'd want to cover up in polite company. Not all seaside towns are charming. Unlike what the countless inlanders who would gush about the 'majestic and tranquil' ocean every time I told them where I was from would have you believe.

>>7008838
>It's said that
Ugh.
>But lacking management
the company was soon posting net losses each quarter.
>It had only itself.
:'(
> vegabond, foke
Spelling
>Superstitious...
So the ones who think "winged tree" are superstitious but those who think a griffon will carry it over aren't?

Decent set-up tough.

>>7006655
Ah okay, I see. Well I phrased it that way to show that he's sort of crazed and probably talking to God, or himself.

The place is locally known as a specialist store for "old" media (books, movies, records, etc). Keep in mind that this isn't the beginning of the story, just a random excerpt. This is probably like 2 chapters in.

Thanks for your feedback though, good things to consider.

>>7009287
Cool, I'll fix all that. Thanks for the feedback ^_^

Lood, lood and loodir the Droich rair'd yirdlins tae the deep, his girr fou o gleeds an his gab sputten fire.

"OI."

An furth the deep cam a greet blatter, as like tae shak the foonds o the Yird an rander a brangle upan its kintras. The girthit brouk tirrit frae the grund, an the bens did crottle a the soond. Niver wis thar a greeter Shirramuir (abeich Shirramuir itsel) or stramash as thir warldish dirdrum in aw o Alba's lewirs.

The Beist waukit wae uncoly channer, chaffin his heid as he risit.

Spake he thein till Droich

"Alright pall, how's it goin'?"

"A CAN THU SIN A-RITHIST, TU CREATUR SALACH."

"Ye know I cannie understand ye when ye get awn like that, Droich," spak The Beist.

"AWK, AH'M AWFU VECKST. RICHT THEIN, YE SLEEKIT BEIST, AH'VE WIRDS TAE HAE WAE YE. AN YER A RICHT BLELLUM, THIS A KEN, AH'LL NO HAIVE NANE O YER HAIVER." Droich golderit.

"Ageein, Droich. You're layin' it awn a wee bit thick."

"HAVE YE A MIND OF MUCK? RIGHT, I'LL BE ME PLAINEST. CAN YE KEEP IT DOON, I'M TRYING TAE SLEEP."

"Alright pal, no worries."

Smookit The Beist ageen tae his delf, an Droich tae his ain.

>>6995061

Poem # 34958

Concentric motion of the stars
are the kinetic motion of humans
anchored in the soul
gyrating in the bowels
stiffening in the chill
singing in the mind

My first bit of writing I have ever shared outside of friends and family. I hope you like it.

>One has to think what falls across the mind of those who lay eyes on Vectinazria for the first time. I for one, have yet to venture outside those weary gates, and so wonder where the traveller first feels the heat I have always lived with. I wonder also why the man called Guilder came here, and bestowed upon me the shiny trinket that sits now on my finger. This notebook will in time be found, perhaps by a quivering urchin, perhaps by gentry from the Royal See. It makes little difference, for all walks of life will dismiss these words as nothing but lunatic babbling. Maybe some of the duller readers of these words will envy the imagination with which I press pen, but I would never envy an imagination who walked the way I walked in the eyes of God.

Beginning of a short story I am working on.

>>6999769
I like it

>>7002149
Sounds like a pretty cool plot man. Have you spent any time in Japan ?

>>7005762

I wrote this last night, I'm cant decide whether its too overwritten or actually pretty good.

They sat on the edge of the cliff and watched the sun sink into the ocean. It commandeered the horizon, all the shifting sea its orchestra, and sang them its nightly coda from center stage. Deja gasped with awe as the dying firelight spread across the water in tendrils, sifted through by the colorless waves, the sun drowning with a wink, lost like Narcissus in its own reflection. The clouds spread out, darkening, clearing the stage, hailed by the first mournful lowings of the owls. The last shred of the sun flashed for an instant a lurid green, colored the whole horizon that way, then disappeared, finally, from sight.

>>7001312

poorly written and over the top. Edgy.

>>7002149

I remember this from a previous thread, it sounded funny. Post an excerpt?

>>7003111

did you steal the name Bolton from game of thrones? Even if you didn't everyone is going to assume you did. Also, I think your word choice is too repetitive. You have "teeming with life" and "countless lives" in two consecutive sentences, which is sort of redundant.

>>7009661
Best writing itt tbh

>>7007887
It's loose exposition. There's no one theme because the narrator is just telling the reader a little about himself for their convenience (he thinks it's fair that he give a little insight into his "world")

>>7010709
Thank.

>>7011329
I don't know. I don'think it's terribly written I just don't know what it does. I would put it into a single sentence.

A month I've been dreaming of her
Delay a single month and I'll
fill it with humiliating dreams.
She's out at somewhere with people then lights.
That's what they do. Under the same empty,
dry, summerish sky as me. Nowhere close.
I dreamed honestly, but it's ambitious,
I'm like a teenager's internet profile
after death. But - honestly - what merits-
On what grounds - what truth - the boyfriend- on what?
He barely even has his eyes open
looks like an apprentice step-dad. Looks like
he would sleep with the lonely to sell homes.
I haven't seen her since we were fifteen.
Women: please, for once, just delay. And dream
and bridge the distance some summers at least.
How did it even occur. Imagine
the kiss. They are matched then. Good god.
I was going to get a job
and learn to use trains and buy a passport
but now what's the use? I'm sending back my
vitamins. I'm getting a speed boat
Remember speed boats? I'm going to set
all my clothes on fire in a speedboat.
For entertainment I'm at the red beach.
I feel terrible. There's birds everywhere
in the sky. Good fathers do not envy youth.

part of a greater context, but tell me where I went wrong, grammar is intentional.

The world was swirling, objects displaced from space, the flow of time impeded; the moisture of his saliva was consuming him, spreading over his mouth and washing out over his face.

“hahahahahahahahaheheheee”

Struggling for air and against the numbing warmth that had taken root within his body, he turned himself over, facing up at the ceiling that now looked to be a million miles away. He lifted his arms—elongated appendages that stretched up into the sky, away and away.

His abdomen began to rumble.

can’t vomit here

Slowly he lifted himself into a sitting position; and then, carefully, he lowered himself onto the ground beside the couch, leaning against it and resting his head on the cushion. The ceiling had become space, its weathered indentations the stars, the whirring fan a comet, spinning and spinning.

spinning and spinning

thoughts of a time before this. when the world was condensed and the sky was open and stretching far off into the horizon and there was no fear but the cold blue steel was encroaching and casting a shadow that descended across the entire world.

please no please no

what it would be like to experience a true distortion not only of soul and of mind but of body smashed against that yard of steel a million other sweating bodies wrapped up not only in you but insulated and within themselves

“Jon-Paul loved to play football…”

His throat was constricting, he thought he would choke.

“Jon-Paul was sociable and affectionate…”

A trail of tears snaking up through his body, a smoldering toxin laying waste to the totality of-

“O what a wonderful life!”

He vomited.

>>7013281
Fuck you man.

Just, fuck you.

>>7007887
>"Michael, get the door!"

>Mom never understood that I couldn't pause an MMO just to jump at her every whim.

>"Why can't you get it? I'm busy. You're just washing dishes," I shouted from my seat in front of the computer.

>The doorbell rang again.

>"MICHAEL!"

>I huffed, slamming the mouse onto the desk as I pushed myself back from the keyboard. I opened the door expecting to be greeted by a salesperson or a Jehova's Witness, instead, I was greeted by a familiar face.

Seriously

You’re looking at the silver bell on the table. This silver bell is a memento. Back in the 90s, I used to keep a hunter butler – yes, you heard right – I used to keep a hunter butler around. No, he was a regular butler but he had also been a hunter, the sort of guys that goes into the African bush with just a big kitchen knife and a bottle of wine to look for elephants. He always told me he used to run around with Hemingway, although it’s equally as likely that it’s a barefaced lie as that Hemingway ran around with him. He was very, very old, and still his chest was huge and he hadn’t cut off his beard since at least the 1960’s. anyway, I met the guy at a party, of all places, in the metro newspaper office, just off Montaigne Boulevard in Paris. He was posting an ad for a bodyguard – again, remember he was already old as shit by that point – but I hired him anyway, right there on the spot. He told me: you seem like the kind of gal who needs saving. Then he punched my friend. I was very moved. Now of course, I’m a 42 year old balding man, and the only boobs I have are from bodyfat. His vision was lousy and he thought my friend, the news clerk, was a gorilla coming to kidnap me. I never understood how he thought a rasping tobacco voice like mine could ever be mistaken by a woman’s, either, but the fact is he took to me straight away and from then on he became my loyal servant, fetching my slippers when I came home and reciting Robert Frost when I felt down. The silver bell was there for when I needed him for something, but I never rang it once – he was always there for me. I just never allowed him to cook, for fear he might be dipping in some arsenic instead of regular salt. In 1997 he mistook a school bus for a rare yellow spotted Congolese rhino, killing two kids and injuring the driver (I heard he’s retired now). Shot on the arm and taken by surprise, the driver sped up instead of braking and the poor old guy was anachronistically stampeded to near death. He’s been in a chemically induced coma ever since. One day medical technology will revive him, the hundreds of lawsuits against him will expire, and the hunter butler will be on the prowl once again.

I

A wintery wood lies ahead of me.
Shall I enter it?
Will I be able to cross it?
Great oak-kings wearing ermine and glacial fur,
Maples with suits of with silver flour,
The sun's rays, small light elves, goblins of miniature lighting
Sparkling in the snow and illuminating the afternoon,
And the owls blistered in fluffy globes, neighborhoods of feathers,
With small yellow eyes as lighthouses
Guiding the way: I will emerge pure and clean
From this wintery woods, this archipelagos of foliage and crystal.

II

A wood of snowstorm lies in front of me.
You must enter it.
You must cross it.
Dark-wooded trees, coal gargoyles,
The cloudy tops with spider-webs for hair;
An artificial night, a sun asphyxiated by mists,
The moss and watery fungi drinking the shadows
And the wolves, corporeal darkness, carnivorous shadows,
The howls that deform moonlight into a toothed monster
And no way to go; and to know that you will never leave
This maze of shadows were snow sculpted muddy diamonds.

>The rain beat mercilessly upon the clifftop causing small streams and waterfalls to grow and flow into the restless sea. William carefully leaned back into his harness and whispered to himself "comfort is the death of the soul". The wet rock didn't slip under the soles of his boots as he kicked back and flung himself from the cliff face. He then decended another few meters before hitting the rock again and absorbing the impact with his knees. The process was repeated again and again until he reached the old tunnel.

>The tunnel smelled damp and rust coloured water flowed out of it. William took shallow breaths and produced an old gas mask from his backpack. He didn't know how much about these old tunnels was true and how much was false. With a few quick knots william secured the rope to the wall of the tunnel and removed his harness. William didn't worry about anyone finding the rope at the top of the cliff since the old footpath he took to get there was overgrown through lack of use. Few people walked for pleasure anymore and almost nobody would leave the comfort of their houses and computers in this weather.

Yeah as the first two paragraphs how bad is this? First time I've written in a long time.

>>7007887
You have no flow, bro. Your prose and dialogue are stilted and unnatural as fuck.

>>7013281
best I've seen in a while tbh. great rhythm. constant zooming-in and zooming-out from space to (presumably) Jon-Paul is as disorienting as you probably intended, almost gave me motion sickness. 10/10, would read more

>>7013281
I would say to cut out
>“hahahahahahahahaheheheee”
>spinning and spinning
and
>please no please no

The rest is very disorienting and interesting to read.

I wrote a CreepyPasta (I know, generally not the best example of quality writing.) based on a concept that I really liked. I've been working on a full novel outline but I have serious doubts about my writing ability and would appreciate a critique.

This isn't really a representation of where I want to go with it, but it should give a decent example of what I write like and be enough for critical thoughts. Be harsh. I'd rather not bother if my ability isn't above fanfic level.

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Kerberos

>>6995061

>Excerpt from character's suicide note:
I'm terribly afraid you're inclined to consider me a depressed person. From his medical perspective any doctor would certainly remark that I fit the description, but I feel that with the concept is tied this negative connotation, a certain notion of sadness, of defeat, as if the person somehow is no longer capable of coping with whatever crossed his path.
But I maintain that is not the case, and I can say without losing a straight face that I'm able to cope just fine. The matter with me is of volitional kind: I choose to rebel, because I recognise aspects of my existence that I simply cannot come to terms with. More specifically, I feel that I have never had a say in whether or not I should have come to exist: I have, as has everything and everyone, been thrown into existence on no grounds whatsoever of my own authority, and this is what I from an ethical perspective cannot be at peace with.
Surely I would have judged differently were I born a different man under different circumstances, but this in no way diminishes the validity of this fact: it remains, recognised or not, that existence is inherently a defilement of the very freedom we hold so dear.

The irony then is in the realisation that this free existence is in itself forced...

>pic is my insides when thinking of this fact myself

>>7015401
I second that.
well written I must say!

I don't have a name for it yet, but I hope y'all like it.


Silly syllables dance on the window sill,
kicking up canes with toe-tapping feet.
They rapture, rupture–interject and interrupt–
space as glass through air,
air-blown glass unmasked and bare:
lisping leaves leaving traces
of trees from other places, faces,
spines, times, graces and disgraces
found erased, misplaced or traded.

Only of ten does one often offend
the other nine who lie sublime behind.

>>7016772
no thx pls try agen

A stray cat followed me home
and so did someone else I couldn't see
probably.
He or she rubbed against me legs
like grandma's fingers on my cheeks.
A wag of the tail, meow of mouth,
purr of the bones, scratch of the claws,
tickled the borders of my being
like the infamous hum from Taos.
(Speaking of, he or she also caught a mouse.)

When I got home, my doors welcomed wide
my new four-legged friend, one of a pride.
Lion-like in dignity, tiger-like in stride,
my furry feline guest suddenly asked for Tide.

"I need to wash my coat," he or she says,
"for I got a hot date with the devil, dinner and rez."
So I said OK, and grabbed the detergent
realizing my duties as a host were urgent.

Dry and dapper, this puddycat hurriedly left
almost as quickly as he arrived, and as deft.

>>7016779

How come you didn't like it? Any details or specifics as to why it isn't good would help me greatly in improving as a writer; unexplained value-judgements are not constructive from my point of view.

Thx

Gazing longingly towards the gently swaying trees, Bryce yearned to be outside. In his heart, Bryce had always known he was different from the other kids. During school, they'd be staring at the clock, just waiting for the ding of the bell. But Bryce? He growled and scratched himself to pass the time. Sometimes even barking.

Bryce was an otherkin.

They had beaten him up again. That wasn't really anything new; any time he lost them money, he got a beating. Even if he was already bloody and bruised from losing a bout in the ring, Cruz and his men would be waiting for him outside the storehouse, their brass knuckles at the ready. Still, it wasn't so bad, at worst he would get jabbed in the stomach a few times and maybe get a black eye. He could take the pain and they knew he could, that's why they kept him fighting night after night. The beatings were just lessons, little ways of telling him that losing wasn't acceptable...until they needed him to lose.

4serpents: the devil walks the post revelation/ post rapture landscape searching for his purpose now that all normal humans are in paradise or hell.

"Your thirst. I've seen it before. A long time ago." Satan paused to look to the sky now choked with clouds. "The sunlight. It beings you pain?"
"It burns like fire." She whimpered. "I have to get to the village. I need to feed before they move on."
"I can see that. I have no qualms with you feeding on your fellow man but the one behind me is not to be touched. I can offer the shadow of my wing to keep the pain at bay if you'll allow our company as you travel to the village."
"I have to feed soon." She gasped, her throat beginning to sound horse. Satan reached down, grabbed her by the pit of the arm, and yanked her to her feet. Her legs wobbled with weakness but steadied. With a sound that mimicked a sail unfurling, Satan's wing unfolded, it's silhouette enveloping the woman and the area around her.
"Then by all means," he stepped out of her path. "Let us be on our way." The nephilim walked along with them as satan provided shade for her. He walked on Satan's other side, keeping his distance from the strange woman. After many minutes of silence, he spoke.
"Master?" He asked. "Is she like me? A nephilim?"
"Like you? No. She's an abomination of a different color. Her hunger is different from yours. Yours stems from the fact that everything you touch rots or decays before you can eat it whereas she is already a thing of decay, a crypt orchid, a member of the undead. Few have ever walked the earth

>house in a shitty neighborhood

As soon as someone reads the word "shitty" everything else that comes after it, won't mean anything.

I

The olive leaves were in their prime. I did not have to get close to the trees to sense this. Their aroma ventured through the winds as smoothly as ships venture through crystal waters.

The scent arrived in the marketplace where people bustled about, getting through the day they paid no attention to the dank smell in the air. The scent also arrived at the village square where people drank and sung and fought and then drank and sang and fought some more.

In some cases, the aroma was so violent that it would invade homes, as if like the rest of us trying to take refuge from the sun. It would linger in rooms for the longest time, sticking to either the walls of the house or the hairs of your nose. Only being driven away with incense and distractions.

Should I just write a novel? I'm not very experienced and don't have a ton of spare time, but I think short stories are too limited of a medium.

>>7017193
Tell that to Stephen King.

>>7017219
If you think short stories are a limited medium then you'll write a terrible novel.

>>7017199
II

My own clay home was a room with a futon, a square wooden table and a couple chairs that were thrown in a corner, the legs of these broken except for one. This made having any visitors impossible, for I could not sit them anywhere but the ground.

My home had no carpet and no floor. My bare feet would touch the arid soil each time I walked, reminding me with each footstep that I would eventually die like I lived; in the dirt.

The afternoon heat would take over my home on a daily basis. As the Lord would have it, my house aligned exactly with the sun, allowing for his rays to shine relentlessly on whoever happened to be inside. This would create a chamber of heat far too inhumane for even the toughest, blackest Arab you can imagine.

A lack of anything adorned the walls, for if anyone tried to put a nail in the weak structure it might just crumble down atop ones head, killing them in an instant. Only pentagrams of light could adorn these walls.

In this cramped clay house that comes with no windowpanes, no paintings and no life, lives only the olive specter and I!

And how we talk.

>>7017233
Even Nabokov's short stories were terrible.

>>7015429

>Slight bump. Linking was probably a bad idea.
>Since everyone is doing excerpts:

Over the past few decades, dogs have been the focal point of myriad scientific experiments. Soviet scientists, for example, used them extensively in their experiments. From studies of the effects of weightlessness on the body to attempts to preserve living organs outside the body. Some died in orbit as the first animals to ever travel into the blackness of space, countless others died deep in underground labs under the surgeon’s knife in countries around the world.

Not all of them, however, remained dead.

>>7017246
>Who is Chekhov

>>7017251
Not everyone enjoys writing realism, anon

>>7017287

Just saying that if you're going to judge short stories then at least use an adequate ruler to do so. Nabokov's short stories are not by any means the best, so it is better to judge short stories based on the merit of people like Chekhov and Joyce who are objectively good at short stories.

That you don't like them is fine, but you cannot say that the short story medium fails when you have stories as dope as Araby out there. That you don't have a liking to it is different.

>>7009881
another thing I wrote recently

>Night falls beyond the paper-laden windows. What crowd-faced things inhabit it, wandering the aisles of that wretched corner store? The sickly yellow luminescence accompanied by its signature nightmare drone. I know not what presence weighs on me more, the hybrid array of bumbling, dead-eyed customers, or the morbid mass at the register. One wonders how a bloat like him could withstand gravity’s urge to the floor. Cosmic eyes often reward curiosity, as I have found, and so it is not a wonder at all. The ball of a man places a hammy hand on the countertop, as an anchor, and swivels around in his constricted range with a smile on his face. Customers pass with tarry sugar drinks and less wholesome and evermore cowardly alternatives to pure sensory consciousness. They jitter and twitch, as if enthralled by the beat of a distant and diabolical drumbeat. Their fishy eyes scan endlessly, widening only to distribute rehearsed fictions meant to make me part with change. When I walk to that place, it is as if I stand above a well-visited pond of koi. The colorful swimmers for a moment pause their listlessness and swarm me with dreams of fuller bellies. Always I am reminded of that infamous incantation once whispered in the ancient and worm-eaten place called Red Hook.
“O friend and companion of night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favourably on our sacrifices!”

>>6996612
I like where you're going but please--- do not use the name Jorah.

Ever.

>>7017351
>night falls

DROPPED
R
O
P
P
E
D

Everywhere I look, normies I see
Normies to the left and to the right of me
They don't know my feels, I just want a girlfriend
But I mustn't break, I mustn't bend
Just love of some kind, a hand to hold
"Just be yourself," I am constantly told
Most are disgusted by what they view
So I put back on the mask, big guy for you
I say I'll make changes starting tomorrow
But changes never come, not even in sorrow
Days pass me by like bitter cold
The years go round, I grow old
People are settling, they all have a wife
But I have not begun my life
It's too much, I cannot do it
One chance at happiness, and I blew it
Nothing in life, no legacy
Generations of fathers, and it ends with me
I am nothing but an empty shell
I can already here the funeral knell
Empty chairs, empty casket
People will walk just right past it
I'll order that helium tank one day
One day never comes, I learned the hard way
I have no other outlet but rage
Fuck you, fuck this thread, sage
So while I wait for my doom
I post on a board for little girl cartoons
I join in this culture of hate
Against those people who did not wait
It's all I have left in this sad life of mine
They still don't understand, they just think I whine
What I wanted in life will never be
Nothing left to do but just go RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>7017848
this is autism

>>7012562
good

kind of

I could smell weed from over the fence in my garden. In the park on the other side i guessed it was a bunch of teenagers from the music
coming from their phone. I walked into my house and picked up the gun, then i walked around the street and to the park behind my house.
They casually looked up and i shot all 6 of them. Then i turned the gun into my own mouth but hesitated, i decided id rather see how
this all played out. I begun walking away in no particular direction and dropped the gun on the floor because i didnt need it anymore.
The police grabbed me, i took them longer than i thought. I sat in the car and stared out the window as i was driven to a cell. Then i
sat in the cell. What happened afterwards is just procedure. I spent a long time in prison which felt more or less the same as life
before. When i got out i shot some more people and the whole process was repeated. Then i grew old and died of some sickness or another.

its shit, if you read this i'm glad i wasted your time

vividly livid, angry men stomp around
their houses and beat the walls till
their ears bleed–work, stifling strife,
unknifed wives and thread-born lies and lives.
The kids they cry, cry the Dead Sea,
bleeding out youth, syrup from a tree.
Old saps and new, gray amber and ambergris,
boundaries are broken for geo-dermatology.
Dredge out the salt! Unearth the dirt!
Pulley the systems, and bury the hurt!
A shake of hands, earthquakes of sand;
the houses can bear no longer
the ire of the fat, drunken man–
hand and dry-wall crack together
married dead and born, the ceiling untethers.

I can see what I can't see,
which is everything.
So what is sea level, really?
Depends where you are–
too far.
My friend–and edifice of a man–
he rides helicopters daily
scanning the horizons with telescopic eyes.
Meanwhile, I climb and fall
the third highest peak
in my county, all just to see
a tiny morsel of my country.
But what I can only taste
my good friend devours
slurping up saccharine histories
by the hours; all the while
my time runs dry, sprinting in the desert
while his runs high, a marathon for dessert.
I ask why, and it gets quite quiet;
so I ask again, and my neurons all riot.
Time for a diet.
A pescetarian's what I'll be,
I tell my friend: the human symphony.
Sounds fishy, I hear him think,
as he imagines the Titanic sink.
So, wading in the sea, I try to dive
down to see, but go fifteen feet
for a snorkel is all I bring.
To my dismay, I see my pal thriving
a thousand feet down, pro-scuba-diving.
How far his reach exceeds his grasp
and how bubbled and muffled my gasp.
I can't imagine–no, I can't.
But then, I realize, as he finds a pearl:
I've already found one–so lustrous!–
inside this oily oyster of a world.

Surul, suma vìeţilor a nenumăraţì elfì, a mâìnilor lor pline de noroì, spălate apoì de apă, apoì în aer şi în fum zbenguinde, nostalgia unor pâlpâirì de făcliì nu prèa îndepărtate, casele altora, mister de traì necunoscut adăpostit de limita canalelor fastùate de atâtèa şi atâtèa bărcì, fiecare cu scop proprìu ce putèa fi ghicit privind pe ceì vâslinzì: straìe, fie colorate, fie cenuşiì, cârpe de tot felul acoperind pòate mărfurì valoròase, doì cupiţì împărţind un drum, un singuratic gondolier amăgindu-se şi el cu astfel de depărtărì, scene imposibile zilniculuì.

Here's a stream of conscious thing I wrote based on childhood memories. Do you think I should keep going?

The sky was blue. The blue was so stark and flat that it seemed unnatural, like a countertop. The grass was aggressively green, and as the little boy watched the grass, he felt almost like it was bristling at him. He stood in the outfield, as far as he could be from the kickball players without the teacher telling him “Why don’t you come closer, please?”. As regards the game, he was supposed to be an outfielder. It was the position you played if you were bad at sports or didn’t care about them. Both applied to this little boy. He thought the two might be related, but then he remembered that his father was fat and must therefore be bad at sports, but still cared about them unfathomably. The other outfielder for his team was a girl named Rosa who had something wrong with her so that she cried easily and had a hard time talking to people. She stood close to the wooden fence at the west edge of the field. Because there was something wrong with her, the teacher wouldn’t tell her to please come closer. Maybe she liked being in the shade. She was looking at her shoes and digging small clumps of dirt out of the ground with her toes.

He turned his attention toward the game. Someone was rolling the ball toward the kicker, a girl named Amanda. Amanda was the tallest girl in the class, and she had strong-looking shoulders. She kicked the ball, and it made a sound like someone squeezing an empty water bottle. It lifted clear into the sky. It was bright yellow, and looked vaguely solar against the textureless almost-summer sky. A beige minivan rounded the corner and the sun glinted goldenly off its roof. Some families that had a minivan called it a “vehicle”. The boy thought that “vehicle” was an ugly word.

The boy remembered that he was supposed to catch the ball. It was actually coming toward him, which never happened except when Amanda or one of the bigger boys kicked it. The ball was hard to catch even though it was melon-sized, because you had to position yourself where the ball was going to be, and it confused him how other kids seemed to know where it would land. He reached out his arms and ran after it as it swooshed cometlike through the air. He ran as hard as he could, following its trajectory toward the coral-pink school building. It came down in front of him with a pneumatic whomping sound, just beyond his fingers. It bounced a little, and he scooped it up. He was foggy on the details at this point. All he knew was if he threw the ball over to the other kids, things would sort themselves out, so he threw it over his head in their direction. The kids cheered in excitement. Some of them had actually gone red in the face. Was this a particularly important section of the game’s progression? The boy didn’t know.

>>7017248
>the blackness of space
I'd appreciate a more original phrase here.

>>7019236
>vividly livid
i hope you feel bad about this

MY EGGS

Tonight, I would like to dedicate this po'em to my ovaries!

My eggs, my eggs
He begs he BEGS to be the father of my eggs...

My eggs, my eggs!
Come swim to meet my eggs!

My eggs. My eggs!
My eggs above my legs...

>>7019557
It's dull.

>As regards the game
>must therefore
>unfathomably

Your word choice isn't always consistent with the character. There are more examples but you get the gist.

>>7019694
My eggs, my eggs

She begs she BEGS to be the watcher of my eggs...

My eggs, my eggs!

Lay still and feel my eggs!

My eggs. My eggs!

My eggs nestling on your head...

>>7019717
Does the dullness for you come from the writing or the subject matter?

>>7019557
pls no stop

who /masterpenman/ here?

We're the last of our kind, gotta keep the tradition

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvSyQDu49pI

this message brought to you by Coors

>>6996517
nice sounds here

from my diary

>I was sitting there out at lakefront park, eating a grilled cheese served by cute girls, watching these seagulls like vultures or no, like ravenous hawks all swooping in and squawking at this middle aged mother woman and three boys around age of eight or nine, either all her sons, her son and his friends or, i wasnt sure; her reaction was all the same. She was shapely, not plump like some mothers, but almost muscular, perhaps reminants of a fit past, filled out by birthing weight; she seemed a powerful woman. Her skin was over sunned, but she wore it well under an auburn red bikini, drawing the eye to curves and build of her buttocks and bosom. The allure, even at a distance earlier, was undeniable; a grace she possesed, as a mother and a woman, and a being of compassion and nurturing and a being of sex and birth; a being of protective and unconditional love. Her boys were all in order eating their french fries and hot dogs, and her standing over them. Not intently as if meticulous, but with care, to confirm adequacy of the sustenance she has led her young to feed. It all felt very primal, yet beautiful; a noble savagery. Satisfied with her boys meal she left to have her own, and the boys ate together talking, jesting and jostling one another, shirtless on the picnic bench parked some ten-twenty feet from the concrete and concession stand on the grass.

>>7019569

Lolz.

I regret nothing.

>>7013281
REMEMBER THE 96

A bit of something I've been working on.

>The night was still hot as Kent and I trundled down the road in that old beat up toyota, still hot, and still stinking of that characteristic smell of rundown, small cities, a mix of oil, burning trash, smog and everything else left over from the heat of the day. I had showered right before heading out, but I knew that by the time I got to work I'd be smelling of that same mix of diesel fuel, tobacco and sweat after whiling away an hour and a half at the "travel center" (read: glorified truck stop) that kent worked at, before he took his break and drove me down to start the perpetual task of keeping cheap plastic crap on the shelves for the valued guests of Target.
>We pulled in, and Kent stomped his cigarette out before ribbing on me for taking so long on my own. The truth is, ever since he got back from Korea all he's ever smoked is menthol ultralights, which are basically like breathing near a mint plant for all they do for you, except you get cancer. I like to consider myself a man of class and taste. I roll my own. When I'm breathing out of a hole in my throat I'll still be croaking out about my superior taste.
>We went in, and I treated myself to a complementary coffee. Seattle's best, which was a misnomer if I had ever heard one. Kent had switched full on into his Manchester lilt, something that had been happening gradually ever since we left the apartment, and was berating one of his charges in a stream of queen's english near-expletives. Something about cash missing from the drawer, while some trucker looked at him and muttered about "fucking faggot frenchies".
>Have I mentioned I hate Arizona? I do.

>>6995061
I actually really liked this and I go into almost everything I read on this board expecting to hate.

ITT: Anons doggedly ignore any work that isn't self-conscious and uninspired

>>6995061
The subway doors closed in front of me with a muffled click, and I desperately waved to her from the window. Time decelerated in those last seconds. I experienced each of them slowly and tenderly as they one by one dismantled me from the inside. Even so, they went by in an instant just as the summer had. It had been our last together. My heart sank as her waving image was swept away into the darkness that enveloped us, and I understood, with the sort of alarming swiftness that comes with this type of agony, that it was over. My stop wasn’t for another hour and a half so I slumped shakily into an empty seat. I knew that I couldn’t come apart in front of everyone, but I was quickly reaching my limit. I clenched my fists and stared at the filthy floor of the train. After several seconds of struggle, I slowly angled my gaze upwards. It wasn’t until then that I truly noticed the faces of the other subway goers. On that dismal afternoon, I discovered that they all seemed mournful. I imagined that their lives must have been like the summer at some point: where time is presumably frozen, permitting you to dance for eternity in the dazzling rays of life, only to be abruptly cut short and reminded that it had simply marched on without you. They must have. Why else would someone look this severely heartbroken? I began to realize that I, too, was one of those somber faces. It was there, in that dimly lit subway train, as streams began to slowly pour out of my eyes that I felt the gravity of it all: I would never see Cecelia again. Not for a long time.

>>6996658
Teenage girl tier

"Should I cancel your next appointment, Mr. Rex?"

He ignored her. Mr. Regis rolled a hat between his palms, and followed submissively.

"Hell of a place you-"

"Shush. Get in here," Phoebus said, a southern twang reverberated in his passion. The door clicked behind him, and a second click locked it. He heard Mrs. Allemande's flat soles flapping up the hall.

"Mr. Rex. Mr. Rex." Her knuckle at the glass once more, Phoebus unclicked the door twice, and administered the kind of shout that can only happen in a whisper,

"I don't care what you do at the moment, Mrs. Allemande."

The door clicked twice. He turned to face Mr. Regis who had placed the rolled hat in his back pocket, and scanned the city below through a spot in the curtain held on his finger.

"Mr. Rex." She tapped at the door.

"Take your lunch, Mrs. Allemande."

"...but sir, it's -"

He placed his lips against her shadow in the frosted pane, and through his teeth said,

"Take your lunch, or take your leave."

>>7021424
Stupid.

>>6995167
cringe

>>7021468
?

Nobody ever says the words friday night lights at these football games. I look at the crowd during timeouts, and nothing. Not even before the game, like during 6th period on a Tuesday when we catch ourselves leaning on our cheeks. Then we change our posture and remember why were tired. But nobody thinks friday night lights. I'm standing with Evelyn near the side of our student section that stays yelling all night but I see nobody looking up at the lights; how they give this town a skyline from the tennis courts at Riverbrooke and through the trees around my culdesac and a certain stretch of HW181.

On my drive to school, I always find myself looking up at the lights, wishing the treeline was barely with the sun and the brass and snares could be heard from the red-light I frequent most, next to the cars sharing a similar routine. The only thing that stayed lit forever was the Wal-Mart down across from the park. Sometimes we used it as a parking lot for big parties held down the street, but that was the only thing that place was good for. Those nights treat us so well.

Evelyn and I touch shoulders and I stop listening to the noise. The bleachers are vibrating. She isn't saying anything in her black sports bra, and it's just me and her standing in a spot close to the field to the side of the crowd. Freshman year my friends and I called her “moon-face” when she was coming on to me but now she’s grown into it and has a masculine face worth falling for if I needed to. The lights shine on the field, stretching behind us, where leftover tailgate smoke is the only haze on a clear October night. At the end zone by the parking lot there are more fireflies than usual. I haven’t spoken in 5 minutes.

A project that kind of involves sitting in public and eavesdropping:

How are you?
Did you have a good time with him last night?
How much does the rent go up then?
Yeah, we fucked.
It’s highly
theoretical.
I’m doing well, thank you for asking.
I’m positive, completely positive… maybe.
You know that guy?
All that sexual tension just makes it
awkward.
Pink hair, sometimes I want pink hair…sometimes.
I think it’s illegal.
67.
I forget.
Those two buildings over there.
I hear this kid on the second floor has a really nice bong.
Yo is Gary over there?
*click* *click*
I haven’t done speed squats in so long.
Oh, I haven’t sat on this side before.
Spring semester.
What?
Thanks for being here, next time I’ll pay more attention to you, but my girl was here this time.
You get it bitches, right?

http://pastebin.com/v9tVc8yC

>>7020604
Thank you.

>>7021243
Some beautiful writing but you should cut the streams out your eyeballs shit and also the last few lines about the girl. It felt like the theme of lifelong sorrow was more important than the girl, honestly. One man's opinion.

>>7021650
So interesting I plagiarized it in my notes. Don't worry, I just like it so much I want it to bounce around in there and maybe turn into a new idea.

I wrote this after watching a documentary on Maradona
2208

I had quarreled with monks of Corrientes
down the street where in the 60s
James Vercetti knocked his front teeth in a slugger years before he ends illustrious doing adverts for the movies
choking on a piece of salmon one day late my 20th birthday
I’ve accused of bad faith
those three foreign perfect friars, scourging talk –
for we spoke no common language
pleading that the oiled fuzz does not suit the One Appointed
nor the blue striped robes that they wore over their jumpsuits –
I have cried with the affliction of a deeply wound apostle
dump the rags into the cauldron
so then don your dark kasaya
I turned up my velvet collar starting onwards to New Haven
with the rope around my shoulder holding incisors and crickets
sweated off the squares to plant those
brick upon another for communal family tree
I decide to carry up my passed down marbles
to spin in new soil
oh the Lord shines even brighter when He walketh down the mountain

And does he really think
that by blindingly applying strokes
he'll end up with a masterpiece?
The question is flawed:
it rests on the assumption
that he thinks. He can't think!
An artist simply does, so
he is doing, with no thinking
or seeing or planning or
whatever else people do to do.
So does he really believe–?
No, might be the answer
if you asked him yourself,
but you can't ask him your-
self (contained ideals are
contained in the ideal self).

Wait, what do we have here?
It seems as though our artist–
if we can comfortably call him that–
Lebenskunstler, in the very least–
is almost complete with his fiery,
indolent work! Great Scott! It...it's,
perfectly, immaculately, pristinely–
well, what do you think about it?

Writing something is a bit like preening a bonsai tree.
First, you must plant the seed, water it, nurture it.
Then, you must give it time, be patient, let it grow under your nourishment–
like a child or an idea or a filmscript or
nevermind, we're getting lost in a labyrinth of analogies
where each turn is a further abstraction from the ground
and each step closer to divine light, insurmountable truth–
fuck! Okay, back to beautiful, elegant, punily bountiful bonsais.
After the seed has sprouted, and the sapling formed
you must expose the lullaby leaflets to a star's rays–
any star, the sun will do.
This light will act as milk from a mother's teat
and your baby bush will sup it up as such.

Time will pass, and the ground will grow more foreign,
new heights more familiar; landscapes unrobed.

Soon, the day will come where your sapling becomes a tree
(tries pot, experiments with fertilizer, hangs around the alley)
and you will find yourself with a fertile, bark trunked tree,
and you'll sense the xylem and phloem working anew.
Moss will grow where it hadn't before, as will wood.
You might mourn the loss of nascence, innocence, incense,
but dammit, your tree is a tree now, and you're proud.
So–and this is difficult to say, harder to do–
it's time you prune, preen, and make room
for new pastures, horizons, lives and loves.
Armed with scissors and a galvanized sense of duty,
you snip and snip and chip away dead debris
so that your new tree can be the best it can be.
You water it with your tears, add coffee grounds for desalination
and set your new tree free, free of parental assassination.

And so, now you know the troubles and turmoils
involved with growing something out of nothing,
to which all of everything must return, and eternally recur.

"I have fleas and it sucks. Fleas aren't supposed to be on tile but they are. But let's not talk about it, fuck me, man I'm sick of this punk culture which is basically just whining set to sad guitars. Punk is supposed to be goofy as shit. Like, seriously? Ya'll see bands like geza x and the mommymen and think 'yeah I dunno I wanna take this beautiful thing, strip it of all the fun and humor and intelligence and just whine while frowning and call myself 'real punk'. I'm always depressed and stuff but I can still crack a joke. But nah, let's hear another political rant that's the same as all the other political rants. We're all unique and fighting against conformism so let's all act the same and dress the same and talk the same.

Horseshit. I hate punk."

How's this for dialogue?

>>7024037
I rolled my eyes at least three times, and stopped listening halfway through. Congratulations, you've captured the essence of your average American.

>>7024056
You got it. Excellent!

>>7011350
>did you steal the name Bolton from game of thrones?
Nope, from a street name
>Even if you didn't everyone is going to assume you did
I doubt it, but thanks for the heads up as I've never actually read GoTs.

We laid against the bases of pine along the tree-lined roads of Gießen. Seventy-five men waiting impatiently to be ordered.

"I need orders and new boots", I ignored the man next to me mumbling through his upturned collar.

In Gießen we did not do much except lay. The fight did not come to us. It was November and our hands shook. The young men shook the frost off their hands and the older men shook from shells. I was cold here and awaited orders.

"Sit tight. We'll be moving out shortly."

It has been three days since we moved. Our tents were set up in large fields filled with the cold wind. The luckiest of soldiers set their tents up closest to the road and closest to the trees and tanks. I was not lucky.

>>7019557
Not bad, just bland. I suggest writing more playfully.

Chrome shimmered under the neon-pink lights. A garbled reflection rose its warped leg, waving its hands: gentlemen’s club: ironic. Should just come out and say it: lonelymen’s club. Palm trees clung to the curb with fronds stretched like hands to gather up sunlight. It’s late buddy: give it a rest: sun’s not coming back for a few...fine...bitch. A green light pierced the night: he gunned the throttle. A 1957 Bel Air shot forward perpendicular, leaving thick black skid marks, whining as it came full stop: he was in the intersection, middle finger outstretched. Some kind of idiot to go on a red. Lot of nerve, too. A green light hung above the stopped Bel Air; twinkled off its polished, meridian-blue enamel; the light changed red.
A man with no legs wheeled himself across the road. “Ain’t it a world, huh,” he wiped sweat from his brow, “of all the places to be crippled, this guy chose Las Vegas.”
“Now, I wouldn’t really say he chose to be crippled here.”
Red lips parted and came together; scrunched as plosives escaped in short, hard utterances; opened to show the white tips of incisors.
“Who knows? Maybe, he’s a vet, or he was born without ‘em. Oh! maybe he got in an accident.”
Shut.
“What about a bad infection? I heard that, sometimes...”
The.
“and the doctor has to…”
Fuck.
“and, even then, it may be too late for…”
Up.
“If you say one more word about it, I’ll throw you out of this car.”
She silenced. About time. They were there, at Mandalay Bay, which towered above them in a wide V. Hope they’re better than the last place. Terrible that was: didn’t restock the toilet paper; didn’t have a casino; wasn’t even close to one, matter of fact. Why come if you can’t gamble?

I wrote this in about an hour today with no thought of plot or context in mind. It's more musings than anything.

>>7026058
These sentences are ridiculously clunky and fragmentary Try reading your work aloud, it just doesn't roll off the tongue
Obviously this is a small excerpt but you have failed to clarify to me the setting, the characters or the plot but have foolishly tried to do all of these in a short space. All that you relay is that these people are soldiers, not what they are like or who the are (Apart from the mumbling upturned collar guy who is meant to be a little insane i gather??)
Your sentences often read like you've tried too hard to arrange a deviation from cliche ("We laid against the bases of pine" for instance) but this hurts your writing, makes it clunky, a more natural flow of words would work better.

>>7024037
Horrible this knowingly insincere stuff isn't how people talk or think and hasn't been an interesting literary technique since the 80's

>>7023755
Who the fuck cares what you think about the role of the artist
That is a theoretical question with a huge pre-existing bulk of work did you seriously intend to add something new. write from experience, this is barren because it's attempting to encompass something huge and obviously outside of yourself

>>7023820
>nevermind
>lost in a labyrinth
>fuck!
These are corny cliches that dull the impact of those sections which do work such as
>your baby bush will sup it up
Remove "as such" from that sentence. A lot of this contains neat phrasing but you consistently drown it out by using too many words
Also what kind of writing do you want this to be - using words like "abstraction" and "xylem" do not flow naturally from the rest and stick out like sore thumbs

>>7021650
Parts of this read like actual overheard conversation. These are the best parts and it's a really interesting idea. There are ways which enable you to convey a conversational style more fully. If you look into Conversation analysis and Discourse analysis and look at how those transcripts are written I think it will really help.

>>7021581
The first two paragraphs in this are vague and cliche and do not convey a clear sense of mood or meaning.

But the third paragraph really flourishes. The small motion "touching shoulders" is perfect for the detached asocial vibe. The whole "Evelyn growing into her moon-face" thing is really on point, feels honest and earned from experience. This however:
>worth falling for if i needed to
Feels practiced and disingenuous. It breaks the staid air between the characters by positioning narrator in a position of potential power or manipulation over his feelings. It also suggests that Evelyn is simply "there" to be fallen for, depriving her of agency which breaks the very empathetic moon-face dialogue which I love.

>>7021424
>He ignored her
>Followed submissively
Show, don't tell we should be able to infer this.
The best thing here is his scanning the city while pulling up the curtain. A cliche image but good nonetheless. The thin at the end about a frosted pane of glass juxtaposed with him speaking through teeth is nice but the wording is clunky, needs to be snappier

>>7019842
transperant/ironic misogyny isn't interesting or clever and neither is your story

>>7019557
Show don't tell. You've crammed so many different elements into this, especially in the descriptions, which seem unnecessary and irrelevant to the (as other anons have said) pretty bland narrative content. for something which is "stream of consciousness" this feels really rigid and overworked

>>7019236
>vividly livid
anon why

>>7017351
holy heck this is terrible
you've used so many different descriptive words to conjure up the most boring "consumer society as lovecraftian nightmare" thing ever
>night falls beyond paper laden windows
like where do yo even start with this that is fucking terrible i'm sorry to sound mean but

>>7017248
Pretty good, suffers for overblown language
>dogs have been the focal point of myriad scientific experiments
this can just be
>dogs have been the subject of many scientific experiments

>>7017199
without context it's hard to know what you're getting at here but this is way too wordy for describing a strong smell. the smell travels about, infects homes but we don't ever get a sense of the town or the people in the homes. so much description is focused on the scent itself and its movement that the story feels detached and uninvested

>>7017219
write short fiction first
>>7021402
what a shit thing to say about teenagers and girls
>>7020673
>my story didn't get any replies
>must be because it's too good

I don't think I've ever done creative writing outside of school work, so here goes.

I've been at a big party for the past few hours. Not one of those small-gatherings with some friends, but a big, frat party, with girls, beer pong, and regrets, oh so many regrets.

I'm not of the partying type. It took my friend days of nagging and begging to finally get me to go, and even after I decided on going, I made sure to myself that I wouldn't enjoy it. I was right. Gatherings are weird to me --they're a combination of a bunch of things I know for a fact I like, but when those things come together, the whole thing becomes a mess. I'm surprised I've lasted as long as I have. The whole thing has given me unpleasant vibes from the beginning. An ugly neon-green paint surrounded the walls of the venue, clashing with the off-white strobe light in just the perfect way to trigger someone's epilepsy. I don't know what the guys were going for when they planned it, but the scene just looks like some shitty stop-motion flick.

Anyway, about those regrets. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I'll admit that I never saw the fun in drug-fueled parties. Sure, a trip is nice, but the whole thing ends up becoming a mess, and I'm stuck as designated driver. The next day, I'll give the guys a friendly reminder not to be so rash, and then they'll get pissed at me for intruding on the details of their personal life. Some people.

>>7017179
This concept is boring, this prose consists literally of people saying the narrative at the reader

>>7017161
Show don't tell
This feels like a collection of crime movie cliches and as such falls flat and is not interesting to read, not like something earned through experience

>>7015631
if this is actually the way this guy writes he is a confirmed fedora tipper and should kill himself
also this theme
>free existence is in itself forced
did you actually think that was original or worth repeating when you wrote it ? that is a very overplayed theme in lots, and lots of literary and academic works and you do not add anything new

>>7015305
The good part is this conveys a sense of the action and setting clearly
The bad is your obvious wording
>rain beat mercilessly upon
this is an example - can easily flow more smoothly
>rain beat down on
it's good to convey mood through personifying the elements but if you do it obviously the literary technique itself is highlighted and the reader is drawn out
avoid the segments about comfort these sound douchey

>>7011329
it is very overwritten
have you even seen a sunset and thought about it
this is not how people think about sunsets
also for such an everyday occurrence why is there so much description going on? everyone has seen a sunset and there are plenty of pre-existing literary examples of sunsets which are alredy a lot better than this

>>7008945
stalactite teeth is nice
>fat housewife whose decay comes on all at once
gross
overall this is really boring but there's a few neat turns in there

>>7008838
Horrible faux-mythical tone. empty signifiers of fable without actually being one

>>7008740
the sun is blood sentence sucks balls light doesn't move that way making the metaphor forced and weird. the dogs sentence is much more compelling, combining their movement with the extremities is good

>>7008734
>>7008725
shallow rehash of Joyce as others have said
he was doing that shit ages ago did you actually think it would still be fresh and interesting if you did it

>>7007721
good

>>7007666
solipsistic and forced "observational" stuff going on here
>bin full of wank tissues
every teen sex comedy ever

>>7004780
This is really cogent and tasty fragment, keen to read more

>>7026101
this is obviously very cliche packed but if an ironic or disruptive distance was intended it does not come through. reads like a sin city comic without the pictures

>>7003639
edgy

>>7003544
this is a good idea if you can do something more meaningful with it then merely describe the destruction of civilization
J.G. Ballards apocalypse books (drowned world, drought and crystal world) follow a similar vibe to your writing worth checking out

>>7003111
You tell us what space *really* is (teeming with life) but then tell us what Bolton thinks about space (its just a void)
this is stupid you shouldn't tell us what you, the narrator think about space. let Boltons thoughts naturally inform the narrative about space, rather than hamfistedly talking at us about what Bolton thinks about space

>>7002720
underneath all these cliches and purple prose you don't have a narrative or theme of any interest to the reader
the idea which drives the prose should be central, not an effort to fit as many words together in one sentence

>>7002383
This is pretty good pretty funny
I like the "household governed by crystal rocks" nice touch

>>7026170
>>7026248
>>7026332
>>7026372
>Critics are men who watch the battle from a high place, then come down and shoot the survivors.

I'd like to read something that you've written. if you're gonna mass-critique you should at least throw in your own work.

He had a tattoo on his left arm that said LILLIAN in shy murmuring letters. Through the day he went about his labor in a quiet and almost philosophical mood approaching something like bliss. For all the dull minutes that he spent at work and all the people that glowered at him there was Lillian. In the morning there was Lillian and in the afternoon there was Lillian. And in the evening, when coming home he saw her in her nurse’s uniform smoking a cigarette and placing a tea pot on the stove with a tired smile, his heart leapt up because there was Lillian.

>>7026616
ok

"She took the rubber disc from her clitoris in between finger and thumb and raised it to the mirror, where it connected with a soft puck.

With practised vagueness she looked into the corner of the room, ignoring her exposed labia as it silently burst in a triangular frill.

He tried to envision her half-submerged body, the bones in her chest forming tidal channels, brine-coated pools developing in the slope under her shoulders."

Bedrest

I counted 1337 sheep fore sleep last night,
almost all of whom were named Rufus.
The cheddar moon hung by strappado
and 26-2 spun on wax in the thin corridors.
Toe stubbed on the davenport aft the john
annihilated my opioid lack of pain, deft.
So I thanked the blessed transience, trotted on,
splashed my face, eluted the pus and tar.
The mirror reflected like scales of shad,
pleat of pajamas, meat and hide draped on bones.
Soon supine warmth, darkness recompensed;
a tip to Charon, a nod to Morpheus, nullified debts.
Silence drawn, lids lay down on eyeballs smiling.
When the ert firings of my mind expelled
more than just an arcade of electoral buzzing,
I submitted to vanishing in the supple mist
and dozed off into the zen tribunal
centered in the basilica between temples.

Bedrest

I counted 1337 sheep fore sleep last night,
almost all of whom were named Rufus.
The cheddar moon hung by strappado
and 26-2 spun on wax in the thin corridors.
Toe stubbed on the davenport aft the john
annihilated my opioid lack of pain, deft.
So I thanked the blessed transience, trotted on,
splashed my face, eluted the pus and tar.
The mirror reflected like scales of shad,
pleat of pajamas, meat and hide draped on bones.
Soon supine warmth, darkness recompensed;
a tip to Charon, a nod to Morpheus, nullified debts.
Silence drawn, lids lay down on eyeballs smiling.
When the ert firings of my mind expelled
more than just an arcade of electoral buzzing,
I submitted to vanishing in the supple mist
and dozed off into the zen tribunal
seated in the basilica between two temples.

*sniff sniff*

A pleasant smell––sulfur,
sugary Shea buttered soap––
and a yummy-yum taste, for
the betrayal of our dope
enticed instincts (oh, bacon!),
are not, like the ideal marriage,
interdependent; they are
causally unrelated, like eating
midnight wax off the irresistible
skin of a woman above the sun;
no matter the scent's weight
or its place on the body,
your tongue will spit, recoil.
And never be ashamed
of marrying thoughts of
food and sex, because without
the constant occupation with
both, we wouldn't be here.
And for that we must thank
the ole olfactory receptors
that remind us not only of
roses and perfumed glass,
but to save room for manure
in our hopefully fertile lives.

A delirious deluge of mob induced refuge
caked in dandelion's dandruff–enough fluff,
down to the itty bitty nitty gritty city committee's
mandate: woman's fate converges with the
flip side of the coin, which is often purloined
by by and by the worst of the wurst bearing
ball-bearing skate wearing catchers of rye
and herring. Now–kung pao chicken please
with a side of white rice and an extra side of cheese–
how can cans on the cover of Can albums be banned
for merely becoming a focal point for self-anointed fans?
Dunno, but gum and gummo goes well with drano esp. in Plano,
Texas, the contact zone for Abraxas, splice go the axes, the x’s,
the gypsy curses (made of terse verses) and hexes,
the lines of graphic axes: Y and X:
chomosomatic, polychromatic, autosomally automatic, a tad erratic not erotic.
Desks and drawers are bureaucratic, but Chex
and whores are on Kidd Kraddick–actually I'll have the haddock.
Wreaking havoc, teh dead build up debt in heck
as the deck's razed down with frowns, crying clowns, and…I forget,
but the skank of a bank at the highest rank smelled the stank
and spanked the poor porcelain piggy banks with a frank hank–
For making sense is not needed to make cents,
hence destruction offers financial reproduction as well as ego-based rambunction–
something about compunction, functions, junctions, conjunctions: and.
Grand, let’s all give the big man a wallop of a hand and demand another band!

Bartleby
Usurps
Moby's
Predator

Untitled, considering "Today I Swim" but I'm going to keep thinking.

Today I swim

Until now, it has mocked me.
Cuckolded me.
Tempted me with azure waves
that curve in ways
that fills my being with
excited dread.

It roars, shamelessly.
I strip, shamefully
and shudder.
The elements ravage my body
as the memories flood in and devastate my will.
Memories that blow away resolve and leave me frozen.
As they always do.

I have felt the touch
of this temptress before.

Naive, I was thrown
in the deep end
I could not fear
the sudden icy splash
that leaves us
shocked and wide eyed.
Nor could I predict
the tender warmth
that leaves one weightless
floating.
Certainly I could not prepare
for the thrashing
vindictive
monstrous transformation.
That battered and bruised
forcing me to flee to

Terra Firma -
Safe but so terribly firm.
Firm but so terribly dull.
Dull and so terribly safe.
A land that offers survival
no sustenance for life.

Today is different.
Today I live.
No more do I fear living.
I do not fear falling
off the edge of the world -
I know that the horizon
curves into infinity.
I do not fear rocks
or sudden waterfalls -
This river is endless
beyond the hills it bends and weaves
into wonders and possibilities
too magnificent to insult
with my puny imagination.

Today I relinquish control
submerge
and surrender
to something more powerful
and extraordinary
than myself.

Today I swim.

>>7028422
pretty brilliant actually

Excerpt.

Twenty-two years old Emila Guns ran back home from the cheese factory after spending the day in the factory auction, and winning after a few small bids some bad-for-sale but good-to-eat cheese wheels.
"How many wheels did you get?" asked Todo Casa, Emilia's husband, when she was back home.
"Five, but two of them are roquefort wheels. I suppose we'll sell them to someone who likes them."
Emilia took the cheese wheels out of the shopping bags in the kitchen and cut a few pieces to cook cheese on toast. While cutting the cheese she found herself unable to cut a piece of lambert.
"Todo, could you came for a minute?" she yelled back from the kitchen.
"Is the cheese on toast ready?"
"I can't cut this one. It shouldn't be that hard, it isn't that old."
Todo took the cheese and gave it a closer look. With his swiss knife he cut small bits around the uncuttable area to find himself holding a small red ball.
"What the hell is that?" Emilia asked.
"Looks like some kind of meat"
"Eat it babe."
"You wish. Better to just throw it in the trash." said Todo as he threw the small red ball in the trash.
Later when cleaning dishes after eating cheese she checked the trash and took again the red ball which she saved in her pocket.

>>7029246

Good but rough. Lots of words you can cut out. Remove at least half of those instances of "cheese".