/pt/ – Petrarchan

>>5384 Hopefully I start around then as well! I've always read a decent amount, but have gotten way more committed to it this year. I've been having fun writing reviews of books, movies, Google Maps locations, etc. - with an eye toward literary merit. Looking forward to the inspiration for a larger writing project to coalesce.

>>5388 Lol I also have one huge notes folder and a large poetry doc. I try to periodically cull things from it that are bad or that I won't ever bother finishing, but its still almost untenably long.

>>5393 write, write, write until you write something you don't hate. don't worry though, if you look at it too long you'll hate that too

>>5393 Time + keep writing. Five to ten years from now, it will look fine to you with only a few adjustments. I have a purgatory folder for these somewhat finished but hated pieces.

>>5393 In becoming more objective, for me I think it's been through reading and judging writing of varying levels of quality, especially in trying to understand the author's intent behind each piece and how well it was realised. Then you apply that to your own work. My writing more recently has been much more focused on the conceptual level because of this, and I think that's helped me improve a lot. When I have a clear idea of what I'm trying to present or express, I can inspect and see what contributes to that. You can identify elements as flawed or superfluous rather than bad. Another important thing I think is to finish things. Of course an idea isn't used up after you've written it once, but calling pieces completed has always helped me feel more objective in my appraisal of them. There's no telling yourself that it's part of a larger thing you haven't finished yet and that the vital components will come to you later. Low-stakes avenues to share my work have also bolstered my confidence a lot and brought me above the default-bad mindset. The avenues for have been posting things to /lit/ (/crit/ and &amp especially), and then some local literary open-mics. Even if the feedback is limited, I feel more objective after sharing a piece; maybe it's about the brief state of vulnerability and a heightened critical perception. Also this >>5400.

>>5393 In becoming more objective, for me I think it's been through reading and judging writing of varying levels of quality, especially in trying to understand the author's intent behind each piece and how well it was realised. Then you apply that to your own work. My writing more recently has been much more focused on the conceptual level because of this, and I think that's helped me improve a lot. When I have a clear idea of what I'm trying to present or express, I can inspect and see what contributes to that. You can identify elements as flawed or superfluous rather than bad. Another important thing I think is to finish things. Of course an idea isn't used up after you've written it once, but calling pieces completed has always helped me feel more objective in my appraisal of them. There's no telling yourself that it's part of a larger thing you haven't finished yet and that the vital components will come to you later. Low-stakes avenues to share my work have also bolstered my confidence a lot and brought me above the default-bad mindset. The avenues for have been posting things to /lit/ (/crit/ and &amp especially), and then some local literary open-mics. Even if the feedback is limited, I feel more objective after sharing a piece; maybe it's about the brief state of vulnerability and a heightened critical perception. Also this >>5400.

>>5401 >I write mostly when I have inspiration You can mine for inspiration if you approach things like reading or observation with an active intent. And spending more time trying to deliberately settle on ideas might help you expand them into things that aren't depleted so easily. >a lot of half finished works I grow uninterested in Have you considered giving yourself a target length and a limit? That way you're not just writing until you run out of steam, but trying to successfully portray your idea with limited means. Do you already journal? Inspired or not, if you write more you'll have to accept writing things you don't end up liking or which are mundane, and a journal can encompass practice of the latter type. On intentional observation and to a lesser extent keeping a journal: I spoke to someone who reviews grant applications and stuff from (predominantly visual) artists, and he told me that as artists mature he notices them shift from being defined by their subjects to being defined by their perspectives. In my much more limited experience, I think there can also be a change from producing works with a hyper-focus that relies on a specific audience's commonality with the work, to producing works that make the fundamental concepts accessible to any audience.

>>5407 Writers writing about writing reminds me of movie directors making movies about Hollywood or directing, some of it is profound and interesting, but it mostly feels like the creator jerking off. Nevertheless, I think Nietzsche and Schopenhauer's work on the Apollonian and Dionysian is very interesting and indispensable for understanding a more "prima" why to art. In the same vein, Plato (especially the art focused dialogues, like the Symposium). Writing specifically, I think Walt Whitman has some interesting poems on poetry writing, if abstract. For prose, nothing comes to mind immediately, but maybe Tolstoy and Woolf have something? The former definitely writes about why one writes in the end of War and Peace, and Woolf has a couple essays worth investigating, though I think her work is very largely reflective on writing itself.

>>5410 True, it's often over-indulgent, but I'm suspecting artist ego feeds what is there to indulge a necessity (answer the question), rather than the question being itself an indulgence. Thanks, I'll check it out.

>>5432 I'll admit to being harsh, because I do think questioning the medium within itself can be very productive. See: Hollywood Boulevard, one of the greatest movies of all time, which directly addresses acting within the fame industry. Probably, to create something that questions the thing it is within is to walk the line which suspends disbelief. When it comes close to self indulgence and we roll our eyes, it's because we no longer allow the writer to be anything except a neurotic expending energy on something rather pointless. Or a director loving his fame and money.

>>5467 cont. Pic related is the last thing I wrote, specifically for one of a series of literary open-mics. Read it last Tuesday. And here's a recording I just made of it, since it was written to be read aloud: https://vocaroo.com/1uOhG8psA6ds I've been using the series as an exercise because it applies some constraints (time-/length-limit, a month between readings) and forces me to call a piece complete each month with the added gravity of presenting the work. Trying to make something that truly reaches a conclusion within a limited frame is very different from the short fragments I used to write, even if the lengths aren't so different; writing with the focus on speaking it is also fun, though I'd always read my own works to myself as a habit. So far I've done four of these. Reading to a crowd was new to me at the start, but it's fun. I like listening too, and generally there are at least a few good pieces each time. This one I have particular issues with, mostly in that I intended for there to be more, but had to keep it trim due to the time limit (5 minutes, which I definitely went over while live despite my fast practice runs). I wanted to make the reversions to memories clearer, and meant to have a third overt memory sequence. It's also very front-loaded, and doesn't do a lot to develop things later. The last line was an addition post-reading, and I feel done with it now.

>>5471 cont. >What's your writing process like? With the last four pieces I've completed, I've generally spent a lot of time thinking in advance, and have re-used a lot of old ideas that I'd already written about to varying degrees. The first three came out nearly spontaneously (in terms of the actual writing) if after some false starts, and were edited only in fairly minor ways. With the piece I posted, I pared down the idea for something I'd meant to be much longer (which I'd sporadically written a number of vignettes from), and tried to focus closely on what I was trying to express (really: what feeling or idea I was preoccupied with at the time) and the set of symbols I'd use to do it. I had a structure in my mind that I slowly stitched together, with the two memory sequences being mechanisms both to broaden the concept and to emphasise the explicit narrative. This was probably the most deliberately I've approached a piece of writing, at least out of the recent four, but in each I've started from a set of ideas that I attempted to connect. When I'm reading is when I'm most often inspired. When I feel really taken with an author's style, the urge comes on and often the words for what I want to write will start coming out clear. Sometimes it's just pastiche (e.g., a rip-off), but it's fun, and it feels like a good exercise. Speedboat by Renata Adler was novel I finished just before the piece I posted, and probably had an influence on the disparate sequences, but it was when I started re-reading Divorcing by Susan Taubes, right at the start of it, that it became clear that I'd use the memories to stitch the structure together.

>>5782 I did, over a week ago >>5471

>>5473 You should properly link to posts when you reply. The linear imageboard format gets confusing if you don't do that. Type two chevrons and the post number. It's not theatre kids, though I wouldn't know what to say are the demographics of the crowds. It varies per night. Most of the readings are pretty informal, a smattering of confessional stuff, some comedic stuff. It's mostly people who float around in the local literary scene, like people involved in the local magazines. Mostly people writing for fun, though you'll also see people who've won prizes and grants (often as invited readers). Mostly mid-/late-twenties, but it swings up or down of that. This is only one reading series in my city, and the crowd is different at others. The only way you'll find out is by showing up. There's a benefit in shaking off the fear, yeah, but it's also valuable to just hear an "I liked that," and to see what the reception is to different pieces of work. The first one I read at someone came up to me after to say she really liked a sort of shift in perspective, which hadn't been an intentional thing on my part, but none the less made me more mindful of that effect in the future. They're attended by people who like to read and write, so it benefits you to talk to them.

>>5481 Hey, reply properly dumbass. All you have to do is type it out like this: >>5481. It makes threads confusing because it's not apparent who the hell you're replying to, if to anyone.

>>5559 >as artists mature he notices them shift from being defined by their subjects to being defined by their perspectives. Beautiful words anon.

>>5560 They're not mine. That's close to exactly how it was described to me by this other guy, and it felt like a fuller vision of what I'd been trying to figure out about artistic maturation.

>>5562 >Fung Shing Chinese Restaurant, 3.5 stars >The strange and miserable atmosphere made by the red stain-marked wall-to-wall carpeting, plinking oriental notes, and fish tank of ambling half-turned floaters, is part of the charm of this fine Chinese eatery. I found myself transported to the Chinese slums of my city as they must have existed a century ago, they themselves a tether to the crowded backwards streets of herbalists, inns, and opium dens in the homeland. >So too were the emaciated Chinese cooks and waiters a glimpse to another time---and a jewel amidst it all! The plump and friendly waitress with broken English I watched from across the room, hoping she might alight upon my table with her tender hands---oh! Her struggling English, my trying to clarify, our amiability, the mixing of our giggling laughter and what might come of it if she were to chance upon my table and I didn't have matters to tend to this evening... >The duck: good, a tad salty. >Dumplings: in quality, standard fare, but, in quantity, a deal if ever there was one. >Do order the chow mein with mushrooms. >I will return most certainly. >Sincerely, >Anon There's a reason I use Rateyourmusic for the charts and the lists but try to look at the reviews as little as I can.

>>5594 >for me, art is the suffering. I wonder if that means I'll never be great. If you write because you're obsessed with your own suffering and not because you enjoy writing, then I wouldn't guess that your writing is very good. But I think it'd be more useful to ask piece by piece the purpose of what you're doing rather than deferring to some other artist's purpose or ethos. Do you write explicitly about yourself or about things that have happened to you, or what's the actual subject of your writing? Do you have any pieces you'd share?

>>5748 This thread has specific questions posed. /wg/ was made by and quickly abandoned by /lit/ refugees in the image of their own long-abused generalist shitheap. More people should post work their though. It's hard to take someone seriously if they don't show what the product of their method is.

>>5750 Alright, post (You)r work then

>>5782 I did, over a week ago >>5471