/lit/ - Literature

>>4931361
By going hyper-local they've found a way to remain relevant to the people who would buy their paper, but the reduction in staff, if there has been (I can't speak to that) wouldn't be caused by that. Absolutely there's been belt-tightening in the industry, but like I said, print media isn't going anywhere. Thinning perhaps, but not to extinction.

I live in California, why?

Why should people be obligated to feel they're useful? To whom?

>>4931268
I can't really say how hard it is - I got the job by having a friend who worked there. I don't have a degree and didn't, at that point, have any writing samples. My friend was familiar with my fiction and knew I was able, so he vouched for me.

What I can tell you is that he got the job by having a degree in English from a prestigious uni, and he had some samples written for dollars for some obscure website. I think as long as you have links to good, published articles you stand a chance at freelance work. From there you work your way up.

>>4931337
Print media is still alive, you just need to go big enough or small enough (local). Big magazines pay well, and local newspapers have found a way of staying alive by becoming "hyper-local" i.e. focusing exclusively on town-related matters and leaving the national news to the other outlets. I get paid around 80 per article, so it's not bad. I'd stay away from online shit though, they pay nothing and there's plenty of hungry writers willing to take them up on it.

>>4931137 #
To that I would say, one, you can't know if food tastes the same for you as it does for me, because taste is a sense-datum that is inherently ineffable. We lack the language with which to describe the raw sensory data of taste. Yes some people can like a taste while others don't, but that says nothing of the taste itself, only of our reaction to it.

Second, I wouldn't compare something like the cognitive process of taste to something like the cognitive process of reading. I'm not entirely clear what the point was there..

>>4931088
I'd say the writer provides the blueprint. If no one ever needed to put in creative effort into visualizing a book then everyone would have the same images of that book. But as anyone who's seen a film based on a book knows, that's far from the truth.

If anything the Internet is killing attention spans. As soon as something becomes even remotely boring or tedious you can move on to the next thing, in seconds, no friction.

I think growing up with movies is what causes imaginations to stagnate. Sure they can be inspiring but they are a form of media that pre-visualizes or pre-imagines everything for you. All the work that your imagination must do when you read, for example, is done for you. Everything the filmmakers want you to see is there, rendered for you to see. In books text must be rendered into images in your head. After all, the etymology for imagination is "the faculty of the mind which forms and manipulates images"

I work two jobs, one as a freelance writer for the paper, and as a part-time waiter. There are pretty long stretches that can go by where I don't work, but trading all my time for more money isn't a deal I'm quite ready to make yet (though I know it's pending). Instead I spend most my time with the gf and occasionally working on my book which will be my golden ticket, with luck.

The good thing about working for the paper is that I'm slowly building up a body of published work which I can then take elsewhere, and I get to meet a variety of people, or the version of them they present to a reporter.

The good thing about working waiter is that it's somewhat mindless work I can spend time at thinking, though there is a lot of emotional labor involved. Also there are many kinds of people whose conversations I overhear which can provide fodder for my writing.

The negatives to both is that I suffer from anxiety, so being around so many people can be especially exhausting, though I can convincingly mask it for the amount of time I need to be there.

I bought a netbook specifically for writing (though I ended up using it as my main computer) and the programs I use are Q10 for writing and Open Office for editing.

In Q10 I like to change the color of the text and the backround to match the 'tone' of what I'm writing. I like to think the colors exert a subconscious influence.

>>4916084
>>4916091
You're trying too hard now brah

>>4916009
>the dark whiteknight

>>4916009
>the dark whitenight

>>4915934
You could but I would recommend against it. Read 49, it's good and short, then dive into GR with the Companion. If you can't make it past 200 pages, set it down and save it for later.

>>4915845
People don't care how drunk or medicated you are as long as you can make them laugh.

>>4911284
It's weird, that's the first edition cover of GR but it doesn't seem to be hardcover. Is it?

>>4915518
If you're not mirin her hard you're doing this whole heterosexual thing wrong

>>4911751
tfw I knew someone as attractive as Kristen only smarter, who seemed receptive to me and who could have been mine if only I hadn't cocked it all up.

One of my favorites from Mason & Dixon

>A very small town clings to the edge of an interior that must be reckoned part of the Other World. No change here is gradual,— events arrive suddenly. All distances are vast. The Wind, brutal and pure, is there for its own reasons, and human life, any life, counts for close to nought. The Town has begun to climb into the Ravine behind it, and thus, averaged overall, to tilt toward the sea. After Rain-Storms, the water rushes downhill, in Eagres and Riffles and Cataracts, thro' the town, rooftop to rooftop, in and out of Windows, leaving behind a shiv'ring Dog from uphill, taking away the Coffee Pot, till leaving it in its turn somewhere else, for a Foot-Stool,— thus bartering its way out to sea. The Horizon has little use for lengthy sunsets. Creatures of the Ocean depths approach the shore-line, as near as the little Coves where the water abruptly becomes Lavender and Aquamarine, remaining to observe, deliberate in their movements, without fear.For years, travelers have reported that the further up into the country one climbs, the more the sea appears to lie above the Island,— as if suspended, and kept from falling fatally upon it, thro' the operations of Mys-terion impenetrable on the part of a Guardian.... As if in Paymentscredited against the Deluge, upon no sure Basis of Prediction, the great Sea-Rollers will rise, and come against the Island,— reaching higher than the Town with the Jacobite Name, tho' perhaps not quite to the ridgeline above it. For anyone deluded enough to remain down at sea-level, there must come a moment when he finds himself looking upward at the Crests approaching. The Public Trees quite small in Outline below them. The Cannon, the Bastions, of no Avail. Did he choose, more prudently, to escape to the Heights, he might, from above, squinting into spray whose odor and taste are the life of the sea, behold a Company of Giant rob'd Beings, risen incalculably far away over the Horizon, bound this way upon matters forever unexplain'd, moving blind and remorseless across the Sea, as if the Island did not exist.

One of my favorites:

>A very small town clings to the edge of an interior that must be reckoned part of the Other World. No change here is gradual,— events arrive suddenly. All distances are vast. The Wind, brutal and pure, is there for its own reasons, and human life, any life, counts for close to nought. The Town has begun to climb into the Ravine behind it, and thus, averaged overall, to tilt toward the sea. After Rain-Storms, the water rushes downhill, in Eagres and Riffles and Cataracts, thro' the town, rooftop to rooftop, in and out of Windows, leaving behind a shiv'ring Dog from uphill, taking away the Coffee Pot, till leaving it in its turn somewhere else, for a Foot-Stool,— thus bartering its way out to sea. The Horizon has little use for lengthy sunsets. Creatures of the Ocean depths approach the shore-line, as near as the little Coves where the water abruptly becomes Lavender and Aquamarine, remaining to observe, deliberate in their movements, without fear.For years, travelers have reported that the further up into the country one climbs, the more the sea appears to lie above the Island,— as if suspended, and kept from falling fatally upon it, thro' the operations of Mys-terion impenetrable on the part of a Guardian.... As if in Paymentscredited against the Deluge, upon no sure Basis of Prediction, the great Sea-Rollers will rise, and come against the Island,— reaching higher than the Town with the Jacobite Name, tho' perhaps not quite to the ridgeline above it. For anyone deluded enough to remain down at sea-level, there must come a moment when he finds himself looking upward at the Crests approaching. The Public Trees quite small in Outline below them. The Cannon, the Bastions, of no Avail. Did he choose, more prudently, to escape to the Heights, he might, from above, squinting into spray whose odor and taste are the life of the sea, behold a Company of Giant rob'd Beings, risen incalculably far away over the Horizon, bound this way upon matters forever unexplain'd, moving blind and remorseless across the Sea, as if the Island did not exist.

For portability, ebooks. For edibility alphabet soup.

Finnegans Wake makes more sense when you can eat it as soup.

>>4912460
>implying Fabio doesn't transcend gender. (gives a new meaning to transexual)

>>4912427
Beat me to it

My sister sez males use female noms de plume all the time in the romance novel genre. Apparently women get weirded out when reading smut written by dick-quills

>>4907438
For sale. Baby shoes. Wrong size.

in retrospect I should have known they wouldn't fit me

>>4866732
You're that sad fawning Irish guy, huh