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/lit/ - Literature / Fanfic / Poetry

M-my hands are w-writing on their own~!
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File: 1385198848038.jpg (31.51 KB, 260x400, Spider Jerusalem.jpg)

 No.418

Welcome to my thread, hopefully you'll enjoy it in some way. I'll start it off by posting something I wrote about a month ago, and something I created mainly in the last week. I wasn't originally going to post a thread, honestly (you mostly have Kyoko to thank/blame it being here), and I'm rather nervous in showing some of what I've written, but here goes:

As I said to someone who had surely guessed as much by the work of mine he’d seen earlier on, I’m in a creative drought. I’ve spent the last hour or so combing through the unfinished writing projects I’ve left be, almost all of them totally incompatible and many of them blatantly terrible. I don’t know what to do with them so I guess I may as well just start typing about that indecision itself (well no shit).

I don’t really know for certain what I should write. Should may not be the right word, I guess I shouldn’t really do anything and by the same token I may as well. Anyway, the odd motions I’m making and these half formed thoughts should be proof enough I have no real idea of what I should (there’s that word again) write.

A lot of people see themselves as performing some great service by simply writing about what they do, and many of those same people as well as yet more see themselves rendering even greater service to the race by simply writing about who they are. Many times they might well be; in case what I just said sounded overly cynical, it wasn’t intended to be nearly as judging as it may appeared. That brings me to something people don’t seem to state enough (regardless of its total lack of context or relevance in most places): perspective is a twisty, incommunicable pit of consciousness. And yet the desire to convey mine drives me to write, and as a result of it being so, I see almost everything I do produce in my unproductive state to be an utter failure.

Anyway, going back a little, I haven't done much of anything that would warrant a self-serving description, but if I indeed want to be a writer making such descriptions regardless of how they may look is just part of the role. How’s that for a run-on sentence? (And how's that last sentence about run-on sentences work for a summary of what I've written thus far?) In any case, I should at least explain why it is I see myself as doing nothing. It’s not so much that that is exactly the case; well, that much is obvious by my being able to say as much. So what I’m trying to say is that I do nothing important. Those I’ve tried to touch on some deeply personal level and those fewer I’ve tried to help in doing so have so far gone on being what they were and doing what they doing were regardless of any attempts of mine to exert positive influence. For all I’ve helped, I may as well have been pissing pool toys or taking out the recyclables at a government-funded heroin clinic/distribution center in a hippy district. (Granted, if such a place exists I doubt rather heavily they bother to wash their needles at all.)

This brings me to another thing entirely, something people with greater perspective than I have gone on about seemingly as long as men have had the language centers of their brains developed: human beings are self-hating, fleshy little fatalists, and it shows in everything we do. We’ve gone from being in scattered groups in which the unshaven primate with the most testosterone or the female that could manipulate best ate and screwed and made much merriment at everyone else's expense to a similar system except with drone-strikes, darknet slaves and willful poverty, starvation and ignorance, well beyond what we could easily prevent. We’ve also multiplied it to an absurd degree. I don’t ever really brood on it unless I come into contact with the dredges of this glorious new system of ours, but that’s an increasingly common event, even with me being the opportunity wasting little shutin I am. Okay, so the not brooding often thing may have been a white lie. Art: it must sacrifice its own credibility, right?

People will often, in response to the previous sort of declaration, fall back on the platitudes that the species evens itself out, that we always produce great artists with our warlords and civil innovations with our military ones. This is absolutely true, but it doesn’t ever seem to help a whole lot. Our inventors are people as much as you (assuming it isn’t a Google bot going through this) or I. And with this human-ness comes even greater vulnerability to becoming selfish assholes then you or I might have. Why greater? Because the only thing worse than a person is a person with money, authority and/or access to new technology. Don’t believe me? Look at the invention of the bomber. Actually, you’ve probably heard that story before, so bear with me.

 No.420

>>418

Look at something more timely: the internet. A lot of MS word black pixels and tabloid sweat has been spewed celebrating and denouncing the freedom of it, but at the same time most of it only exists to get you to buy products. From Mexican lead pills marketed for everything from baldness on one extreme of the body and shriveling of the body in another to, again, humans. The “dark” parts of the internet that exist now, however, are exactly like the ones that existed very shortly after its invention. The degenerates and greedheads got the jump on it, as they do all new and great things. It’s just taken them a few years to dig a whole deep enough for them to profit off of it properly.

Given how much of those networks are just shock and troll sites and how much else of it seems to at least try to offer some actual service, that is probably an exaggerated view of it. Still, the internet offers one of the best examples of a technology that is often underutilized or simply used badly: it's the greatest invention in human history when it comes to potential for the sharing of information and for learning since the invention of written language, and it's mainly used for porn and other distractions.

And what better institution to fail at preventing actual harm than the US Federal Government? When they bothered to go after anything there and had the ability, what did they go after again? Child pornography? Human trafficking? You know, perhaps things that result in gross bodily harm to innocents in their very functioning? No, of course not, they went after drug dealers largely disconnected from the cartels killing people over the rights to supply said stupefying chemicals. Which, to be honest, regardless of any perceived want for legitimate freedom I would have been completely fine with if it weren’t for more pressing matters. Really though, they aren’t any more pressing; to say they are would be to suggest that said powers might actually be able to show more concern for preventing harm than safeguarding profit and perpetuating a doomed ban.

I suppose I should get back on the trail I’d lazily plotted for myself earlier on. So, in that interest, I’d like to say that while any explanation of who I am would be too self-serving to bear, I again also realize that the desire to be a writer is the same desire which would bring myself to commit a sadistic act such as forcing you through one anyway.
That admittance of wrongful intent doesn’t make me any more ready to deliver, though, but I feel like that sort of catharsis is something I should dip my head into. I’d channel a certain Charlie and say that “I’m nobody… A boxcar, a jug of wine and a straightrazor, if you get too close,” but everything but “I’m nobody” would be a wild overstatement. I wasn’t even alive by own judgment until a few years ago. Prior to that, I was a hunk of meat that loved its brother, wasted a lot of time and enjoyed not having to really try at anything. I’m probably not a whole lot more than that now, but at least I can stand in criticism, and I often do that when it comes to past versions of myself, and everyone and thing else. So maybe that’s the main thing I do, and should write about.

Keep this in mind: I don’t really consider any young children to really be people. Not “I don’t consider them to be alive,” I just don’t judge them as having any of the qualities that make up a worthwhile person beyond being warm and producing a lot of fluids and gasses while seeming to enjoy the processes associated. Those qualities that actually mark a person as being real in my mind mostly have to do with being capable of affection and reason though, so often it seems like other older people try descend to the point of no longer having to try to be real human beings. A lot of times I also do that, so for the most part it’s okay.

One thing that seems clear to me now is that the more you alienate yourself from that great panorama of artificial identities and goods the more you seem to not really need an identity of your own, in the aesthetic sense at least. I am mainly whatever I am that is doing what it does every given moment; the self that’s painted in my head out of past decisions is one that I abhor, but the fact I have a hard time feeling its being there saves me from most of the feelings of self loathing I might have otherwise.

 No.421

>>420
The fact I seem to preoccupy myself with trying to determine the qualities of that shell of a being despite not really feeling it a necessity kind of confuses me. I’d claim that it makes sense because most occupy themselves as they do on a daily basis mainly to avoid having to face themselves, but I don’t like doing that either.

And I suppose this is what listening to Andrew Jackson Jihad records while being a lonely sack of meat named [xxx] does to any such [xxx]y sack-o-meat. I’m lost. That doesn’t seem like a new development, so I guess I should apologize to that whiny voiced kid with the guitar. It’s probably not the best reflection on myself that while he sings about his stepdad abusing him I’m made jealous by his craftsmanship.

Speaking again of shutins, I’ve had a realization. That is, while I’m rapidly approaching being NEET, my actual opportunities for doing anything of worth are rapidly diminishing. The amount of time that I have to fill increases with my ability to fill it with memorable or productive things. You as a citizen of this great nation of ours have to submit to trading much of your brief life toiling for others simply to survive. You can actually survive either way, but unless you want to seem a complete leech, feel absolutely abandoned or live on the fringes of society eating ramen and shooting squirrels and living in a shipping container in the woods of British Columbia, you’d best submit. If you don’t, aside from being a leech and whatever else, you’ll have less freedom of opportunity than you will working the Chinese lead-mill job you’ll have to reduce yourself to anyway (assuming you aren't the type for suicide at least). People aren’t made to enjoy empty time and space for the most part. If you’re one of the few that can do so easily, I envy you; my need to fill up empty space led me to writing this gibberish, after all.

(About those two plans earlier: guess which of those I want for myself using a basis of depth of description, your choice will likely be correct.)


And thus concludes the first piece. I'll post the second momentarily.

 No.424

>>420
As was said a couple and however many more times my memory deems less important to save, taking longer than necessary in writing is a sin. As is evidenced by that last sentence, it's a hard habit to break. It is also a hard thing to refuse oneself of references to his ownership of the only thing he ever can truly claim to have all his own: his judgements, his thoughts. I can barely stop myself from acting on the urge to refer to opinions written as those of your humble narrator (or perhaps more accurately your burden).

I try and write of goals, of conditions under which I may be content, when in all likelihood my immature self is so unappreciative of calm and contentedness that it would likely reject them if they were offered, in exchange for whatever it deemed the most interesting. What are the goals I write of? Knowing and being with someone I can truly relate to, and so sympathize with, and more recently I began to wish I may become more able to convey the vision of the world and the self that exists within my skull as a reflection of what actually is.

It would seem those needs perceived inward are simply by-products of an inability to achieve self-understanding in a genuine way. I worry that the seeming need to feel desires deeply is just an attempt to ignore the feeling of emptiness that may reign otherwise. Maybe most of the shallowness I feel is so intensely shown in others is projected. Given that all those desires revolve around understanding, they're probably just externalized desires for comprehension of the self.

If that is indeed the case (and it probably isn't), I doubt I can do any better than to pursue them anyway. It may well be that in nervously attempting to identify personal faults, I betray an unrealistic expectation: that, after growing up with no real social ties outside my mother and brother, and being as selfish as any other child and then some with this isolation, I might still be able to tell for myself what best to do with this precious little time in existence so little after really coming to look at the greater world for the first time.




I'd like to know the opinions that those who've read this far have of my work from what little I've offered here. If any of you want more I'll do my best to supply it, and I'll be just as glad to let this thread die if it's universally loathed.

Oh, also, sorry in advance if the fact this is largely introspective happens to irritate you. I've spent more time trying my hand at poetry and fiction than this sort of thing, but I feel most of my poems and stories aren't as worth sharing. Maybe they are more than this mess, not sure now.

I feel that establishing some sort of understanding of my drive for writing before producing things purely for consumptions, or closer to that. I also feel that I could benefit personally a lot more from meditation on what is than what isn't (that might be a cop-out, I do enjoy writing about actual people other than myself).

 No.425

My home computer's fan is out, so I likely won't get to update this or anything else for something like a minimum of five days assuming I don't get many opportunities to use the machines of others.

That factor could go either way, but the amount of time required to type out this sort of thing from my notebooks is a lot greater than the amount of time necessary to simply check every email and make one or two response; the preceding was an example of what tends to be done when I get on someone else's computer.

I feel it necessary to post at least one more thing, so here, have the first section of an attempt of mine to create a framework for a few notes I wrote in a different state:

(The following sentence or two is likely a result of the convenience of the awareness some section of my head has for the necessity of revelatory intro.) It would work a lot better in the pursuit of developing the ability to write good fiction to put my ass to a seat and write some than to simply wish and will myself to miraculously find some of that fabled talent. In the interest of taking the more efficient route, allow me to try making use of those things I scribbled while panicking into something usable:

I had until recently always wished to write decent fiction. No, that counts as an overstatement; I wished to write any fiction, until a relatively short time ago. The rate of consumption to production in terms of writing I had when I was a smaller child must have been higher than just about anyone else's, I began truly wishing to write well of my own ability three or four years ago.

So, I wrote a few first chapters of books that the main body of never materialized, and deemed the personal experiment more or less completed. I spent more time on trying to develop an ability for poetry, but still I judge the results to probably be crap even in the opinions of others.

I avoided really trying at fiction again until early this year, when I wrote a partially fictionalized combination of a few days that had had me in them as my body was stowed in its bed. It was composed of conversations never truly had with people who are themselves nonexistent, and yet the only praise of it I took seriously was that it had a believable air. (My dreams are ever mundane.)

I didn't mean originally to expose this story I speak of to varied criticism; I feel myself far too amateurish to respectfully beg the attention of anything but a personal audience. That begs the question: hod did I manage to screw myself over to the point I was exposed to people who wouldn't already be biased in my favor?

I wrote that patchwork of impulses to sate the desire to write decent fiction, well after I had already written something that would at least vaguely qualify for the format. In my own opinion, the attempt at writing quality failed, but unlike past attempts someone else took notice of this one.

+ + +

I'll finish it during the week, or at least try to get it closer to its finishing then.

 No.427

Get to the point, man. A word of advice on writing about real experiences: Go the Jack London or Mark Twain route and write about physical things, hardships, ways of life that people want to know about.

Anybody can write a formless miasma nowadays of can't do's, of externalized system blame. I'd say strip all of that out; get to the core of what is really worth sharing. Think of it as a "How to" manual of experience, is it useful for the readers to add this to their minds? An illustration of the symptoms is a start, but it can only go so far.

 No.428

>>427
Yeah. Twain being the one of those I'm actually fond of, I'd be inclined to agree that going in that direction would be of benefit.

>Think of it as a "How to" manual of experience, is it useful for the readers to add this to their minds?

That doesn't really approach my conception of art too closely; most things I've enjoyed reading haven't really made me more aware of anything the author had deemed "worth sharing", and what is seems largely up to the reader. I'm probably badly misinterpreting you.

 No.431

>>428

Ah, your mention of art actually provides a fitting synonym. Some would argue that good art is all about stimulating a change in perception. Likewise I think part of the enjoyment of reading can be traced to the question, "Did I learn something new?"

Even the most practiced prose can falter for lack of content; it is something to be aware of as your exercises soak up that refrigerator smell, taking on all those self-conscious qualities of the derived internet– its echo-chamber of the mundane. Do not be afraid to cast off the moorings of smell-absorbent paper to steer your ship onto a more vital course. Do not cling to aspects which are seen– rather focus your efforts upon the unknown qualities which must be transcribed into understanding.

 No.432

>>431
A lot of times I feel as if my only purpose in writing a given thing is to affect a certain feeling rather than convey certain information, though I desire to do both; I suppose when I attempt both at once it quickly sinks under the weight of the collective meandering bullshit.

I don't quite think I tend to draw on too much outside myself, which is probably my main problem, yet I believe what you and some others (including myself really) think I should do is try and cast off the mundane influence that creeps in probably as a result of my coming to grips with certain views while trying to find something of meaning among what are otherwise trivialities. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting you again.

This experiment has probably been something of a failure, or at least it's as much a failure as any creative exercise can be. Still, I suppose it's a better start than some have had and will have and are likely having.

Writings that aren't fully immersed in my own self-consciousness and lack of assurance seem to be the only things of worth I'm able to produce at this early point in my brief existence, so I hope that at least that in attempting to write actual stories beyond the first couple abominations I can persist to the point of having actual skill at it.

Thank you anon.

 No.433

>>432
I usually see myself as having absolute absolute disdain for those I see as wasting the energy they could use saying things of worth or bettering themselves or others by going on about their own ordinary lives. The fact that my attempts at outside writing stink of the same kind of self-absorbed journal-y shit kind of pisses me off. Hopefully with that awareness of hypocrisy I won't do worse.


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