>>61978
Oh, because the line between music and poetry with respect to lyricism has ALWAYS been so clear. Nope. Hip hop doesn't exist. Leonard Cohen never put villanelles to song. Nope. None of it.

>>61995
lol, Why are your panties in such a bunch, man?

>>61997
Because I'm a goddamn poet.

>>61998
Then you understand my frustration with OP's work. I don't care if everyone in the world writes poetry, but a bunch of abstractions set to rhyme does not constitute a poem. I'm just trying to recommend some contemporary poets to him, jeeze.

>>62001
Recommending poets is good-hearted and well-intentioned. Telling him his poetry is categorically not poetry is foisting an ill-formed understanding of what poetry is upon someone with a budding interest in it, which serves nobody but yourself.

Look, I think at the core of it you feel you've good intentions with what you've done: trying to show him how to make a better poem. (And it is true that it might not be the best poem in the world.) But what you're really doing here by telling him it's not even a poem at all is assuming a position of authority which I don't believe you can really claim. Why, for example, is a bunch of abstractions set to rhyme not a poem? It might not be a good poem, but what makes it 'not a poem'?

I think you're someone who's read a moderate amount of poetry, and by this point, you think you know what it is. But the truth is that your categorical division between 'poetry' and 'not poetry' is little more than personal taste.

WHY THAT IRKS ME:
Because basically what is happening then is that you are teaching something wrong: that this is poetry and that is not poetry when really what you're teaching is that this is the poetry I like and this is the poetry I don't like.

If you really want to help him out and show him what real poetry is, that takes a little more consideration of what poetry exactly is. Do that if you really mean it. Talk about what at its most basic constitutes poetry. Is it rhythm? Is it pattern? Sound? Image? Form? Something else?

Cause what you're doing right now is just saying: "Hey, I'm sorry that you suck, but you suck. You should write like these guys" which is the absolute worst thing you can tell any budding artist. It's setting out a trap for them that they get caught in for years--trying to pretend they're a different writer and that their instincts are wrong.

Yes, my panties are in a bunch, but what goddamn poet's panties aren't in a bunch when it comes to poetry? What painter refuses to ramble on about paint? What musician is not internally infuriated by an awkward note?

Introduction
Prologue
Here is the first part of the thing

Might be more helpful with some more information about what it is you're writing.

>>61984
Really? I was so damn bored..

>>61986
Oh hell yeah. I loved everything about it. Michaels journey to understand our culture, and eventual goal of uplifting us into higher understanding, was fantastic. It amazes me that the same man that wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, the hippies guidebook, also wrote Starship Troopers, a manifesto on how to build a perfect military. A lot of people have a hard time coping with this but i find it so inspiring. Extremes dont work in this world. For one author to write two books on such polarizing topics, and so eloquent and well played, is mind blowing. We're not people of one principle or belief. We're too many. We have to account for all people and their needs, physical and spiritual. I think these two books together really show the need for a military but how it should be done and how we need to adopt a more peaceful state of mind towards one another.

At this point im just ranting but the bottom line is, i loved it and everything about it. Anybody who reads this should definitely read Starship Troopers next. or vice versa. Theyre unofficially meant to be read together in my opinion.

>>61983
I just started on this this morning!

Finally got around to finishing Lord of the Flies late last night (I found my DS a last week and have play Pokemon nonstop since then). It was fucking great, man, holy shit. I wish I had read it in high school.

I just got a cheap modern copy of Naked Lunch, so I don't have to depend on my dad's slightly fragile old copy and Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris. It's fascinating, learning about the background and production of some of my favorite comedy works. It's by the same guy who wrote Ginger Geezer, about Viv Stanshall.

>>61989
Yeah I'm really enjoying it, it's very good how he manages to get into the mindset of someone really alien and the plot is full of intrigue. I'm a big fan of the Starship Troopers film but I've never read the book so I'll check it out next I think.

Try reading some short stories, they usually aren't that descriptive.

I suggest something by Chekhov (Ward Nº 6 is the only one I've read), or by Sartre (The Wall, No exit)

It looks like you might enjoy Game of Thrones books though (vibrant style and adventure etc). I personally don't like them but a lot of people do, and they seem pretty good for the genre

>>61972
"Try reading some short stories, they usually aren't that descriptive."
What did you mean by the last bit? I said I loved lots of description and you say your recommendations arn't?

I tried Game of Thrones but it's not that interesting and I've seen the tv series.

>>61985
Oh shit, I should pay more attention to what I read, sorry. In that case read any russian novel from 19th century. Have you read Crime and Punishment? Great story, great characters, great descriptions (one of the most bitter books I've read). The Death of Ivan Ilych is great too, and it's not 600 pages long like the other one.

Maybe it'd be easyer if you name a couple books you like. Oh, The name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, has descriptions roughly 3 or 4 pages long.

I currently just work by passing on stuff to long time friends, people I met on the punk and hippy scene in Newcastle, run a tumblr that occasionally gets a short piece put on it. My biggest problem is that I need people to work with to produce my current labour of love, a comedy pilot short aiming to parody both news as a format and the small minded nature of the place I live, conjuring a sort of idiotic, closed universe populated by local action movie stars who appear in low budget films about renegade farmers sold at car boot sales, pretentious local authors who believe their plummy prose is on par with Pepys and insane loan sharks who seek to capitalise on something as small as lending a cup of sugar.

The man speaks the truth, but truth is all that Bukowski deals in.

Damn, that is so right...
I have never read his poetry but I love his prose. What do you recommend as a starter?

small disagreement:

>if you have to sit there and
>rewrite it again and again,
>don't do it.

just because it doesn't come off well, doesn't mean the idea behind it can is not worth rewriting.

I like Bukowski but sometimes he's full of his own shit, like in this poem. He's basically telling you that if you don't do it the way he does it, you're not the person whose meant to do it. He's also said in other shit that there are a lot of great writers out there, but that it's just about luck and being in the right place at the right time, or being seen by the right people at the right time. I see what he's getting at with this, but sometimes there's something wedged in you and it has to work it's way out slowly. It doesn't always all come as one big thing over a minute or two. It's funny when people like Bukowski write shit like this when they know they easily could've been just another starving writer who never made it. He's spot on about not doing it for fame or money or women though. It is something that comes out of you because it has to, not because you want to get something from it, but it doesn't have to come out as one huge torrent of words.

Basically OP, don't be discouraged because some writer you idolize tells you that you either do it the way they do it or you shouldn't do it at all.

>>61946
i think he's even having a go at long windedness in itself, i think you agree with him and he's basically saying fuck the superfluous, it's never good

>>61958

Finally, something original for fucks sake.

What.

DICKS EVERYWHERE

bump

>>61933
Yeah cannabis helps if you drive to someplace alone while high and take note of things and pretend you're a character in the story.. That being said---Cannabis can give you a spark of creativity, but you have to take notes, or else you'll forget

>>61933
>>61966
Yeah I almost write exclusively when I'm high, problem is everything I right is too fast paced, I can't stop and describe anything.

OP I'm interested in that book, what's it called? Could you perhaps provide a link?
I haven't got great advice for you, except to keep a pen and a notebook next to your bed and write in it whenever you think of something, even if it's 3am in the morning and you're trying to fall asleep (you might even fall asleep faster once you exorcise the ideas from your head)

>>61965

Thanks for the advice guys, unfortunately i cannot use cannabis, the reason being legal issues. I am finding, however, that as i progress further into this book that i am improving at least a bit. Picture unrelated

>>61975
You could try drinking and writing, it was the preferred way of many great american authors. Thanks for the book, will check it out.

"Write drunk, edit sober" - Hemingway

“The moon! The moon! And that damn fish!” Stevens was muttering, luckily for the wilderness, inside, having closed the window. I guess we can’t blame Stevens here. His thoughts were racing, about many things, but it all coming back to the fish and the moon. “Who wants to read sci-fi novels when there’s now things going on that science can’t even explain?” he was thinking. “The fish isn’t even like something out of a sci-fi. It’s just insanity. Who cares about my bogus space novel now? Reality has disproved all my speculative fictions.”
Well, he is right about that. Stevens, before the fish came, had been working on the sequel to his successful space opera. Had plans to make it a series, a franchise, movie deals would likely follow, all he had to do was publish the second book and he was on Easy St, the street on Cape Cod the CEOs and Hollywood actors all had their summer mansions on, just two towns over. Well, he wouldn’t really be able to afford East St, but a fellow could dream.
It’s not like he could think that way now though. Ever since the incident, scientists have yet to stop scrambling, trying to sort everything out. New calendars were being worked on to address the longer years, everyone was adjusting to the changes in their local weather, laws were being drawn up about setting new legal ages for driving, smoking, and, Stevens favorite, drinking.
Is Stevens a drunk? Yes, but don’t tell him that. And he is quite functioning as an alcoholic. Once upon a time, he worried he drank too often. Now that he is a published novelist, he feels he has a license to do it. Besides, he doesn’t day drink. Always waits until his daughter is tucked in. That doesn’t change the fact that it is a nightly habit. Although with the new climate, with no future in sight for his writing career now that sci-fi was essentially dead (Damn fish!), with nothing to write about, he was starting once again to feel a bit like a drunkard. Especially with his wife gone.

Not gonna lie man, it reads a little bit like Doctor Seuss got drunk and slept with Lovecraft. I can't take you seriously at all. Why is the narration so weird and conspiratorial? And people don't mutter exclamations.

>>61955
I agree, it's a very strange narrative style, almost as if it were being told from the author's perspective, despite the fact that the author isn't complicit in the events (to my knowledge) (I mean you OP not the author in the story). I don't hate it though, I think I could get used to it but it is jarring at first.

I have a correction for you though:

>like Zeus hurling a lightning rod

should be

>like Zeus hurling a lightning bolt

The first two lines sound like Hannah Montana lyrics

>>61955

>it reads a little bit like Doctor Seuss got drunk and slept with Lovecraft

That's kind of what I aim for. First two lines were dumb and would probably be dropped, but it takes a couple nonsensical lines to get me into form. And the style is vastly different from others, my short stories have always been told as 1st person from a narrator who is unattached to the story, not a character, just an odd fellow weaving a tale, it's sort of like how someone's drunk grandfather would tell you a campfire tale.

>And people don't mutter exclamations.

That's probably something I would drop on 2nd draft, I posted this immediately after writing. Was looking to see if it would be a first page to make someone want to see what was on the 2nd page.

>almost as if it were being told from the author's perspective, despite the fact that the author isn't complicit in the events

That's my odd style, I have a narrator character I enjoy who is almost like the stories hype man. He fades into the background for most of the story, the first couple pages is where he is most present.

About the story, it's in a setting that has been in my head for a few years, and I only now thought up the story that deserves to be told in the setting. It's in a world where a behemoth, luminescent Lovecraftian fish appears in the night sky, eats our moon, and chokes on it. Now it is revolving around us like the moon, and its luminescence does make nights brighter than before, but besides that, not much changes besides everyone's concept of reality. It's slowly decomposing but will stay bright for decades to come. Now the writer is struggling to write sci-fi in a world where reality is now trippier than any sci-fi. The fish and moon are more just an absurd, Discworld-esque setting for an unrelated story.
Hope you guys don't mind if I post more as I go, it helps me along showing someone and don't trust people I know to be honest enough. Also, I have some really creepy points in the first few chapters, and I like my Seuss style and need someone to rein me in if the goof factor is too prevalent in a part that should have a darker tone. I know the style is odd, but the styl…

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Real life.

>>61930

Personal finance.

being able to write a story takes more than just a good plot outline, also there's a book somewhat like this called Children of Men.. Go for it though dude. get writing, I like to pretend i'm in my stories and write from there

http://www.themetric.co.uk/author-reveal-no-04/

The reveal is out.

>Go to website
>Decide to submit
>YOU MUST SIGN UP FOR A USER ACCOUNT TO SUBMIT
>anonymous

nope.

>>61828

>Author names are later revealed.

>>60615
bump

>>61926
https://vine.co/v/hBdLl2P0qgT

We are currently in the release process. Im dumping this so you guys can have something to stare at.