I'm a published writer, but I only have a dozen or so publishing credits in magazines, and I am not getting anywhere in terms of recognition, so my plan is to play up how much of a minority I am. I want to shill myself as an underrepresented voice to get a brand or to at least make it look like I'm sidelined or suppressed by the establishment, in the hopes it garners sympathy. I think this will be a good business plan and, if I pull it off correctly, it may project me as the next big name in my genre (horror). After all, people are already saying Stephen King is an old white male, and his spot will need to be taken when he dies soon. I can use my mixed heritage (I am only half white but have middle eastern and indigenous ancestry), lived experience with mental illness (GAD, paranoid schizophrenia), and experimentation with homosexuality as an expression for LGBTQIA+ inclusion. Do any anons have experience in the game of publishing, or know which agents are looking for a horror writer with minority clout and has overlapping disabilities or stigma?
Nah dude sorry try asking /lit/
>>24948468This is /lit/Maybe you got multiple boards open, senpai
>>24948460>indigenous ancestry>with mental illness>LGBTQIA+>not on front page of the New YorkerSo you're a bad writer.
>>24948546Nah, I'm actually really good. Unlike all the seething white unpublished cucks on this board. I just haven't written any novels and not sent to New Yorker (except once because the wait times are forever). As I said, I'm a genre writer so I have to make it through pro rate magazines. But there's basically no audience for it. I think I need to move to a novel with an agent, and that's why I made this thread.
post sample or fuck off
>>24948614I've already posted samples and people just seethe because I'm better than them.
>>24948616>source: none
>>24948460I think you should just try differente avenues, like, have you tried screenwriting, writing for comics, games? If you're a published writer you have a higher chance of getting a role in these fields.
>>24948616I come here every now and then and I've never "seethed" at anyone's work. I have however critiqued. And that makes the authors seethe pretty regularly. The problem isn't us. It's that you can't take any sort of criticism. And if you can't do that then don't expect to get anywhere brown boy.
>>24948683I already know I'm good but if you can make me seethe, I'm happy to see you try. I would only seethe if you made a structural critique and belittled my themes, but most people can't even read between the lines because my work isn't easily digestible slop.https://docs.google.com/document/d/12OR-aVZRPuX4-2dvte9D9a-QOzVBRyqeo8YOJtTie2Y/edit?tab=t.0
>>24948951Bruh I am not doxing myself to read your nonpublic google doc you preening fop. If you need to rely on your identity instead of your prose, you are simply not that good. Do something meaningful and innovate. You may be surprised to hear but there are some real writers lurking, and you're coming off as petulant.
>>24948984Such a published writer that you don't know how to use incognito mode so your google account doesn't show up.
>>24948989Maybe, just maybe, I'm not the guy you think you're replying to and I wanted to check your power level, clicked your link, shrugged, then called you out on your behavior.And your response? Oh, you don't know some incognito trick, like this justified your schtick. Tell me anon, what genre do I publish in? Who reads my work?
>>24949018What behaviour? Building a brand is the hard part. Being published isn't.>Tell me anon, what genre do I publish in?You don't sound like a published writer at all. >Who reads my work?No one.
>>24949025"Building a brand" is unwriterly horseshit for MFAs who invested in a business, not creatives who write because they must, and are competent enough to make a living in another field. You wouldn't need to do this nonsense if you were talented, useful, interesting, or had merit, and have instead invested in being as insufferable as possible. Any writer worth their salt knows that contemporary reception has nothing to do with legacy, and if I wanted to make money I could easily write smut, but unlike yourself, I have creative integrity.To top it off, instead of reading the obvious subtext that I am about to cockslap you and say something absurd, you doubled down on your pretension and hubris, which says everything anyone needs to know about you; you've gotten the reception you deserve. Do you have another guess or are you still jerking yourself off for the time being?
>>24949046Didn't read.
>>24949048That's it? The horror writer with transcendental chops who is criminally ignored, to the extent he's going to pull out every nefarious pandering trick in the book to be read, completely tone deaf to the contemporary market, can only scrounge two words to defend himself? As expected of country vegetables.I write horror, anon. Ontological horror in the post-modern tradition. As a man who has successfully overcome GAD. Who reads my work? Extremely niche pretentious academics. And why am I replying? Because I wanted to help, until I saw you were a faggot. Considering this is my third post, it's hard to be more efficiently awful, pat yourself on the back.
>>24949072O.K. Let me respond to you now. >The horror writer with transcendental chops who is criminally ignoredYes. I've slaved for 3 years and feel like I should branch out to novels to make money and support myself. It's not selling out, it's merely using the game against itself. Don't hate the player!>to the extent he's going to pull out every nefarious pandering trick in the book to be read.I didn't start all this. There has been over a decade of people exaggerating their lived experience to get published. So, there is a real pressure to sell yourself as a minority, even though I always felt uncomfortable to do so in the past. I'd rather just have my work read on its own merits, but I realised you need the architecture of a brand first to be able to make what you really want. I just think it's bullshit I lived through hell just to have some white, middle class pudgy sludge pile reader call me privileged. >completely tone deaf to the contemporary marketWell, like I said, I have disabilities and feel like I don't utilise them yet. But I still run into structural barriers despite the wokies at the helm, who actually don't want to help disabled people, but it's all a farce to make them seem less selfish and inhumane... I'd rather just build a career so I don't have to worry about not having any food for next week. >can only scrounge two words to defend himself?You didn't read my work so I was using the inherent irony available to me.>I write horror, anon. Ontological horror in the post-modern tradition. Sounds interesting. What does that entail?>As a man who has successfully overcome GAD.Good for you.>Who reads my work? Extremely niche pretentious academics. You sound a bit insecure about it. It doesn't sound bad at all. Good for you. Hope you write what you're proud of.
>>24949096Read motherfucker, read. My critique, to be explicit, is the exact thing you're doing right now in this mawkish post is unbecoming, and frankly, abhorrent. Quality writing stands on it's own, three years is paltry, and using these crutches is repugnant, and increasingly gauche, you duplicitous faggot. Bet my life has drama you can't even imagine; it's not relevant because I have chops. Get a real job and write on the side until you can support yourself, or pigeon hole yourself forever into the depths of being synthetic. Now, what is my writing? Operationalizing philosophy in experiential packets, with the reader as a vector in the book, and presenting extremely dense layered intertextuality that produces paradoxical conditions within the reader that I intentionally don't resolve. It's nonaesthetic; the grotesque, the surprising, and the frame have nothing to do with it at all. The horror is what happens to the reader. Think Burroughs if he read Lao Tzu and Ligotti, but with a deeply reverent humanism. And again, why am I telling you this? As a gift so you stop being such a faggot and try something bleeding edge new. I also know you won't be able to do it, so I'm not overly concerned about you stealing my thunder.
>>24949143I think you're lying for the sake of feeling better.
>>24949151About what? That I write in that genre? Sure do. I invented it and it took 15 years. That I think you're contemptuous? Sure do, work harder until you make something meaningful, and I am only telling you that under the premise your self reported chops exist so that you can improve.
>>24949186Again, you're just shoehorning your credentials into the conversation awkwardly. It sounds like a cover letter or resume, rather than a dialogue.
>>24949201This isn't a dialogue. I am insulting you. And bragging to justify my position while talking about my work you just didn't believe. You haven't said anything of substance whatsoever and beyond your latent humanity, you have done nothing to deserve conversation, assistance, or even attention. All you've done is complain about how your life is hard and you are entitled to free rewards, which is hideous.
>>24949218No one reads you. I barely remember what you're even seething over.
>>24949226Incorrect. I don't need to play identity politics games to get read, and if you lack the reading comprehension and attention to detail required to understand I'm insulting you until you improve as a writer, rather than jerking of over what you think you're entitled to, your problems seem self inflicted.
>>24949240You're a washed up Gen X / Millennial and you've not got enough decades left to make your mark nor innovate in the field. I bet you haven't even read as much horror or gothic or romantic fiction as me, especially when you're working a wagie job and writing trite that sounds like a John Padgett ripoff. You've been eclipsed by me. I'm still quite young and, yes, I'm simply a better writer than you. I'm merely exaggerating what I am already and packaging myself for the overwhelming majority of editors, who you know are all progressive and woke, to sell more to the big horror mags; Nightmare Magazine, The Deadlands, The Dark Magazine, Apex Magazine, and Skull & Laurel, all ask for underrepresented voices. So do the agents I've looked at.
I've went to /tv/, /ic/, /mu/ and /g/, and always baffles me how come of all artists you writers have always the most pathetic pettiness. No wonder nobody wants to read books.
>>24949247You still don't get it. And "eclipsed" is quite the statement from a charlatan who thinks he needs identity politics and agents and magazines to do anything of merit. You can assume what you like, but you don't know anything about me beyond what I've said, and I have an incredibly clear picture of both who you are as a person and a businessman.Let me ask you a question. What are the most expensive books you've ever purchased? And where did I say I publish? And what kind of deals do you get in that space?
>>24949263It's about scarcity, so writers hate each other. There's also a great amount of resentment over how we're treated constantly, not even by an illiterate society, but by the people who are supposed to publish us and foster our voices. Editors especially just force their tastes on the majority of prospective writers, or even established ones. Not getting a piece published because of arbitrary taste makers or woke ideology is the silent censorship no one talks about. Writers face rejection 99 times out of a 100, and innovation is often met with immediate punishment. PKD says being a writer is no better than working low end jobs: you get shouted at and told what to do by editors and publishers. We have to suck up to our masters and beg for scraps, while the smallest deviation is met with silent censorship or blacklisting. That other anon, if he isn't lying, could get completely fucked if someone found out his real name and said he posted here and used a slur against me. That's why I'm just going to call him washed up, because he can't really lick his wounds and claim it's because of woke culture; he's actually too old to be a horror master now, unless he already wrote his magnum opus, which I doubt.
>>24949271>What are the most expensive books you've ever purchased?Second hand: Arkham House editions of HPL's works. Otherwise, probably my New Directions books of Ezra Pound.>And where did I say I publish? You didn't. You said it's postmodern lit. So maybe Dalkey or some other small imprint. Maybe Giramondo? Or a university press?>And what kind of deals do you get in that space?Probably a contract for a few books and standard royalties. I don't think your contracts are going to be that much better than everyone else's. Only people like Stephen King would be able to negotiate huge advances. And you've made it clear you're writing serious literature to upend the seats of previous masters!
>>24949275Anon, maybe in your league, but all of that is irrelevant to me for a variety of reasons. I am not a "horror writer" or a "horror master" because that is marketing cache. I write. And because it's not my career, none of that applies to my livelihood and they have no control over me, so I can produce good work on my own. I simply show up, say "this is done", shop around until I find a publisher I like, the move on. Almost all the writing income I get is from consulting and ghost writing, because I'm not a careerist idiot playing trite games of faggotry for pennies on the dollar to feed myself.>>24949288I publish in academia. At high margins.
>>24949293Academia isn't high margins, retard. I've worked on government funded research grants and projects. I've been in a PhD too. You might have had it better than me because you're old as fuck but the humanities and sciences are both in a crisis at the moment, and no one is making money for how much work they put in. Unless you graduated in the early 90s, there is no way you are a full professor. Even being an adjunct is a stretch, but I also doubt you're a research scholar, visiting fellow, or lecturer. That doesn't leave many other jobs. I was an RA and academic editor, which is why I am poor. I can't find other work because academia creates burnout and hyperspecialisation that makes it hard to transition into the normal workforce. I had to end up doing teaching and even that was a culture shock.Wrong person to lie to. I think you're either born into a rich family and coasted, or just a straight up liar.
>>24949302Or, if you read, you'd know that I have a real job and support myself, and that a 10% net margin after cost on an academic book IS a high margin you insanely pedantic retard.
>>24949306No, you just lied. I actually worked in this field and what you said is an exaggeration or a lie intended to impress an Indian on whatsapp. Academic writing is also infamously poor quality and you can find journal articles or monographs that use AI to generate text. There aren't even enough experts around to do peer review because they 1) don't offer any money for it 2) there aren't actually that many experts 3) half this shit is made up anyway and getting published is tokenistic. You work a job and get paid a token payment for ghost writing for ESL academics who paid their way into a PhD. Nothing to gloat over.
>all of this because OP was insecure about showing his writing
>>24949275>It's about scarcityExactly. Too many writers, not enough readers. That's the fundamental imbalance that precedes all the other issues you've listed. There's no point in complaining or trying to change anything else in the chain, those are just consequences.
>>24949310Wow. It's almost impressive how little you understood of what I said, despite understanding what I said explicitly, because you want to make up being correct in your head to soothe your anal fissure. Don't bother me. Tell me anon, what a book is required reading for a course, what type of compensation does the author get and how expensive are those books?
>>24949324>I write TEXT BOOKS which means I get ... $500 a year!Kek. You're bottom of the barrel. That's not even writing. Also, textbooks go out of date as soon as you put them out. So get to work, you'll need to revise and update every fucking semester.
>>24949275>>24949316I wish that people talked more about this. Do you guys know anyone that writes about it?
>>24949333What did I say I wrote? One thing very specifically. And it isn't textbooks. And writing is not how I pay my bills, so I can write what I want.
>>24949352>I write academic slop and make good profit margins (false)>I work another job because writing alone can't support me (true).>I’m a REAL creative writer operating outside identity politics (false).>I don’t do much creative writing, my work is institutional slop (true).In the span of one thread, you have claimed all these contradictory statements. Well done.
>>24949356No. I suggest working on your reading comprehension.
