What are you writing?
- Thread starter luka
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slowtrain
Well-known member
Burrough's Livejournal:
Why does she hate me so much? I hate the people with this pompous bullshit attitude like they are working things they wont have and then they will die alone and i shall laugh about this every night as i drink my sorrows away. Everyday, I'm trying to be me, but people don't like that, they reject it. One square mile in New York county holds a staggering 66,490 people. Applying this variable gives us 729,534 males in New York County, where Harlem resides.
New York county's racial breakdown places African-Americans as 17.4% of its total population. This now gives us the number of males in the United States, aged 20-30 years, which is 20,436,627.
Why does she hate me so much?
I mean hey you can act all polite in shit and speak shit about me behind that fake facade smile mask you have but I want you to know that you just make me feel disappointed just as I have disappointed you. I understand about Joseph and Philip but I have been doing landscaping and various computer crap, ancestry and many other things that need my attention that I have neglected by keeping people out of jail.
Remember all the cars that I have let in in the past 8 years that I've been driving?
Why does she hate me so much?
Líkar þetta · Jacob Gilchrist líkar þetta.
GO THE ALL BLACKS!
swissreplicawatches.com.auCelebrate with a $397 Swiss Made replica Rolex, Tag Heuer, or Omega. Delivery is fast and free, order today!
Uppfæra stöðu
Bættu við mynd / myndbandi
Spurðu spurningar
RÖÐUN
William James Wolfgang
Why does she hate me so much? I hate the people with this pompous bullshit attitude like they are working things they wont have and then they will die alone and i shall laugh about this every night as i drink my sorrows away. Everyday, I'm trying to be me, but people don't like that, they reject it. One square mile in New York county holds a staggering 66,490 people. Applying this variable gives us 729,534 males in New York County, where Harlem resides.
New York county's racial breakdown places African-Americans as 17.4% of its total population. This now gives us the number of males in the United States, aged 20-30 years, which is 20,436,627.
Líkar þetta · · Fyrir 5 mínútum
William James Wolfgang
what the fuck am i doing get a blog you retard
Líkar þetta · · Fyrir 5 mínútum
William James Wolfgang How fucking important do you think you are and where were you going in such a hurry that you cant slow down for stopped traffic?
Fyrir 2 mínútum · Líkar þetta
William James Wolfgang
Why does she hate me so much?
I mean hey you can act all polite in shit and speak shit about me behind that fake facade smile mask you have but I want you to know that you just make me feel disappointed just as I have disappointed you. I understand about Joseph and Philip but I have been doing landscaping and various computer crap, ancestry and many other things that need my attention that I have neglected by keeping people out of jail.
Remember all the cars that I have let in in the past 8 years that I've been driving?
Líkar þetta · · Fyrir 7 mínútum
William James Wolfgang
I did it mostly because I was trying to forget about Ryan-and then partly I did it because I was drunk and not thinking about the consequences. There was one question I knew I got wrong because I hit the wrong button at the last second by accident whilst I was tapping my fingers along the remote... Still the residue of desired greatness clung to me for the next few hours, until I was thinking in great long sentences of overly lyrical thought about people I knew, situations I could describe, how I wanted to take everything I saw around and me and push it all down into ink and paper. I mean, who wants to talk about those goddamned Ozzy Osbourne reruns all the time?
Why does she hate me so much? I hate the people with this pompous bullshit attitude like they are working things they wont have and then they will die alone and i shall laugh about this every night as i drink my sorrows away. Everyday, I'm trying to be me, but people don't like that, they reject it. One square mile in New York county holds a staggering 66,490 people. Applying this variable gives us 729,534 males in New York County, where Harlem resides.
New York county's racial breakdown places African-Americans as 17.4% of its total population. This now gives us the number of males in the United States, aged 20-30 years, which is 20,436,627.
Why does she hate me so much?
I mean hey you can act all polite in shit and speak shit about me behind that fake facade smile mask you have but I want you to know that you just make me feel disappointed just as I have disappointed you. I understand about Joseph and Philip but I have been doing landscaping and various computer crap, ancestry and many other things that need my attention that I have neglected by keeping people out of jail.
Remember all the cars that I have let in in the past 8 years that I've been driving?
Why does she hate me so much?
Líkar þetta · Jacob Gilchrist líkar þetta.
GO THE ALL BLACKS!
swissreplicawatches.com.auCelebrate with a $397 Swiss Made replica Rolex, Tag Heuer, or Omega. Delivery is fast and free, order today!
Uppfæra stöðu
Bættu við mynd / myndbandi
Spurðu spurningar
RÖÐUN
William James Wolfgang
Why does she hate me so much? I hate the people with this pompous bullshit attitude like they are working things they wont have and then they will die alone and i shall laugh about this every night as i drink my sorrows away. Everyday, I'm trying to be me, but people don't like that, they reject it. One square mile in New York county holds a staggering 66,490 people. Applying this variable gives us 729,534 males in New York County, where Harlem resides.
New York county's racial breakdown places African-Americans as 17.4% of its total population. This now gives us the number of males in the United States, aged 20-30 years, which is 20,436,627.
Líkar þetta · · Fyrir 5 mínútum
William James Wolfgang
what the fuck am i doing get a blog you retard
Líkar þetta · · Fyrir 5 mínútum
William James Wolfgang How fucking important do you think you are and where were you going in such a hurry that you cant slow down for stopped traffic?
Fyrir 2 mínútum · Líkar þetta
William James Wolfgang
Why does she hate me so much?
I mean hey you can act all polite in shit and speak shit about me behind that fake facade smile mask you have but I want you to know that you just make me feel disappointed just as I have disappointed you. I understand about Joseph and Philip but I have been doing landscaping and various computer crap, ancestry and many other things that need my attention that I have neglected by keeping people out of jail.
Remember all the cars that I have let in in the past 8 years that I've been driving?
Líkar þetta · · Fyrir 7 mínútum
William James Wolfgang
I did it mostly because I was trying to forget about Ryan-and then partly I did it because I was drunk and not thinking about the consequences. There was one question I knew I got wrong because I hit the wrong button at the last second by accident whilst I was tapping my fingers along the remote... Still the residue of desired greatness clung to me for the next few hours, until I was thinking in great long sentences of overly lyrical thought about people I knew, situations I could describe, how I wanted to take everything I saw around and me and push it all down into ink and paper. I mean, who wants to talk about those goddamned Ozzy Osbourne reruns all the time?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Cheers for the props guys, dunno where I'm going with this really or how long it's going to be but I'm quite chuffed with how it's turned out so far.
I think you may have just posted the most postmodern thing I've ever read. Love the Icelandic, looks like it's from Beowulf or something with all those crazy letters.
I think you may have just posted the most postmodern thing I've ever read. Love the Icelandic, looks like it's from Beowulf or something with all those crazy letters.
slowtrain
Well-known member
I have facebook in icelandic solely (well also cos it looks fucking cool) because when people post new posts, it says '1 new saga' (or however it is spelt in icelandic)
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
How did the self-publishing go, Tea? I'd be interested to hear your experience
Did people buy/ read it? Obviously tell me to mind my own business if you'd rather not talk about it
Well to be honest I haven't really been keeping tabs on it since I put it up there. I know I've sold at least one copy (!) because an old schoolfriend of mine said she'd bought it (and then gave me detailed feedback on it, so I know she def did buy it and wasn't just saying she had to be nice). I guess I ought to contact them and ask how I can check up on my sales.
One thing I will say is that formatting an ebook is a bit of a pain in the arse. Do not expect a document that looks OK in Word or Open Office to have the same formatting when you turn it into an ebook! You can get free programs to turn documents into ebooks and then preview them (as if viewing them on a Kindle) which is very handy. I dunno how 'techy' you are but for stuff like indentation, page breaks and so on I found it helped to learn a smattering of HTML.
But the process of actually putting it out on Amazon is fairly straightforward. PM me if you've got further questions - no guarantee I'll be able to help but I'll give it a shot. Also, their customer service people take a few days to get back to you but do generally answer your questions pretty well when they do.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Approaching the financial district now. Few buildings more than two or three decades old, divided between the relatively ancient edifices built with home-grown cash during the last big boom and the newer ones that have sprung up over the last few years. The nation-state continues to crumble as global elites network, consolidate and gradually merge. These newest buildings belong to every architectural school and to none; postmodern studies in the divorce of style from any recognizable tradition, they could be in any city in any part of the world. This is apparent to me now more clearly than ever, as my heightened awareness picks out curves, angles, length ratios, encodes them numerically according to some unknowable algorithm...structure becomes equation becomes bitstream...I get the feeling this data is being squirreled away in some obscure department of my brain for a purpose that is not mine.
thanks for the info. worth knowing.
it's not something i've given any thought to, tbh, but maybe something to consider one day. i'm still clinging (probably completely in vain) to the idea that some small publisher or agent might be interested in at least reading a couple of chapters. not looking promising so far though.
nothing too weird (cf. a lot of this thread) but perhaps a bit too 'literary'. it has characters though, and a story. see link in my sig
i've sent it to lots of agents (DGA, Curtis Brown, RCW, some smaller artier ones too) either by e-mail or post and heard back from about 10% of them, with a completely anonymous letter saying no. more recently (perhaps two months ago) I've sent it to some indie-ish publishers who accept unagented submissions like Alma, CB editions, And Other Stories, Snowbooks and as of yet nada.
it's 90,000 words or so, which is about *right* (from what I've heard).
the example of it having characters was too suggest it wasn't too weird
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That's pretty good, easily a shortish proper novel. Mine was only 18k words. Best of luck if you decide to put it out. But at that length it could well be worth going for an actual paper publication?
craner
Beast of Burden
Yeah, well I don't know what to say, really -- keep trying! Are you British? It's always good to have connections, or be good looking, if you are trying to get a novel published in the UK. If not, have some kind of interesting life story to hang the title on -- like being a bus driver, or something. If you have none of these things, and don't emerge from the elite educational establishment, the only way around it is to be outstandingly talented, either in an acceptable, staid way or in an extravegant, Gallic, outre way, though the latter route is more difficult, admittedly.
Or, Network, Network, Network, as we used to say in the Labour party -- bombard little magazines and online magazines and literary journals and competitions with snappy short pieces, stories and sketches and reviews, and generally hobnob with the literati underground, make your name known within the small circles and it will slowly filter up, or fester. At the very least -- assuming you get stuff published or printed -- you will have a small resume of bylines and allies to garnish your novel submissions. You will have made a name for yourself, found a niche. The aformentioned Owen Hatherly is the model to follow in some ways, but apply the same logic to fiction; harder to do, I am sure, but still possible.
In the meantime, you will have had practice writing, and worked on the novel some more, maybe, changed bits around, perhaps -- unless you consider it totally polished and finished? It's not unsual to get hundreds of rejection letters, but sometimes the difference between a book deal and oblivion may just be one crucial rewrite, edit or insertion, so with every round of rejection letters, I would consider it to be a lucky chance to rework the work, work out what's missing or what should be missing, and work and work and work. (Cut, cut, cut some more, I always say, like George Oppen.)
Publishers like to perpuate the myth that they actually sit around reading manuscripts and occassionally get smacked in the face by An Outstanding Work, when they actually go on CV, publicity photo, covering letter, connections and opening chapter. Depending on how much confidence you have in your book, and how successful you want it to be, you have the construct the package. There's not a lot of money or guts going around in publishing, they're all scared little cynics, scarred Eng. Lit. Grads struggling to stay alive in the world of retail and business, with monsters and aliens roaming around, feared CEOs from other sectors, restructuring and setting targets and sacking them and things. You have to sell yourself to them, because they have to sell you; they have tight targets to meet.
Unless you're pulling some Plum Sykes or Alan Titmarsh stunt, this could conceivably improve your work. Don't dismiss the rigorous, if unpalatable, aesthetic benefits of the market!
(I was only joking about Plum Sykes. I love Plum Sykes.)
Or, Network, Network, Network, as we used to say in the Labour party -- bombard little magazines and online magazines and literary journals and competitions with snappy short pieces, stories and sketches and reviews, and generally hobnob with the literati underground, make your name known within the small circles and it will slowly filter up, or fester. At the very least -- assuming you get stuff published or printed -- you will have a small resume of bylines and allies to garnish your novel submissions. You will have made a name for yourself, found a niche. The aformentioned Owen Hatherly is the model to follow in some ways, but apply the same logic to fiction; harder to do, I am sure, but still possible.
In the meantime, you will have had practice writing, and worked on the novel some more, maybe, changed bits around, perhaps -- unless you consider it totally polished and finished? It's not unsual to get hundreds of rejection letters, but sometimes the difference between a book deal and oblivion may just be one crucial rewrite, edit or insertion, so with every round of rejection letters, I would consider it to be a lucky chance to rework the work, work out what's missing or what should be missing, and work and work and work. (Cut, cut, cut some more, I always say, like George Oppen.)
Publishers like to perpuate the myth that they actually sit around reading manuscripts and occassionally get smacked in the face by An Outstanding Work, when they actually go on CV, publicity photo, covering letter, connections and opening chapter. Depending on how much confidence you have in your book, and how successful you want it to be, you have the construct the package. There's not a lot of money or guts going around in publishing, they're all scared little cynics, scarred Eng. Lit. Grads struggling to stay alive in the world of retail and business, with monsters and aliens roaming around, feared CEOs from other sectors, restructuring and setting targets and sacking them and things. You have to sell yourself to them, because they have to sell you; they have tight targets to meet.
Unless you're pulling some Plum Sykes or Alan Titmarsh stunt, this could conceivably improve your work. Don't dismiss the rigorous, if unpalatable, aesthetic benefits of the market!
(I was only joking about Plum Sykes. I love Plum Sykes.)
well i don't know who plum skyes or owen hatherly are. apart from that, thanks for the advice
that's the big issue i know. the magazines/ twitter/ meeting-and-greeting approach holds very little appeal. but I'm slowly steeling myself up for it.
thanks again
that's the big issue i know. the magazines/ twitter/ meeting-and-greeting approach holds very little appeal. but I'm slowly steeling myself up for it.
thanks again
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
My hands turn the wheel to the right and I am conducted southward down a narrow street towards the river. I pass the building that houses the financial insurance brokerage firm where I work; glancing up, I involuntarily visualise streams of data passing between it and the banks, actuaries and other institutions we deal with. If I were to look over at these places I know I’d see (if that’s the right word) similar links to other institutions, and their links to yet others…an Indra’s net of connections, fractal, receding to the horizon and beyond it in limitless self-similar iterations. Don’t let the city’s countless fanes fool you – the only god this old town has ever venerated is Mammon, and these shining rivulets that crisscross the sky are the weft and warp of His great loom.
Approaching the river now. Without knowing why, my right foot releases the accelerator and applies gentle pressure to the brake as I cruise slowly along a row of residents-only parking spaces, searching for a vacant spot. There’s one. I pull up and cut the engine. Looks like this is the end of the road, at least in my car.
Out now and walking neither hurriedly nor slowly along the embankment, the river to my right, dark and silent. This great curving spine of murky water was once the chief datastream along which traffic material and otherwise passed, long since superseded by rail, road, cables of copper and glass, intangible waves…but on a whim I wonder if there isn’t still some great occluded current flowing along with or under the physical current of the stream? Increasingly uncertain whether any of ‘my’ thoughts are really my own or have their origin elsewhere. I look up from shimmering lights reflected in the otherwise featureless surface of the water and the glittering city night appears a blasphemy, yet also a thing of impossible beauty, like some gorgeously iridescent parasite emerging from the dull husk of the humdrum creature that involuntarily nursed it. Wonder again what it is that I’m incubating. Somehow I think it won’t be long before I find out.
My train of thought is interrupted by a sound that seems far more alien than it should. Footsteps a few metres behind me and to my right; a youngish guy, about my age, nondescript clothes, South Asian. He sees that I’ve seen him and then, in one instant, we both know. He’s on it too. There’s no nod or smile needed; the stuff in him communicates with the stuff in me. He and I are merely vehicles, perhaps soon to be abandoned like the vehicle I’ve just left behind. I turn ahead again and we trudge in step for an indeterminate length of time. I become aware of others joining us; a middle-aged woman ahead and to my left; black kid about eighteen a few paces behind her; white girl of 22 or so joining us from a side street and falling into lockstep with the rest.
One after another we step over the chain barrier and descend the slippery steps to an old loading platform at the river’s edge. Now only my own height above the river’s surface and yes, I was right! Invisible from the bank, I can now see the same patterns of data and disincarnate commerce flowing along and within the water. Great glittering skeins of subtle light which must surely have been there already – since the city’s founding? before then, even? – but only now become visible. The others can see it too, I guess. I wonder if this is happening, or is about to happen, in the other cities where this stuff has people in its grip. Most major cities are built on rivers…rivers have always been conduits for communication and trade…arteries and nerves…
Two of the people in the little impromptu group I’ve found myself are now crouching down on the platform and dipping their legs into the greasy water as it washes sluggushly by. I look to either side and through sight enhanced with more rarefied senses I can see platforms and ladders up and down the riverside crawling with small dark figures. I don’t know whether this should provide comfort in numbers or horrify me at the scale of what’s going on, but my capacity for emotion has drained away to nothing just as other faculties have been sharpened. I turn back to the river. It’s not that there’s some external force dragging me forward and that I’m powerless to resist; it’s simply that resistance has no meaning any more – I cannot imagine resisting any more than a ball can imagine rolling uphill. My turn; I crouch at the edge of the platform and take one last dab from the baggie in my pocket. Almost instantly the scene all around me, already somewhat derealized, loses more solidity than ever and I don’t even feel the cold or the wetness as I slip into the water.
I am now in a totally abstract space of information transactions. Data streams by at colossal rates, gigabits per square metre per second. I see it now not just flowing serenely past in lines or grids but interacting with itself, swirling into eddies and squalls, forming persistent features like weather systems. The complexity is unimagineable; seething entropy wherever I look. I sense that much of it is the human communication traffic of the city, yet other currents seem somehow impossibly older and other. The two strains of information are gradually merging, becoming braided together. And all this is intimately linked to the sudden appearance of this nameless black junk we’ve all been taking.
Is my physical body still under water? I can’t see or feel anything that gives a clue. The others around me are visible only as illuminated schematics of nervous systems, networks of glowing gossamer threads that mesh seemlessly with the flowing datastreams surrounding us on all sides. The physical boundary of the body is immaterial now…integration is complete…each brain becomes another node in the network. I look down at my own arms and bodies and see the same pattern of fine glowing lines extending off into space.
No idea now if I’m even still inside my physical body. Each of my fellow travellers, represented by a nexus of coiled and knotted lines – and I now see there are countless numbers of us – seems to be moving towards what I suppose is the central channel of the river. Here the flowing streams of data are consolidating into a great river of information, following the course of the physical river. We drift towards it and I see one nexus and then another approach it and merge into it, losing individuality altogether.
Now I’m approaching this torrent of liminal data. First my hands – if that’s what they are – move towards it and I sense the utter ancientness yet at the same time hyper-modernity of this great thing, this impossible current of symbols which I now realise is more real than matter. It was here first, will always be here and will outlast the crude stuff I am, I was, made of. Bits predate atoms and vectors predate dimensions. Maybe we’ve reached some critical information density and this is what’s called this stuff into being…maybe this happens every time, why SETI came back empty-handed.
This is it – no emotion now, just the pressure of unimagineable amounts of data coalescing from all sides – we are all here, all of us, all that were or will ever be, together in 1A65 7E611 944B 0594…
Approaching the river now. Without knowing why, my right foot releases the accelerator and applies gentle pressure to the brake as I cruise slowly along a row of residents-only parking spaces, searching for a vacant spot. There’s one. I pull up and cut the engine. Looks like this is the end of the road, at least in my car.
Out now and walking neither hurriedly nor slowly along the embankment, the river to my right, dark and silent. This great curving spine of murky water was once the chief datastream along which traffic material and otherwise passed, long since superseded by rail, road, cables of copper and glass, intangible waves…but on a whim I wonder if there isn’t still some great occluded current flowing along with or under the physical current of the stream? Increasingly uncertain whether any of ‘my’ thoughts are really my own or have their origin elsewhere. I look up from shimmering lights reflected in the otherwise featureless surface of the water and the glittering city night appears a blasphemy, yet also a thing of impossible beauty, like some gorgeously iridescent parasite emerging from the dull husk of the humdrum creature that involuntarily nursed it. Wonder again what it is that I’m incubating. Somehow I think it won’t be long before I find out.
My train of thought is interrupted by a sound that seems far more alien than it should. Footsteps a few metres behind me and to my right; a youngish guy, about my age, nondescript clothes, South Asian. He sees that I’ve seen him and then, in one instant, we both know. He’s on it too. There’s no nod or smile needed; the stuff in him communicates with the stuff in me. He and I are merely vehicles, perhaps soon to be abandoned like the vehicle I’ve just left behind. I turn ahead again and we trudge in step for an indeterminate length of time. I become aware of others joining us; a middle-aged woman ahead and to my left; black kid about eighteen a few paces behind her; white girl of 22 or so joining us from a side street and falling into lockstep with the rest.
One after another we step over the chain barrier and descend the slippery steps to an old loading platform at the river’s edge. Now only my own height above the river’s surface and yes, I was right! Invisible from the bank, I can now see the same patterns of data and disincarnate commerce flowing along and within the water. Great glittering skeins of subtle light which must surely have been there already – since the city’s founding? before then, even? – but only now become visible. The others can see it too, I guess. I wonder if this is happening, or is about to happen, in the other cities where this stuff has people in its grip. Most major cities are built on rivers…rivers have always been conduits for communication and trade…arteries and nerves…
Two of the people in the little impromptu group I’ve found myself are now crouching down on the platform and dipping their legs into the greasy water as it washes sluggushly by. I look to either side and through sight enhanced with more rarefied senses I can see platforms and ladders up and down the riverside crawling with small dark figures. I don’t know whether this should provide comfort in numbers or horrify me at the scale of what’s going on, but my capacity for emotion has drained away to nothing just as other faculties have been sharpened. I turn back to the river. It’s not that there’s some external force dragging me forward and that I’m powerless to resist; it’s simply that resistance has no meaning any more – I cannot imagine resisting any more than a ball can imagine rolling uphill. My turn; I crouch at the edge of the platform and take one last dab from the baggie in my pocket. Almost instantly the scene all around me, already somewhat derealized, loses more solidity than ever and I don’t even feel the cold or the wetness as I slip into the water.
I am now in a totally abstract space of information transactions. Data streams by at colossal rates, gigabits per square metre per second. I see it now not just flowing serenely past in lines or grids but interacting with itself, swirling into eddies and squalls, forming persistent features like weather systems. The complexity is unimagineable; seething entropy wherever I look. I sense that much of it is the human communication traffic of the city, yet other currents seem somehow impossibly older and other. The two strains of information are gradually merging, becoming braided together. And all this is intimately linked to the sudden appearance of this nameless black junk we’ve all been taking.
Is my physical body still under water? I can’t see or feel anything that gives a clue. The others around me are visible only as illuminated schematics of nervous systems, networks of glowing gossamer threads that mesh seemlessly with the flowing datastreams surrounding us on all sides. The physical boundary of the body is immaterial now…integration is complete…each brain becomes another node in the network. I look down at my own arms and bodies and see the same pattern of fine glowing lines extending off into space.
No idea now if I’m even still inside my physical body. Each of my fellow travellers, represented by a nexus of coiled and knotted lines – and I now see there are countless numbers of us – seems to be moving towards what I suppose is the central channel of the river. Here the flowing streams of data are consolidating into a great river of information, following the course of the physical river. We drift towards it and I see one nexus and then another approach it and merge into it, losing individuality altogether.
Now I’m approaching this torrent of liminal data. First my hands – if that’s what they are – move towards it and I sense the utter ancientness yet at the same time hyper-modernity of this great thing, this impossible current of symbols which I now realise is more real than matter. It was here first, will always be here and will outlast the crude stuff I am, I was, made of. Bits predate atoms and vectors predate dimensions. Maybe we’ve reached some critical information density and this is what’s called this stuff into being…maybe this happens every time, why SETI came back empty-handed.
This is it – no emotion now, just the pressure of unimagineable amounts of data coalescing from all sides – we are all here, all of us, all that were or will ever be, together in 1A65 7E611 944B 0594…
Last edited:
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Me doing a reading of some stuff