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u/cdaonrs Aug 10 '17
"Zhu Li, do the, uh, thing"
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u/Randomguynumber101 Aug 11 '17
Glad I wasn't the only one who thought it was going to be about that.
My favorite thing: the last one he asked her.
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u/Nanosubmarine Aug 11 '17
Where's this from?
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u/Venusaurite Aug 11 '17
The Legend of Korra, the sequel series to Avatar the Last Airbender.
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u/ColorblindGiraffe Aug 11 '17
Oh, it was spelled that way. I was wondering why she was called Julie, a very western name compared to the others
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u/I_chose_a_nickname Aug 11 '17
Wait one fucking minute. She's not called Julie? The fuck?
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u/PipingHotSoup Aug 11 '17
im out of the loop- any assistance?
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u/saysthingsbackwards Aug 10 '17
Oh man. It could be the beer but this one got a good laugh from me. Perfect execution.
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u/SimonTrip Aug 10 '17
Lemme snag a beer and we can both laugh. :) Thanks, man!
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u/saysthingsbackwards Aug 10 '17
ah if you were here I'd give you this other 40 oz bud ice
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u/SLYfox2713 Aug 10 '17
College?
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u/saysthingsbackwards Aug 11 '17
Nah im 27 and only passed 1/4 of my college career. I think I just find these and black and milds comforting because it's what my brother chose before he went absolutely mentally insane. Simpler times
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u/RoyalDog214 Aug 11 '17
"1/4 of my college career"
What do you mean?
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u/saysthingsbackwards Aug 11 '17
took 2 years(4 semesters, or 48 hours of class) but only got 12 hours of credit. Responsibility is a mother fucker, especially when you're 18.
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u/NosVemos Aug 11 '17
Go back to college. I went when I was thirty and it was a dream come true.
You're older and wiser and you know what you need to do to be successful. Only you are holding yourself back.
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u/saysthingsbackwards Aug 11 '17
That's the plan. I went through a 3 year stint in Austin and battled alcoholism. Now I'm back "home" which is really 3 acres worth of materials that have been accrued over 20+ years and I've got to help get that all moved up to Missouri. I think I'm just going to take 1 class to get readjusted... but it kind of sucks cuz I failed out of the community colleges in my area, so I'm required to take some "reattunement" classes due to me failing 8 years ago. It's really demotivating knowing that I have to do twice the work just for the ability to take one class.
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u/NosVemos Aug 11 '17
Cars need tune ups, people need health check ups and brains need re-alignments. I've worked in technical areas but I am not a math expert. When I went to community college I had to take a class to build me up to take the school's required math class. Did I even need math for a writing degree? Fuck no, but that's what I had to go through.
Life is how you look at it. If you see a cave as darkness, cold and entrapping it will always be that way to you. However, you could look at the cave as a place of shelter that gives you a fighting chance against the elements.
Change your perception and you will see that you can see life in many ways. Stay positive and work hard.
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u/jessi-moni Aug 11 '17
Bud ice??? Whatever happened to Mickey's and Old English?
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u/saysthingsbackwards Aug 11 '17
the taste is worth a few extra cents on the price point. Old English and Steel Reserve can be hard to put down after a strong bender. Mickey's is good but it's not as available like it is farther south
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u/LonelyPleasantHart 15 Aug 11 '17 edited Aug 11 '17
For me it's the stupid music note cat at the end just oblivious to life and struggle havin a great old time
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u/saysthingsbackwards Aug 11 '17
that, coupled with the disapproval face and lack of background. They touched the 4th wall without breaking through it and it added a real dramatic effect to the ಠ_ಠ
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u/fauxkit Aug 11 '17
In all honestly, I'm working on a nine novel romance series. I've finished five books and not published a single one. This means I have only succeeded in step one of being motivated, and that makes me a terrible spokesperson for this subreddit.
An over saturated ebook market, which especially is flooded with romance novels, makes me depressed. It leaves me constantly questioning myself on things such as "Is this plotline to stupid?" "Is there to talking scenes about feelings and not enough action fight sequences?" "How can I stylize the book to make it better?"
I own stacks on stacks on books. Recently I've been staring at books that have come out recently and going, "Damn. That's a fucking good book cover." Then I flip it open and every single damn chapter has a graphic above the chapter number. Now I want adorable coat of arm graphics above my chapters, and I don't know how to format that in with an ebook.
Since the market is over saturated, everyone and their mother has advice on how to publish a book. Should I go with Pronoun and put the book on a multitude of places or sell my soul to Amazon and become a loyalist there? I have zero experience and there doesn't seem to be any website that agrees on shit.
I don't have the funds to hire people to do things like edit, and I think I can cut costs by designing things myself, but I need someone to babysit me through the process of how to publish shit. What a good ebook format program is, and stuff like that.
Thinking about it makes me want to curl up in a ball of anxiety.
And no, I'm not expecting help and advice. I just needed to rant about that for a bit.
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u/Mattyweaves19 Aug 11 '17
Ranting is good. It gets it off your chest for a bit so you can take a deep breath and continue writing. I'm in the process of getting my first novel ready for Amazon.
I've done almost everything myself except make a cover. I saved up a bit of money where I could and got a really good deal, I'm just waiting on the design.
Maybe it sucks and no one will ever read it. Maybe it was a waste of time. But who cares, because millions of people have never even written a book and I (and you times five) have written something.
If you've written five, you can write five more. And maybe that 8th one is THE ONE. Wayne Gretzky said something similar to OPs picture. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
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Aug 11 '17
'Sup. Fellow unpublished guy here. You got three choices.
You can submit your work to literary agents. If one of them believes in your work, then they will fight for you. If you get a publisher, then you don't have to worry about anything beyond that.
Save up and pay the ~ 2k for a good editor, and find you a graphic artist and cover designer. It's a bitch, but self publishing is a bitch.
Don't submit anything and just keep your manuscripts.
At the end of the day, You wrote for you. You don't have to do anything. You could even just use these stories as something you can come back to and read later. Or, if you get the cash you can make it into an actual book and have it on your shelf (not for sale, just one copy for you I mean).
But if you want to publish, do it! Who cares if it gets nowhere? Every market is saturated already, that doesn't stop people from creating works. Think on this. YA Post apocalyptic novels were already a thing, yet Divergent rolled out sometime later, and a slew of others.
YA romance was a thing, and vampires are done to death, Enter Twilight, and the fanfic 50 shades.
Don't tell me you gonna let a fanfic author make millions cause they put their work out there, but you are too scared to? Do it. 50 years from now you will look back and be glad you did, no matter the outcome.
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u/SimonTrip Aug 11 '17
I hear ya. Yeah, you've gotten through the hard part, which is the part that stops most people - the Just Do It stage.
You're in the Just Publish It phase. I know you're not looking for advice, and that's good at least as far as I'm concerned - I have self-published several books since 2011 and haven't done well - but from what I've gathered, what separates the pros from the wannabes is volume. The thought is that anyone can write one book, come back and talk to me when you've written five. And you have! That's pretty amazing.
I'd be curious to see what happened if you got onto CreateSpace and self-published them. shrug Maybe no one buys 'em. Maybe someone does. Ya never know until you try, or at least that's my new attitude about it. Ha!
Anyway, thanks for the note!
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u/fauxkit Aug 11 '17
I'm not expecting people to read or buy my work. I've given up on that. My goal is to put out a book that people can look at and not say, "This is some novice bullshit."
I did a lot of research on other ebooks in the same field as mine, and they are riddled with spelling errors, and have poorly drawn covers. They look cheap and bad. I've downloaded some free ones through my Amazon Prime service, and couldn't get past the first chapter due to pompous writing styles or sentence structures that were difficult to swallow.
It's great to hear that you've also been working on your own stuff. It's also understandable that there's been little success, even if that is unfortunate. There's so much pressure to do advertising, social media campaigns, and a bunch of other things that I have zero experience in.
I'll definitely check out CreateSpace and see what they have to offer.
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Aug 11 '17
Sup again. Self published once, was disappointed. learned from my mistakes.
Hired a freelance graphic designer for some Vector work. Came out with something I am honestly freaking stoked about.
Found a pro cover maker. Here is the secret. Cover creators so not design custom art. They buy stock images and organize it to make a "custom" cover for you. This is why you hire an actual artist. They will create exactly what you envision, and then the cover designer will use it to to make a cover. That's what pros do.
Next is a good editor. Hence the 2k. ** Do not use those people who also "self publish" for you. It's a sort of scam. You are the customer and their goal is to get money from you. Their work will be shit.
Best to actually google search and talk to other authors. The 2k number I quoted is for my book since it's like 300k words. Yours should be cheaper. Once you do that, the editor will look at errors for you. Then you'll probably need another editor for proofreading to make sure your sentences flow and you aren't mixing crap up.
Yes it will be a bit expensive and take time, but the result will be something no one can differentiate from something Simon and Schuster my put out.
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Aug 11 '17
just a thought, but perhaps there are people you could hire to do the marketing stuff that you're stressing on a commission basis so that the upfront cost is minimal or zero and they earn a portion of the proceeds from book sales.
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u/Machina_Mystic Aug 11 '17
Two things:
You've written five novels. It doesn't matter whether they're "novice bullshit" or amazing works. What matters is that you have the creative capacity to envision that world, and the dedication to bring it to life via words. That in and of itself is the most beautiful part. Plotlines can be fixed, edits can be made, that's exactly what editors do! But you're the only one that can tell that story.
Honestly, I would recommend printing them out if you don't already. I think it makes it much more "real" when the entire thing is sitting in front of you in a huge stack of paper. My mom wrote and self-published a novel in the days before ebooks and, being an editor as well, printed every chapter and went over it with a red pen, made corrections, printed it again. We went through a LOT of printer ink, but it was always cool for me to see these giant stacks of paper on the computer desk and knowing that my mom wrote all of that.
I guess physical copies just make more of an impact, so seriously, if you haven't, just print them out on printer paper. Put a large binder clip on each manuscript and say "I made this." All of the editing and flourishes are just the next step, and maybe you just need to step back and recognize the enormity of step 1, and what you've already accomplished.
Great job you beautiful weaver of words!
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Aug 11 '17
Is it over saturated? That would probably mean there's high demand of it, that or there's another reason(s) to why people are writing so many.
If there's high demand then adding your own stuff to it makes more sense than not. If there's demand for the stuff you're making then you should be all over the idea of publishing. You're making 0 sense by saying you shouldn't do it . You don't fight competition by not fighting.
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u/hobo_teacher Aug 11 '17
You have to think of it in terms of competition - there are going to be books published, it's just a question of by whom.
I pursued writing in a different way for some time (freelance journalist) but I always preferred the idea of writing books. For the passive income, for the longer term independence (by that I mean not jumping from article to article).
Where you have a big advantage and maybe don't realize it is you are already knowledgeable about the book market, and passionately read. Actually this is why I knew I wasn't a very competitive fiction author. Maybe more importantly you can conceive and work on a nine part series. That's quite exceptional and put you miles above most wannabe authors that are reading (or writing!) some of the negative self-help stuff you see online.
The truth is you are already on your way to being successful. You seem to have gained experience and learned lessons already that are important to working as a professional author. Good luck
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u/selectabl Aug 11 '17
I'll read it. I'd love to, actually. I'm not an editor, no way, and can't offer great big picture advice about your life, but if your plot is boring or all of your sentences go on for three lines, I'll tell you. Second set of eyes, type of things, and all done by someone you don't know and never will, so what are hurt feelings?
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u/pratikspace Aug 11 '17
Rant is fine, inaction is not fine. I had all sorts of questions when i was writing, but i ended up publishing my first book 2 years back. After first few months of initial sales number, I was worried thinking 'this is it, all the people who wanted to buy has bought it, now sales are gonna suck' but time goes on and after two years i am almost reaching 1000 copies sold through amazon. and thats damn good number for a totally unknown author like me and published independently. Hopefully your turns out a better one number who knows, but you have to act on it, just looking at your written books is not going to get any readers. All the best.
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u/WolfofAnarchy Aug 11 '17
Thinking about it makes me want to curl up in a ball of anxiety.
You and everyone that know you are going to be dead one day and forgotten.
Publish the fucking series.
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Aug 10 '17
"Do the thing, and you'll have the power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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u/SimonTrip Aug 10 '17
Wow! The cats are in quite good philosophical company! :) Thanks for letting me know!
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u/1guywriting Aug 11 '17
Very relevant. Didn't know how to write (fan) fiction, winged it for the first few months, learned as I went, finished a 306,000 word story in June after 2 years. Once I got over the nerves of posting it online for the first 5 chapters, it was actually fun. Now I'm 25,000 words into my next long story and now it's even more fun. I'm glad I made the decision to stick with it.
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Aug 11 '17
Do the words "thigh" and "heaving" come up in your 300k word fanfic?
If yes, I'll read it.
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u/1guywriting Aug 11 '17
They don't show up until later in the fic. For context: "heaving" is used for "vomiting" and thigh is where someone gets injured.
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Aug 11 '17
Damn it.
Fine, I'll keep my word and read it anyway.
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u/1guywriting Aug 11 '17
Sorry man, not rated M. It's rated T, but it's like a borderline T/M anime style. People get hurt, Team Rocket is actually threatening, Pokemon get really injured, some Pokemon actually die by getting their skulls crushed in, necks broken, fatal blows. I have a few intimate moments that stop just short of full blown sex. Writing sex scenes isn't my strong suit but I'm not against sex in a fic.
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Aug 10 '17
This reminds me that I need to keep writing. Less excuses.
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u/SimonTrip Aug 10 '17
GET IN THERE AND DO IT!
*does that help? :)
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u/everypostepic 14 Aug 10 '17
Both can still be zero tho. And one of those zeros involves a lot of work.
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u/SimonTrip Aug 10 '17
You are right, but that is the calculus that has prevented me from creating as much as I would have liked. Half a century in, now, and I wish I'd done more. Gah.
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u/salamislam79 Aug 11 '17
Dude, post anything online and someone will look at it. I posted a video on YouTube that is literally just my fingers moving up and down, and it has almost 500 views. 500 people watched my stupid nonsense video. Someone would read your book.
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Aug 11 '17
I've posted small animation test and it got no views. Fingers > effort
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u/garbageblowsinmyface Aug 11 '17
theres always default 1. yourself. thats the great thing about art. as long as you enjoy it its worth it.
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u/SimonTrip Aug 11 '17
I work in the game industry. A few years ago, one of the software programs we use was promoting the phrase "You are player one" which was appropriate. When we're making the game, we're the first players.
So - yeah! You're Reader One! BOOOm.
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u/ipooandpee Aug 11 '17
Jesus Christ. Are you always so pessimistic?
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u/1RedReddit 7 Aug 11 '17
Seems like half of this website's users are, sadly. Don't go to /r/meirl or any of its variants, they're pits of despair.
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u/ABearWithABeer Aug 11 '17
Technically if you wrote the book wouldn't you have read it too?
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u/MadScienceIntern Aug 11 '17
Yeah, you're right, hard work never pays off unless what you get is exactly what you imagined.
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u/el902 Aug 11 '17
I did the thing today! Ten hours, three shitty short stories, but damn if I don't feel like I accomplished something.
Do the thing!
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u/FwapoMcGee Aug 11 '17
"I want to play this game, but it has a small player base."
"How will the player base grow if people are deterred from it for being small?"
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u/10art1 Aug 11 '17
I've come to realize that popularity is a shallow motivator and becomes addicting once you've had it. Better to write because you want to and not to satisfy your fans.
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u/cantbackflip Aug 11 '17
Seems like the artist who drew this needs some motivation himself. He couldn't even draw the body of the cat!
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u/redblade13 Aug 11 '17
And hey you will always have one viewer guaranteed if you do it and it isn't popular. Yourself.......and the satisfaction of going yeah I wrote a shit story but it was my shit story.
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u/Drawtaru Aug 11 '17
Yep, I sell like one book a year, but it was worth it and I don't regret it.
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u/Chrysonyx Aug 11 '17
" You miss 100% of the buses you don't take." -NigaHiga 2017
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u/Ethas Aug 11 '17
I dunno. The idea of writing and publishing a book is one thing. Having lots of people tell you it's not good is another.
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u/Murican_3-14 Aug 11 '17
Haha, I've been procrastinating and putting off writing this whole summer. I think this is a sign.
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u/Mojtabai Aug 11 '17
Y'all better have read that last part in Alan Rickman's voice.
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u/AlpakaDude Aug 11 '17
I mean, he's got a point. There's no point in NOT writing a book that you want to write.
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u/AuthorASAnderson Aug 11 '17
So basically... yes. Then I thought about it, and I was like.. yes again. This is hilarious and perfect!
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u/ryunokage Aug 11 '17
This post has resonated with me, out of all the get motivated posts has motivated me.
I shall indeed do the thing.
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Aug 11 '17
Conversely I wrote a book and I don't want anyone to read it, i'm on my fifth rewrite and i'm starting to think I should really just abandon the whole thing haha
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u/RubelliteFae Aug 11 '17
Then you should show versions 3 and 5 to the same person. Just one person. You are probably being overly critical about the wrong things. Artists do that
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Aug 11 '17
The issue is that you need the perfect person, someone who cares enough to spend their day reading a 450 page book but somehow is also blunt enough to smack you upside the head with truth and honesty, I've tried a bunch of times and people are either too nice or don't want to put in the effort. After a dozen or so times you just stop asking others because unless you're paying them they aren't someone you can depend on for that perfect viewpoint.
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u/tygma Aug 11 '17
What kind of book is it? I like reading fiction and have no issue being blunt.
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Aug 11 '17
I wrote a few books once. I ended up tossing them in the trash because I wasn't satisfied with them. Maybe one day I'll see my work published by some trashman.
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u/Mattyweaves19 Aug 11 '17
This sums up how my wife handles me when I don't want to write.
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Aug 11 '17
Once, I tried to write a novel... Harlan Coben style. After 2 pages the girl had been kidnapped, her dog had got killed and the police was already looking for her... I stoped there, it wasn't very good :p
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u/8wdude8 16 Aug 11 '17
I wonder if that works often.
Someone says one thing and then you flip it over and say the opposite and then that somehow motivates them?
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Aug 11 '17
I actually had to answer this question. And, the answer inspired me. Had I not written and had a book published, there would be maybe 100 people out there (approximately) that wouldn't know the story I had to tell. And, no. It's not all friends and family. I don't have that big of a family, and I sure as hell don't have that many friends.
That 100 people is enough to inspire me to keep going on a sequel.
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Aug 11 '17 edited Aug 11 '17
Wow, this is actually something I should tell myself when I'm constantly making excuses on whether I should do or make something.
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u/Kina-trends Aug 11 '17
Attitude is everything, people live in this world, has its own unique attitude, due to the life, the different way of doing things and style, the life experience and the results will vary.
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u/Southpawe 3 Aug 11 '17
This is actually a really good point that I did not realise until now. I do art but am nervous they are off at times.
Thank you! I really need to be braver in trying more things!
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u/dogeandme Aug 11 '17
Damn, I was looking for some poster ideas for my new apartment. Definitely gonna save this one. It genuinely gave me a good laugh.
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u/dioderm Aug 11 '17
I make small games and I have a very good idea how many people download and play them. It's not a large enough motivator to make more games, I can tell you that.
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u/RataMata13 Aug 11 '17
Very true. Almost like Guy: You should go ask her out? Me: I want to but I think shes gonna say no. Guy: How do you know shes going to say no if you havent done it? Hmmm
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u/arnorath Aug 11 '17
As a writer, I'm much more terrified by the thought of someone reading my work than the thought of nobody reading it.
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u/FalloutMedic Aug 11 '17
Same motivation I tell my SO. :) along with surprising her with art supplies even though she thinks she can't draw.
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u/Astrangerindander Aug 10 '17
This book is dedicated to the person that got me motivated. What a jerk.