Hallo /lit/ I posted a thread last year about my decision to

Hey OP!

Sounds interesting, can you give us a summary of the story please?

>>9343863
Did you translate it yourself?

Did you self publish?

Does it have anything sexual in it?

>>9343863
What's that title in Norwegian?

>>9343863
what was your budget

>>9343881
Hi dude, thanks!

The basic summary is as follows:

A 26-year-old man is admitted to a psychiatric ward following the death of his father, a long-time alcoholic that his son left to move to Oslo. He is allowed to leave the psychiatric ward to attend the funeral, but is advised to return and complete his stay by the concerned staff. Instead he visits his father's home after the funeral and discovers a memoir his father has written. This surprises him, as his father was a quiet and isolated man who never talked about his love for books and so on, but in the attic of the house he finds boxes full of novels. The son realizes he never really knew his father, since their relationship was distant and strained since their mother decided to leave him and moved to Sweden with her new partner. The son, who lived a rather sheltered life and even in Oslo barely leaves his apartment except for work, decides to in a sense "re-live" the life of his father by visiting each of the places mentioned in the book in the order they are mentioned. He has always felt inferior to his father and has always despised himself for failing to live up to the apparently masculine ideal his father represented. He travels to his father's hometown and learns of a shy young man who once lived there, he visits his ex-girlfriend who never married and still fondly remembers her first love, his father. He visits many people that his father essentially "cut out" of his life when he became a rather depressed and stubbornly independent man, just, the son reflects, like the way he is becoming. He returns to the psychiatric ward and discovers that his room is now occupied by another patient, who turns out to be a school friend he has not seen in years. The two boys were very competitive during their school days and fell out after they were each asked to replace the lead singer of a popular local band during a summer tour and agreed not to do so for the sake of their friendship, even though the other boy did end up going with them. Each of them is from Oslo, and returning there by train the protagonist lies about his life there to hide the fact he is essentially a hermit with a dead-end job. His friend, he discovers, lives in a wealthy area of the city and has a fiancee and a well-paying job and have just placed a downpayment on their apartment. Visiting their home the protagonist tells a story about his own great career, his girlfriend etc, then leaves the dinnertable and cries in the bathroom. He remembers a passage in his father's memoir about how he had visited his son (the protagonist) in university dressed in his finest suit, and lied that he had received a promotion and was beginning to date again. The protagonist leaves the party claiming his girlfriend is locked out of their flat, but travels instead to Sweden to visit his mother. His boss calls him and asks why he isn't at work, but their foul relationship already involves the protagonist being overworked...

>>9343883
Hey! OP here. It is written in Norwegian (I hope it gets translated). A publishing house is publishing it. There is no explicit sex in the book.

>>9343888
What do you mean? Sorryy.

>>9343954
...and, again recalling his father's memoir about himself as a quiet young man being pushed around by his first boss at a factory, the protagonist announces his resignation and throws his phone out of the train window, since only his father, his boss, his landlord and a pizza delivery place were contacts on there. In Stockholm he discovers his mother's address but sees her leaving the home as he approaches, along with her new partner and what look like his daughter. Her warm and friendly behaviour around the man and his daughter makes the protagonist become nauseous and he has to stop himself from running up and insulting her for being so happy when his father was miserable for so long. Instead he throws a loose stone through the window of the man's home and walks away while neighbors call for him to be arrested. In his father's memoir is a brief mention of the time his father worked onboard a merchant vessel as a young man which he boarded in Stockholm. He wonders how about a man like his father, so reserved, so averse to big cities, so dismissive of foreign cultures and climates, could understand the appeal of a more adventurous life as represented by working on a merchant ship. He asks himself whether his own youth, spent almost in isolation (studying, at work, on the internet or walking the city alone) is likely to lead to an adulthood like his father's, without even the experience of having a loving wife and child. Finally he returns to his hometown, where he had been invited to the wedding of his old friend and his fiancee. He goes to his father's house and puts on his father's best suit, surprised it fits him, then runs down towards the church where the ceremony is soon to begin. Inside he finds people waiting for the bride to arrive, and his old friend turns and sees him and ushers him up to the front, where he replaces the groom's brother as the best man. After the wedding he throws confetti and cheers the married couple as they leave the church. After everyone dissapears back to their homes or to the local bars and hotels, he stands there alone on the steps of the church, covered in confetti, weary with lack of sleep, and smiling with tears rolling down his face.

>>9343963
He's asking how much money you blew living in the cabin

>>9343990
I find it hard to estimate. I just thought of a figure but things here in Norway cost a lot so it's hard to make the figure relative.

But I haven't had to pay rent, only food, transport and upkeep etc.

What do you guys think of the summary? Does it seem like something that people might enjoy?

My editor at the publishing house says it has potential to sell well but says it's very difficult to tell. I have signed a contract with them which also forces me to read my book in various places and to do interviews. It looks like I will be talking on NRK (Norwegian radio station) sometime this summer before the book launches.

Haugesund is pretty /lit/, Jon Fosse is from there. But why bother writing about Oslo? Harald Hårfagre didn't unite the east, Oslo is Sweden. Mark yourself as a vestlandsforfatter!

>>9344049
OP here. The hometown of the protagonist is in the West, but the protagonist moves to Oslo to get away as far as he can from his alcoholic father, who he does not want to be like when he is older, and who he feels is holding back. What he realizes however is that he doesn't really know this person he doesn't want to end up like, and has never asked what really made him this way beyond ta divorce. Jon Fosse is great. Have you heard of Johan Harstad? I'm doing an event with him during the summer, reading his stuff at the moment.

>>9344081
Heard of Harstad but never read him. Any good? The protagonist not knowing his alcoholic father reminds me of knausgårds first min kamp. Are you originally from Haugesund, op?

Congratulations! If it gets translated into English I'll be sure to buy a copy.

>>9344092
Yes I like what I've read so far. It's maybe a little cliched and sentimental, but I'm reading his very early stuff (he first published a collection of stories around age 21 / 22).

And yes the Knausgård link does make me very worried. I don't want to be viewed as someone merely imitating him. I've only read the first book of his recently, having worked pretty much backwards, so it's not as if I read it and thought "aha, so here is how I make money in writing!". To be honest more of my influence could be said to be the movies of Joachim Trier, writers like Hamsun etc. But it's hard to avoid being compared to Knausgård now, especially if the author is writing in a realistic tone which focuses on the details of every day life and so on. My grandparents moved to Haugesund later in their life, I was born in the Stavanger area. Where do you live?

>>9344097
Thank you! I stupidly offered to translate it myself to my editor, but he said that is not how things work in publishing. I was pretty embarrassed, since he must have thought I am fame-hungry and think I'm going to be an international best selling

>>9343954

I thought that your book was about an autist who hid in a closet and recorded his brother having sex.

What's the title in Norwegian?

How long is it? How long did it take to write?

>>9344106

How would you say you're influenced by Hamsun. He's perhaps my favorite writer, and this raised my interest.

>>9344106
I live in Stavanger but Sandnes for faen 4 life

>>9344126
I have worked on so many stories that went nowhere this past year. I believe I posted here before my plans to write a novel about a hospital for children with abnormal mental conditions also. But this is something I was writing on "in the background" as it were, but I felt it was too boring (the plot grew from a small idea - son friends memoir - to something much larger). I'm afraid to post the original title here because searching it online leads to my name and photo. The title is really just a translated reference to Leonard Cohen and his song "Take This Longing", which was originally written for another singer with a line that includes the title.

>>9344130
It is approximately 86,000 words in length, though I'm emailing several times a day to discuss edits and so on, from single words to whole paragraphs. It's not a nice feeling to have people looking at your book and taking it apart etc. It begins to feel more like a product that has been taken from you. I started this story several times, first when I was 22, then when I was around 24, then I figured I had to just finish it because it was at the back of my mind. So I wrote it for six months without distracting myself with other stories. It was a risk because I only gave myself a year here so if this didn't work I'd be back looking for a job and hating myself for wasting so much ideal time.

Who is publishing you?

Did you maintain a strict schedule while writing it?

>>9344153

Well, in case you're not actually our resident shitposter (existential crisis with depth and profundity twice my age, new york vegan literary lifestyle man, young man with stories on an USB stick, etc), which I still suspect, congratulations man.

>>9344131
"Hunger" is of course a fantastic book. And around December I read it again while visiting my parents and I asked myself what is the non-literal meaning of the book, and how does the protagonist's hunger relate to the modern world. And I figured that my own hunger for some time has been to invest in reality, to form relationships, to pursue a meaningful career, to care for my community and for social ideals, etc. But I spend most of my time on the internet, alone in a room, just like the protagonist who rents a tiny room and hungers for "real life", represented in the book by food, status, a relationship with the woman at the end, and so on. It's a hunger for reality, for a life outside the self. I have read Victoria, Pan, Markens Grode etc, and I think Hamsun's strength is his willingness to isolate his characters and then show the often desperate struggle it takes for their isolation to be bridged. It's like he has thegrasp of traditional or national mythology similar to Halldór Laxness for example, but also the intensity of "Existential" writers who treat each individual as entire universes in themselves, both liberated and imprisoned.

>>9343954
>>9343985
maudlin trash

>>9344160
I am hesistate to say write now. It's a pretty well-respected Norwegian publisher. I basically met a guy who lives near my grandparents cabin who used to work in publishing, and since he's retired and taking it easy he offered to read my manuscripts after we met at a barbecue nearby. He encouraged me to keep writing this story I kept putting aside, telling me to just finish it rather than let it linger in my thoughts. And he then suggested who I send it too, and the editor I contacted was surprisingly very informal and supportive. A really nice guy.

>>9344166
At first I didn't, but I think I was very tired and pretty depressed about life when I first came here. I'd take a swim in the morning, then cycle around and pretty much avoid writing since I kept reading over stuff and thinking "you idiot! this is waste of time!" But then I began eating the exact same thing every day, waking up at exactly the same time, for a long time I wore exactly the same thing (black cotton trousers, white shirt with sleeves folded twice). So yes while writing this book for the past six months I have been quite strict, trying to make Monday to Friday into a full time job and then allowing myself space for free thought on the weekends, taking long walks, trying to relax, thinking up ways of fixing things and filling in spaces.

>>9344173
Thank you!

>>9344039
>which also forces me to read my book in various places and to do interviews.
this is the bad part of being a celebrity

>>9344217
I guess you're right. I really hate my speaking voice. I also hate drawing attention away from the book itself, or being asked to "explain" what the book's about. I will have to make sure not to sell out and embarrass myself.

What did you live off? Did your parents finance you? How old are you?

How much did you write before your stay at the cabin and during it? Did the quality of your writing change?

Confirming once more you need to have rich parents to be a writer

>>9343954
>>9343985
I hope you're doing it for the money and not because you think it's good writing. Out of curiosity, what books have you read recently and what did you think of them?

>>9344228
I am 25 years old. I worked for three years full-time after university and saved a lot of money by living like a monk, so I've been using my savings on everything I buy. I wrote a novel in my final year at university, which a smaller publisher accepted, but in the months between my submitting it and them replying I had a change of heart and didn't want it to represent me, so I withdrew it. I tried very hard to write after work for the whole three years after, being shortlisted for a short story competition, winning another, and starting and failing to finish several novels. I realized I was never going to get anything done with that much pressure on myself, unless I wrote a novel over maybe ten years with small revisions in my spare time. And as for quality, I find it easier to enter the correct "mood" to write when I don't have other obligations such as work or a relationship to demand that energy, attention and focus etc from me. I found I have also become more "zoomed out" in terms of how I approach a novel, paying fewer attention to small details which turns a minor scene into a 20,000 word novella. Having so much time to write and read I find myself perceiving myself as a "writer" more easily, rather than an office worker who spends an hour or two a night wearily composing a few sentences that don't read very well the following day.

>>9344238
OP here. My parents are not rich, and my grandparents weren't either. My family is not literary at all either.

>>9344256
I am doing it because I believe the story is interesting and that I am able to articulate certain things using the story as a vehicle (though not moralistic, political, economical things).

Recently as in published recently, or as in what books in general have I read lately?

For the first answer it would be Johan Harstad like I mentioned.

But most recent book was Alle dor alene ("Every Man Dies Alone") by Hans Fallada.

>>9344205
Is it a big one or a smaller one?
I would love to have the contacts you do. Considering sending in some poems to Gyldendal or something.

>>9343863
Holy shit. I was there for several of those threads. Good job, anon.

>>9344330
It's one of the bigger ones. Obviously there aren't many to choose from so don't want to go into detail.

>>9344350
No problem, i don't really read norwegian lit that much, but i'll be sure to grab a copy when it comes out.

>>9343954
>>9343985
OP here.

Anybody else have an opinion of my synopsis?

Does it sound like "maudlin trash" as another poster suggested?

>>9344476
It's certainly very 'modern' in the themes you've crammed into it. While maudlin, it isn't necessarily trash.

I'd give it a chance desu, though I wasn't sure I liked the ending. Should've ended with the son talking to his father's grave.

>>9344527
>self-pityingly or tearfully sentimental.

I believe the ending is ambiguous and suggests that although the protagonist has reached a point where change is needed in his life, it isn't as though that change and the progress it entails is immediately available to him. He is there at the church watching others going on with their lives contently, and although he knows now what his future is likely to be like should he remain the same as he is, yet it is unclear whether or not his future will change or not, whether it will be better than it would have otherwise been or not. It is more the awareness of his situation that I wanted to depict, and his state of mind as he rushes home to celebrate the success of others.

>>9344476
Seems like you were able to document a well written self-therapeutic memoir. My 4channest of opinions is that I would never read it unless it became popular and I had to for self posturing. It's lonely boy being a lonely boy realizing why he's a lonely boy.

this is my favorite kind of trolling/shitposting

You set out to do something not many here could do, and you finished the process. You even were published by an actual house. Don't take the negative feedback to heart. They haven't read it, and they are bitter. Congratulations on your hard work and success.

I don't remember those posts, but I congratulate you OP. Remember sharing is caring.

>>9344846
OP here. Thank you for your post. I am rather disheartened by the reaction in this thread. This will be my debut work and of course such things tend to set the tone for an author's future career. I have already withdrawn one novel a few years ago, now I feel tempted to do the same.

>>9344910
>/lit/
Didn't you expect it?

post an excerpt op ?

>>9344928
I suppose, but I have frequented this board for many years and my understanding of literature and other subjects has developed a great deal due to the discussions here. I frankly agree with much of the criticism here directed towards certain writers and books, and to think that I might be writing something that would not be appreciated here, and perhaps even ridiculed and dismissed as "trash", disheartened me greatly.

>>9344946
Withdrawing it would be a mistake. You're young, Norwegian, and financially able to take an entire year to write your novel in an idyllic location. Those are things that they want, too, but aren't able to have. You are published, and therefore validated-- another thing they don't have. Then they read your summary and it isn't what THEY would have written, were they in your position. They are bitter. That's all.

>tfw /lit/ are crabs in a bucket

>>9344946
I remember feeling exactly what you describe in 2014

>>9344946
don't worry about your first novel setting the course for the rest of your career, very few people think of knausgård as a pedo or a nabokov wannabe just because he debuted with out of this world, your legacy will come later in life anyway

and if critics compare you to joachim trier and knausgård i think it will only be a good thing

whose your publisher? gyldendal?

>>9344946
Youre a really good troll.
Keep up the good work.
(Nvm me, youre not trolling of course, etc).

>>9345149
Thanks for the encouragement. I have tried hard to avoid cheap sentiment. I was aiming for the kind of taught emotional expression found in the songs of Mark Kozelek / Sun Kil Moon, or something like that.

Congrats OP. You're pretty cute btw (if that's your pic). Would you date a British femanon?

>>9345631
Not him, but I would.

>>9345631
That guy is gay you roastie. He's also bald last I saw him

>>9345640
Ummm, do you have a book being published?

Just curious! :D

skreiv du på nynorsk eller bokmål OP? post eit lite utdrag værsåsnill, alltid kjekt å lese ny norsk litteratur

>>9345656
No, mine's already published (not trying to brag, just stating the fact).

>>9345665
Proofs pleeeeeease :)

>>9345683
Okay, but only after you prove you're a girl. =P

>>9345661
This.

>>9344946
I wouldn't be too disheartened although
I don't think that your critics are necessarily bitter as some have said, just ultra blunt and critical like most of 4 chan .There's no way anyone can have an opinion of any consequence without at least reading an excerpt.

Grattis från östra rikshalvan!

OP here.

>>9346299
Thank you!

>>9346203
I do respect this community and the opinions it generates, moreso in many respects than the opinions of literary critics, who often simply praise everything without taking the time to analyze it. Thank you for your support.

>>9343863
>It's another cabin thread
I thought we were rid of you at last. Don't make a thread until something of note happens. In fact, don't make any threads at all.

>>9346680
>something of note happens

Nigga is getting his novel published yo

>>9344946
post a 2-paragraph excerpt from the middle of the novel. that will give us a better take on the potential quality of the actual book and your writing than a paragraph just summarizing the plot

>>9343863

Congratulations! It would have been exciting to have a conversation with you outside of /lit/

>>9343863
Glad you made it, lad.

>>9346727
I would have to translate it into English. I don't know if the quality (if there is any quality!) will remain if I do that.

>>9346744
Thank you.

>>9346794
Thank you.

OP here.

If anybody else is willing to tell me what they think of my synopsis I would appreciate it. I really do fear that I am about to represent myself in a way that will make me regret it in the future. After all I have withdrawn one novel for this reason and I keep telling myself I should do the same here.

>>9346821
Look man, you want to be a writer, right? Thing is - at least it seems to me - that you're not the writer you want to/thought you'd be. Or you think you haven't written to that capability. Who gives a fuck. If this is your in, take it. I'm not sure if youve ever played a sport, but take soccer for example. When everyone starts out they want to be Messi or Ronaldo, I.e. some sort of goal scoring forward. The reality is that many become defenders and midfielders that rarely score goals. This holds true to the rest of life. Go through with the book, accept what it is, and look forward to the next step. I'm the guy who said I wouldn't read your book unless for self posturing, but why the fuck would you let that get to you? You shouldn't! Put the book out there, see what happens. If I can't convince you, perhaps read kafkas a message from the emperor

>>9346821

Synopsis
>>9343954
>>9343985

Honestly, I think this can be good! You have made a story that let's you weave in different voices and narrative techniques without it being artificial. This is a story about a young man getting to know his father trough his fathers memories and his own eyes. From the start you have a purpose for your wanderings, which I for one think is a good thing.

When it comes to the story itself, I think it's plausible (has a logical build up) and potential. There were some things however that struck out to med as weird (but that might make sense if I read the novel in it's entirety). Like:

>Each of them is from Oslo, and returning there by train the protagonist lies about his life there to hide the fact he is essentially a hermit with a dead-end job. His friend, he discovers, lives in a wealthy area of the city and has a fiancee and a well-paying job and have just placed a downpayment on their apartment.
Where is the ward?
Didn't the MC move to Oslo?
Why was his room occupied (other than driving the story forward)?

And
>Finally he returns to his hometown, where he had been invited to the wedding of his old friend and his fiancee.
Who is the old friend? Not the guy from the ward I assume.

Sorry for the (probably) stupid questions.

----
So, in my opinion, you have a good skeleton for a story. Your synopsis demonstrates a lot of possibilities, and the actions of the MC flows quite well. But of course, it all boils down to your delivery. For instance, to put it crudely, if I'd told you that I was writing a book about a nervous young man and an old jewish man, walking around Dublin, experiencing and thinking and meeting people doing their daily chores, or the entire life of a college English professor, it would be quite hard for you to determine whether or not it would be crap based on the stripped description alone. I therefore think it's limited in terms of what you can get out /lit/ in regards to your plot. It is what it is. I'm sorry for the rambling, I know you only asked for an opinion on the synopsis.

I'm on my mobile, so I apologize for the sloppiness inn writing.

I just want to add that it's so nice to see someone who actually creates something, instead of talking about doing it, or just shitpost.

Jeg er forresten >>9346744

Oh hell yeah dude, I remember those threads.

What would you say you learned from writing this novel?

OP here.

>>9348233
Thank you for your post. I will look up the Kafka story.

>>9348566
>Where is the ward?

It is just outside of Oslo, to the North-West. They catch a train back to the city centre together.

>Didn't the MC move to Oslo

Yes, they are both resident there.

>Why was his room occupied?

The protagonist promised to attend his father's funeral and return, since some of his belongings were at the hospital and some of the staff were not convinced that he was stable enough to leave. But instead of going back he finds his father's memoir and takes some time away. When he returns, on his way back to his apartment, he finds that his old room is occupied and discovers that it is his old friend who is staying there. There is a sense of "even here!" to the scene, where the protagonist tries to achieve something (improved mental health) his friend again is there doing the same thing, a theme of their friendship before they parted ways.

>the entire life of a college English professor, it would be quite hard for you to determine whether or not it would be crap based on the stripped description alone

Thank you for the reassurance here. Much appreciated.

>>9348581
I guess I learned to take things seriously and to try as hard as possible to deny myself certain obvious pleasures (food included) in order to remain in a state of semi-awareness wherein my subconcious mind (?) works with my conscious mind in order both to produce writing and also to guide it in a certain way. I am fairly retarded when it comes to planning out different scenes. I tend to know the beginning, know the ending, know a few stops in between, and then try very hard not to simply make the journey between these necessary scenes a series of unartistic strategic movements. I also learned that in order to have something that reads like an actual novel, as in something I would read, it is necessary to edit again and again until there is not a single interruption in the note I am holding throughout the book. If a sentence doesn't adhere to the tempo or atmosphere created it can serve to make the reader (or me at least) suspicious, hesistant and so on. Much like driving along a narrow mountain road which you are told is safe (and fun!) only for a piece of the road to give way at one point, making your journey more a matter of caution than enjoyment. I also struggled with dialogue, which in real life often is so boring, non-meaningful, cliched and so on. How to write dialogue that both reflects reality while not simply cherry picking the very rare "profound" or symbolic sentence and also not simply spamming for pages the kind of conversation we avoid on the bus by putting on some earphones. My solution was to use dialogue either to establish character, to inform or to analyze a relationship. I think Salinger writes great dialogue. It's casual but meaningful, its forgettable but serves also to establish unforgettable characters. The amount of editing was overwhelming at times. I deleted whole passages, despite being tempted to leave them in and risk them failing and for their failure to be compensate by a passage I knew was good. A boxer can't hit direct punches for the entire nine rounds, but neither can he afford to take hits every time (passage) between each punch he lands. Also research is something I didn't really grasp until it came to writing a novel. It is so much easier IMO to write a roman a clef or memoir than something that requires a great deal of research. It's one of the reasons I respect people like the guy who wrote the recent novel about Mars and did a ton of research before it, or maybe Atticus Lish who recently wrote a novel about illegal immigrants and veterans in New York and did a great deal of research for it. For a reader to inhabit the world you present you must be entirely certain of everything which takes place in it, in my opinion. Who is the protagonist? How would he react to seeing a man having a heart attack on a train station platform? Would he give money to a homeless person he passes? What are his political views? Does he enjoy holidays in warm countries? And so on.

>>9343863
Based on your summary, your novel doesn't seem to be something I would read any time soon. That's not a comment on its quality though (it's just a synopsis, after all), but rather on my backlog. However, I am posting this to say that I have a strong hunch that your debut will turn out to be a not so great novel from an author who went on to write far better things. I hope this gives you confidence to go on and not pull it back, for I trust this little hunch of mine.

>>9348708

I can tell you've applied yourself. Well done. Not interested in reading your book (i have more than enough to read already) but whether it does well sales or not is not necessarily because it's good or bad. I'm interested though in how it fares critically, though.

( i can tell you have applied yourself because of how many positive statements and assertions you make in detail, and your explanations of artistic minutiae that perhaps only you understand precisely in those terms )

>>9348732
OP here. Thank you for your post. I do want this book to be successful. After all, even Knausgård's first novel, while not remembered as his best, still won a major award here in Norway. But I agree that I will likely improve in time.

>>9348677

Ok. As I hoped, there was more to it than what you were able to squeez into your two posts.

No need to say thank you.

Og som jeg nevnte tidligere, hvis du er interessert i å snakke litteratur med en på samme alder, eller noe annet for den saks skyld, kan du sende meg en e-post på [email protected]

>>9348732
I was being too negative. I am in a better mood now. OP, you might exhibit symptoms of greatness. It's not this one, but your future achievements would not have been possible without this stepping stone. Do go ahead with it and good luck.

>>9349632
>Mood
I have one of those too

Watch I am not a hipster and tell me what you think about it