Dark mood? – Here’s some writer to writer trash talk to cheer you up – Part 1

I’m reading An Insider’s Guide to Publishing by David Comfort. It’s a pretty depressing book. I expected something more encouraging, especially since it was written by someone who’s last name is Comfort. I was wrong. Maybe I’m being too critical because I’ve been in a bloody dark mood these past few days so I’m bound to find fault with everything and everyone.

I’m not going to critique the book now. What I will do is give you something that actually made me smile: writer to writer trash talk. I was reading along, figurative tears in my eyes because of all the depressing stories about:

• the bleak future of books,
• the misery of a writer’s life,
• the struggles with failure AND success (Did you just go, “Huh?” … Don’t worry. I’ll explain that in a future post),

when I came across something that I found funny enough to make me stop crying and had me laugh out loud instead: trash talk.

Should I be embarrassed that I found it funny? Well … maybe some other time, when I’ll be less miserable myself. For now, here it is. These are all quotes taken right out of the book. I didn’t change anything (even if I wanted to):

Voltaire called Shakespeare’s plays “a vast dunghill”. D.H. Lawrence called Joyce’s last novel “Punnigan’s Wake” and “Olla Putrida.” Turgenev deemed Dostoyevsky’s  Crime and Punishment‘ “an interminable stomach ache.” Louisa May Alcott called Twain’s Huckleberry Finn  “trash suitable only for the slums.” Twain called Ambrose Bierce’s Nuggets and Dust “ten shudders and a vomit.” Other greats were ruthless with themselves. “Oh, with what trash I began!” said Chekhov. Vonnegut warned Playboy at the beginning of his interview, “You understand, of course, that everything I say is horsesh*t.

– David Comfort, An Insider’s Guide to Publishing

“Seventy percent of fiction and nonfiction bestsellers lists is dreck, and that The Da Vinci Code, by Dan brown, stands as a prime example,” Stephen King told Entertainment Weekly.

– David Comfort, An Insider’s Guide to Publishing

Poet John Dolan called James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces “A Million Little Pieces of Sh*t.” Liar’s Club author Mary Karr considered it “horse dookie,” while Gawker dismissed it as “a pile of sh*t,” and The New York Daily News branded Frey himself as “a lying sack of dung.”

[James Frey] begged to disagree. […] “I’ve been through so much sh*t … I’ve been stabbed over and over and over again. All I want to do is make sh*t that I think is cool.”

Which, of course, is what every writer has done, from Homer to Shakespeare to Proust to Patterson. Only their definitions of cool sh*t has differed.

– David Comfort, An Insider’s Guide to Publishing

What do you think? Did that make you laugh or am I the only weird one that found it funny?

This is only part 1. There are way more lovely quotes to show that it’s impossible to please everyone. No matter what we write, there will be at least few people (and this is best case scenario) who will find our writing to be mediocre junk.

I just had a cool idea for writer’s smack talk. One day, when I’ll be a famous author, I’ll use it on one of my lesser rivals.

Your book is so bad that I can’t decide whether I should take off my glasses and be too blind to read it, or I should keep them on to protect my eyes from all this dreck flying off from its pages.

– Ada Ireland to future rival

I’m already making up smack talk and I haven’t gotten one rival yet! Well, at least no one can say that I’m unprepared.

P.S. Here is a picture of me trying to be nice:

And here’s what happens when I open my mouth.

We go through a lot of duct tape rolls at my house. Just sayin’! 😉