THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE

[davidbcomfort]

NRA FOLLIES

• NRA head, Wayne LaPierre: Build youth self-confidence - please start teaching 5 yr olds how to shot AK-47s. • Tragically, the only way to get through an NRA nut's cerebral cortex is with a bullet. Will they see reason now? • OK, fuck all the Newtown & other kids who got gunned down. Would GOP change their tune on GunControl, if Cruz, LaPierre, Perry, Palin got popped? • 2ndAmendment Wet Dream: Wasted on Wild Turkey, Dove-Hunting party Cheney/Nugent/ &Perry shoot each other in crossfire on an Obama decoy. • How long before strictly Constitutional NRA /GOP declares that shooting people is also protected by 1st Amendmnt FreeSpeech? • EqualOpportunity NRA proposes 2nd Amendment Gun lending libraries & free ammo to poor White sociopaths • New Gallup poll finds that 98% of NRA activists suffer from PENIS SHRINKAGE since Obama’s re-election. The other 3% shot themselves. • NRA cowboys: Instead of buying another Python .44 or Bushmaster AK, get an ObamaCare PENIS ENLARGEMENT w/ BananaClip – it’s free!

[davidbcomfort]

TIDINGS OF COMFORT & JOY: Writers Just Say Noel

Charles Dickens has to self-publish “A Christmas Carol” after his favorite novel, Martin Chuzzlewitt, tanks! CC earns him only £230.

Joyce’s Dubliners -- climaxing w/ Christmas story, The Dead -- is rejected 18 times in 9 years, then burned by his publisher in 1918.

  Grinch George Bernard Shaw, on Christmas: “It is an indecent subject… a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous and demoralizing subject!”

  “The prospect of Christmas appalls me.” Evelyn Waugh, gay, but reputedly "the nastiest-tempered man in England"

  “Being queer and self-sufficient is the best present at this season.” Will Self

   “Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?” Christopher Hitchens, RIP. 

   “What kind of Christmas present would Jesus ask Santa for?”  Salman Rusdie.

  “Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.” John Irving

   “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” Garrison Keillor

  “I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas.” Sylvia Plath

  “If my Valentine you won't be, I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.” Ernest Hemingway

[davidbcomfort]

WHY WRITE? A Panel Discussion with the Masters, Part I

Moderator, Jean Cocteau:

“This sickness to express oneself, what is it?”

“Why do I write? Because I find life unsatisfactory.” Tennessee Williams

“Getting even is one reason for writing: I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.” William Gass

“It’s the job of the writer in America to say, ‘Fuck you!’ To kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.” Ken Kesey

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” Albert Camus

“There are palaces and prisons to attack. One can even succeed now and again in blowing holes in the line of the world’s communications.” Norman Mailer

“The role of art is to make a world which can be tolerated.” William Saroyan

“One writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.” Anais Nin

“I write for the same reason I breathe ... because if I didn't, I would die.” Isaac Asimov

“If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.” Lord Byron

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.” Franz Kafka

“Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money!” Samuel Johnson

“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting laid. It's about Getting happy, okay? Getting happy!” Stephen King

“Writers write for fame, wealth, power, and the love of women.” Sigmund Freud

from AN INSIDERS GUIDE TO PUBLISHING (Writers Digest Books, Dec. 2013)

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100 posts!

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50 posts!

[davidbcomfort]

THE 8 TYPES OF WRITER: The Publisher SuperPAC Caste System

8 KINDS OF WRITERS

1.Franchises.

2.Bread & Butters.

3.One-Hit Wonders.

4.Prestiges.

5. Midlisters.

6.Virgins.

7. SUMPS ("SubPerforrming Marginal Individuals)

8.Lepers

For complete profiles see: http://davidcomfort.org/blog

from: AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING

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[davidbcomfort]

Questions for Believers

- Why must Man abandon his only Godlike trait – Reason -- to have faith in God?

-Was Jesus crucified on the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge, or the fig tree he killed?

-If Jesus is the answer, what’s the question?

-If Jesus is a Universal Donor, is He O Negative? Or, if he just donates to Christians, A Positive?

For answers: THE REBORN BIBLE 2.0: The 2nd Coming of the American Rapture

Kindle: 99¢ !

http://www.amazon.com/REBORN-BIBLE-2-0-American-Rapture-ebook/dp/B00BWZEOUE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385668499&sr=1-1&keywords=Reborn+Bible+2.0

[davidbcomfort]

THE PUBLISHING FICTION LIST (Running the 7 Bulls of Pamplona)

1. EDITORS ARE PSYCHIC

2. EDITORS EDIT

3. THE CREAM ALWAYS RISES TO THE TOP

4. CONTROVERSY SELLS

5. ORIGINALITY SELLS

6. PASSION SELLS

7. LITERATURE IS THRIVING LIKE NEVER BEFORE!

For Details see: www.davidcomfort.org/blogs

From just released AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING (Writer's Digest Books)

[davidbcomfort]

THE TOP 7 MYTHS OF PUBLISHING: #3

MYTH #3. THE CREAM ALWAYS RISES TO THE TOP

Shit floats too. But cream -- always?

From Guttenberg on, this has been the publisher party line plagiarized from Van Gogh’s headstone.

Should there be a statute of limitations on the rising? Twenty years? Granted, real cream, not just Half & Half, is like wine: none before its time. Forty years for the Amontillado? This still might be pushing it.

Before the author remainders himself like David Foster Wallace, then?

Historically, dying is the best accelerant for slow cream. The richest artistic cream –- whether it finally surfaces in words, symphonies, or wildflower canvases -- is always recognized on a corpse.

Outside the DOA statute: Could it be that there was or is another Dante, Dickens, Bronte, Pynchon – whose cream still hasn’t risen to the top? Whose manuscripts are now in ashes, out to sea, or under the rubble of a lonely garret?

Impossible, say industry stalwarts and seminar gurus: there are no unrecognized writers, otherwise we’d know about them.

This fiction is based on another publishing confucianism: Birds of a feather flock together. In other words, if another Dickens existed or exists, his MFA or writer’s group friends or lovers or somebody else in his network, would have reported him to FSG, Knopf, or another literary ASPCA.

from AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING, by David Comfort (Writer's Digest Books, 2013)

[davidbcomfort]

CRAZY WRITERS SPEAK!

"What’s most encouraging about the writing trades: They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane." Kurt Vonnegut

  “Most writers appear neurotic; the truth is, we don’t know the half of it.”  Betsy Lerner, editor/agent/writer

  "The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis." William Styron

  “What I’m running here is a goddam bughouse. Not a man without a screw loose..who thinks his balls are swelling.. his asshole is closing,”  Harold Ross, New Yorker founder.

"We are all born mad. Some remain so." Samuel Beckett

  "Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all." Voltaire

  "When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." Mark Twain

  'We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad!” Cheshire Cat at the Mad Tea-Party (Alice in Wonderland)

from AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING (Writers Digest Books, Dec. 2013)

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THE TOP 7 MYTHS OF PUBLISHING

The real fiction list: The Top 7 Myths of Publishing. #1: Editors Are Psychic http://davidcomfort.org/blogs/

from AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING

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BOOK SALES: THE INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

• “The average US book sells 500 copies.” (The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson,

•7 out of 10 books don’t earn back their advance

• NonFiction outsells Fiction 2 to 1. Publishers consider the average NonFiction book “successful” if it sells 5,000 copies; Fiction 7,500.

•Book returns have doubled: 1960s = 20% v. 2000 = 40%

AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING (Writer’s Digest Books, Dec. 2013)

[davidbcomfort]

THE TOP 10 WRITING TIPS OF ALL TIME

1. “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.” Elmore Leonard

For other 9: http://davidcomfort.org/blogs/

AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING

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PUBLISHING FREAKONOMICS

PUBLISHING FREAKONOMICS

• 94% of all books sold are from 6% of authors (excluding Bible and Boy Scout Manual).

•Bowker 2011 book sales stats: Literature (down -29%), Poetry (-15%), History (-12), and Biography (-12%)

•Average POD book sells fewer than 200 copies--mostly to the authors

•Largest advance paid for a self-published book: $4.125 million for Richard Paul Evans' The Christmas Box, from Simon & Schuster.

•Despite the drastically declining publication of emerging novelists, MFA programs have increased 600% in since 1980.

•#of writers who apply for MFA programs annually: 20,000. # of diplomas issued since 1990: 150,000.

INSIDERS GUIDE TO PUBLISHING (Writers Digest Books, Dec. 2013)

[davidbcomfort]

PUBLISHING FREAKONOMICS

PUBLISHING FREAKONOMICS

• 94% of all books sold are sold by 6% of authors (exclude Bible and Boy Scout Manual).

•Bowker 2011 book sales stats: Literature (down -29%), Poetry (-15%), History (-12), and Biography (-12%)

•Average POD book sells fewer than 200 copies--mostly to the authors

•Largest advance paid for a self-published book: $4.125 million for Richard Paul Evans' The Christmas Box, from Simon & Schuster.

•Despite the drastically declining publication of emerging novelists, MFA programs have increased 600% in since 1980.#writing

•#of writers who apply for MFA programs annually: 20,000. # of diplomas issued since 1990: 150,000. #writing

INSIDERS GUIDE TO PUBLISHING (Writers Digest Books, Dec. 2013)

[davidbcomfort]

WRITERS & THE GOD ALMIGHTY DOLLAR

From (AN INSIDER'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING (Writers Digest Books, Dec. 2013)

“If there’s anything writers are more neurotic about than writing, it’s money.” Betsy Lerner, author/agent/editor

“In America you can make a fortune as a writer, but not a living.” James Michener

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.” Virginia Woolf

“I’m physically incapable or writing anything I don’t think will be paid for.” Truman Capote

“Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Samuel Johnson

“If I had enough money, I’d give up writing tomorrow.” Anthony Burgess

“Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money.” Robert Frost

“You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, at a 1948 writers’ convention

“Have you ever seen the possession of money corrupt a man as it has Dos [Passos]?” Hemingway to Edmund Wilson.

“Hemingway sold himself for the God almighty dollar.” Ezra Pound