A bird’s eye view of literature.
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. Just the other day my mother-in-law came to visit. She asked for one of my stories and I gave her the latest one I had written. The next day I had to go and visit her. I asked her how she liked the story. She said it wasn’t long enough.
“Long enough?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “There weren’t enough pages to line the bottom of my parrot’s cage. He’s not happy.”
Not exactly the hot spot I had in mind.
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. Just the other day my mother came over for a visit. She’s a religious woman of sorts. She said she had something that she thought would help me write. She asked if she could hang it in my office. I thought maybe it was a poster with some writing quotes on it. I said okay. She hung it and then left.
When I entered the office, I found the item. It was a plaque. It read: “You are cordially invited to the theological place of eternal punishment.”
Below that she had placed a sticky note that read: “Love, Mom.”
Filed under cartoon by author, Monday morning writing joke, no respect
Nothing in the vows says to have and to hold until imagination does you part.
My wife told me I had to stop writing. She said I was having more fun with my imaginary friends than I was with her. I said, So? Big mistake. Big mistake. I forgot what a wallup a real person packs. My oral surgeon said one or two more surgeries and I’ll be almost as good as new. I’ll only have to take the dentures out once a day.
Next time, I’ll just say E = mc2.
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. Just the other day I attended a party, and when somebody asked me what I did, I said I was a writer. He immediately began telling me his story that would “make a wonderful novel. So, I’ll tell it to you, you writer it up, and we’ll split the profits.”
Next time I go to a party and somebody asks me what I do for a living, I’ll say I’m a physicist. Nobody goes up to a physicist and says, “I have a wonderful theory. I’ll tell it to you, you write it down and put in all that math, and we’ll split the profits and the Nobel Prize.”
Filed under cartoon by author, no respect, writer, writing humor
Critics are everywhere.
One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers. –Wilfrid Sheed
All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. –Antonin Artaud
The noted writer Theodore Sturgeon was once asked why so much of science fiction writing was “crap.” He paused for a moment, nodded, and said, yes, 90 percent of science fiction was crap, but that “90 percent of everything is crap.” This is known as Sturgeon’s Law, and is just as true today as it was in the early 1950s when he first pronounced it.
Same is true for critics of writers and writing.
[Errata: I had originally and erroneously attributed this to Robert Heinlein, another noted writer of such classics as Stranger in a Strange Land. My apologies and thank to Tom Dupree for pointing out my error. It is good to have smarter readers dropping by to read your blog posts. May we all be so fortunate. Thank you to all who stop by, read, like, and comment. It is one of the advantages of this blog format. Thank you all. –Editor]
Filed under cartoon by author, no respect, writer
Sometimes I feel lower than a defeated politician….
Next to the defeated politician, the writer is the most vocal and inventive griper on earth. He sees hardship and unfairness wherever he looks. His agent doesn’t love him (enough). The blank sheet of paper is an enemy. The publisher is a cheapskate. The critic is a philistine. The public doesn’t understand. His wife doesn’t understand him. The bartender doesn’t understand him. –PETER MAYLE
Filed under cartoon by author, no respect, writer, writing humor
Rejection might not be “forever.”
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. Just the other day I got a rejection notice. Not only was it a one-page form letter, photocopied cockeyed on the copy machine, the self-addressed stamped envelope came postage due — and I had used two forever stamps!
Filed under cartoon by author, no respect, writer
She threw the book at me!
I’m a writer and I don’t get no respect. Just the other day I hired an editor to help me with my manuscript, and the first thing she did was throw the book at me! The unabridged book at me. The one that defines words. You know it. D-i-k something something something.
Filed under Cartoon, cartoon by author, no respect, writing
“The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.”
— Marty Feldman
Marty Feldman, comedian, writer, actor
Booker's Blog 