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Welcome to My Official Web Page!

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Publish This Book- Why Writers Are F'd Up



I just finished reading Stephen Markley's Publish This Book. Let's just say it's like Jon Stewart and the creators of South Park got together to write a book on publishing a book. And did drugs while they were at it.

Here's an excerpt (the first of a few):

And you wonder why writers become so fucked up- why they drink and shoot heroin and abuse their families and walk into rivers with rocks in their clothes. You can really only spend so much time with your own thoughts. You reach a point where you wonder if anything you have written is of any value at all to anyone other than yourself...

It's fairly simple math when you break it down, and this is true for anyone in the "arts": you, the artist, want people to like your shit. Sure, it's cool if a few people don't like your shit. Such is the way of things. But you need at least
a few people to like it. Even Michael Bay has people who like his shit. You need someone other than yourself to give your piece of art a once-over, kick the tires, check under the hood and say, "All right. This has value. This deserves to exist."

Yep. What he said.