Adventures of an e-Book Bookie, 21 "Some Writer Jokes"

A writer walks into a bar and orders a beer. “How’s the literary endeavors lately?” asks the bartender.

“Pretty good. I write six hours; every day.”

“Have you sold anything?”

“Yes. My television, my car, and my baseball card collection.”

***

Did you hear about the blond actress who was so stupid she moved to Hollywood and screwed a writer?

***

A writer returned home to see his house wrapped in police tape. “I live here,” he asked a cop, “what happened?”

“Your agent came over this afternoon, raped and murdered your wife and kidnapped your daughter.”

“Holy shit,” he said. “My agent came to my house?”

***

What type of writing pays the best?

Ransom notes.

***

A famous writer walks into a bar and orders five shots of tequila. “Problems buddy?”

“I’ve lost my writing ability. My last three books all suck.”

“They’re probably just as good as your first three,” says the bartender, “maybe your taste has improved.”

***

What’s the difference between an engineering major, a finance major, and an English major?

An engineering major says: How can we build it?

A finance major says: What will it cost?

An English major says: Would you like fries with that?

***

A writer walks into a bar and orders an ouzo. “How’s the writing game?” asks the bartender.

“Not too good, I sent an article to Reader’s Digest and it came back with a rejection slip.”

“What was the name of the article?”

The writer says, “I Fucked a Bear.”

“No wonder it got rejected. You have to improve the title.”

A month later the writer returns and orders an ouzo. “How’s the writing game?” asks the bartender.

“Not too good, I sent the article back into Reader’s Digest and it came back with a rejection slip.”

“What did you rename the article?”

“I Fucked a Bear for the FBI .”

“No wonder it got rejected again. You really have to improve the title.”

A month later the writer returns and orders an ouzo. “How’s the writing game?” asks the bartender.

“Pretty good. Reader’s Digest finally accepted my article.”

“So you took my advice and improved the name of the article?”

“Yep.”

“What did you change it to?”

“I Fucked a Bear for the FBI and Found Jesus.”

***

Heard any good (or bad) writer jokes? Add them here as a comment...

____________________________________________________________

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Adventures of an e-Book Bookie, 20: I've Been Banned From Facebook!

Facebook is my “whore’s bicycle” and I can’t ride it for four days.

Yes, I’ve been banned from Facebook.

I’m currently serving a four-day sentence.

Last night, whilst trolling the site, I received a message informing me of the ban. When I told my wife this morning, Penny said, “I warned you about those dead baby jokes.”

“No dead baby jokes.”

“Dirty Johnny? 69? Helen Keller? Special Olympics?”

“No jokes.”

Penny put down her coffee and looked at me, “How do you manage to get banned from Facebook?”

Apparently you click on a shitload of people to “friend” within a given time period and the MAN SHUTS YOU DOWN. I was trolling lists of friends-of-friends trying to pad my list of friends. I use the “social media” (“...” indicating belittling sarcasm) as a way to toot-my-horn and publicize my books.

Period.

And I was clicking away like a chimpanzee in a 1970s Sociology experiment—doing exactly what the scientists wanted me to—and hoping for some cashews or a banana and I got banned from friend-fishing for four days.

Yes, I’m doing hard time in Windsor, CA: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen...

JOKE OF THE DAY

Why did the whore buy a bicycle?

So she could peddle it all over town

FREE BOOK OFFER

Here's a "coupon code" to download my jokebook “A Man Walks Into a Bar...” for free.
If you have an iPhone or an iPad or Nook or Kobo or Adobe Digital Reader (or whatever) go to:
www.smashwords.com/profile/view/robloughranbooks
and click on "A Man Walks Into a Bar..." and click BUY (you'll have to designate which device you're downloading to) and enter the coupon code yb48k and you'll get it for free. ("Act Now..." "Limited Time Offer..." "Local Restrictions Apply..." "It's New..." "It's Improved..." It's Old Fashioned...")
If you don't have a e-reader go to Amazon.com and download the "Kindle for PC" and then go to the link above and download to your newly downloaded Kindle for PC.
Or you can just go to the link above and download a free PDF of "A Man Walks Into a Bar..." to your computer.
Please try this out and give the jokebook a read.
Then leave a little blurb/review at either (or both) Smashwords or Amazon.com.
It's funny; it's free; it's fun.
Thanks, that's all,

Rob

Adventures of an e-Book Bookie, 19: More Writing Quotes and a Free eBook

23

The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic—in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea—know to medical science is work.

—Thomas Szasz

24

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

—Colette

25

Because if you are like most people, then like most people you don’t know you are like most people.

—Daniel Gilbert

26

A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price-tag on it.

—Marcel Proust

27

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment.

—Hart Crane

28

As a writer I believe that all the basic human truths are known. And what we try to do as best we can is come at these truths from our own unique angle to reilluminate those truths in a hopefully different way.

—William Goldman

29

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not the anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.

—Buddha

30

The moment a writer picks up his pen, he is no longer himself or entirely of this world.

—Richard Selzer

31

I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.

—Steve Martin

32

We just can’t make the best of a fate until it is inescapably, inevitably, and irrevocably ours.

—Daniel Gilbert 33

When we open our eyes each morning, it is upon a world we have spent a lifetime learning to see. We are not given the world: we make our world through incessant experience, categorization, memory, reconnection.

—Oliver Sacks

34

Who controls the society’s memory controls its will.

—Phillip J. Hilts

35

And, of course, any writer who pays attention to critics is an ass.

—John D. MacDonald

36

Words are loaded pistols.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

37

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.

—Eric Hoffer

38

Tomorrow is promised to no one.

—Walter Payton

39

No right or wrong storytelling answer exists. Ever.

—William Goldman

40

If it was easy everyone would do it.

—Billie Jean King

41

Storytellers have been getting us through the night for centuries. Hollywood is the current campfire.

—Gloria Steinham

42

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

—George Santayana

43

Stability in language is synonymous with rigor mortis.

—Ernest Weekley

44

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

—Francois duc de la Rouchefoucauld

45

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

—William James

JOKE OF THE DAY

Why does Charlie Sheen refer to his nostrils as “The Olsen Twins”?

Because both pairs are snotty as hell and filled with cocaine.

SPECIAL OFFER FOR BLOG READERS.

Here's a "coupon code" to download my jokebook for free and check it out.

If you have an iPhone or an iPad or Nook or Kobo or Adobe Digital Reader go to:

www.smashwords.com/profile/view/robloughranbooks

and click on "A Man Walks Into a Bar..." and click BUY (you'll have to designate which device you're downloading to) and enter the coupon code yb48k and you'll get it for free. ("Act Now..." "Limited Time Offer..." "Local Restrictions Apply..." "It's New..." "It's Improved..." It's Old Fashioned...")

If you don't have a e-reader go to Amazon.com and download the "Kindle for PC" and then go to the link above and download to your newly downloaded Kindle for PC.

Or you can just go to the link above and download a free PDF of "A Man Walks Into a Bar..." to your computer.

Please try this out and give the jokebook a read.

Then leave a little blurb/review at either (or both) Smashwords or Amazon.com.

It's funny; it's free; it's fun.


Thanks, that's all,

Rob

Adventures of an e-Book Bookie, 18: "RAIN, REIGN, REIN"

If you want to learn, teach.

—Anonymous

That “Anonymous” sure is smart.

Wrote a whole bunch of books in 140 or so languages and is an expert on literature, language, and love. But there is no truism, for me, that Anon Y. Mous uttered that is truer than the one above. If you want to learn precisely and immediately what you don’t know stand up in front of a group of people and try to teach.

It is a frightening and humbling but ultimately rewarding experience. Perhaps the most surprising experience I’ve had while attempting to teach writing is that every person in the class—male or female; young or old—is me.

There are, as far as I can see, three stages for a writer and any gathering of writers big enough to fill the backseat of a minivan will, without a doubt, encompass all the categories. And, every conscientious writer must travel through all three stages on each and every new project: whether it’s a query letter, poem, or novel.

And each stage is necessary, a natural and essential progression. They are not like FreshmanSophomoreJuniorSenior: you are not promoted, never to return; these writing stages are a continuum that needs to be repeated over-and-over. Sisyphus, rolling that rock up that hill in Hades (only to have it roll back down) is the proper metaphor for a writer’s endeavor. The same doubts will plague us with every project: “This sucks”, “I’ll never be able to finish”, and the dreaded, “The writing is really flowing: this will be published and sell millions of copies!” are stones that must repeatedly be shouldered to the top of the hill. I routinely traverse (hopscotch) through all three phases: sometimes during the composition of the same sentence. The best I can hope for is that I begin with a slightly higher level of competence each time.

STAGE ONE: RAIN

This is writing fast-and-furious and it flows and feels good but there is that inevitable nagging doubt that when you return for a rewrite it’s gonna suck ass.

And it usually does.

What “flowed” (I hate that term and use it disparagingly) so freely now smells foully. The good news is now I have 10 or 16 or 35 pages to edit and rewrite and improve.

STAGE TWO: REIGN

This is a stage where the words that you write have seemed to fall from heaven onto your page. Surely no one has ever written a funnier love scene or a more moving and masterful murder. And you are there: in at the conception of this piece of undeniable literary merit. But again, during a rewrite, it becomes obvious that you are not the reigning “King of the World”. You belong down in steerage. But again, the good news is you have a few pages and maybe a scene or two that are salvageable.

STAGE THREE: REIN

This is where the internal editor is working so assiduously it is almost impossible to write. You won’t (or can’t) allow yourself the freedom to make mistakes. This is the most deadly of the recurring phases because it shuts you down, reins you in and sows self-doubt.

And unlike the other two phases you aren’t rewarded with a gunny-sack full of pages that can be improved.

Writing consists of either juggling (or enduring or surviving) these three stages until something usable arrives on the page. No wonder we writers are such neurotic recluses.

JOKE OF THE DAY

Two women on the prowl walk into a bar. They spot a handsome but glum looking guy sitting alone. One of them walks up to him and says, “You don’t look happy.”

“I just got out of jail,” he says, “and I’m having trouble adjusting to life on the outside.”

“Why were you in jail?”

“I beat my wife to death with a nine iron, dismembered her with a chainsaw, and fed her to the neighbor’s Great Dane.”

The woman signaled for her friend to come over, “He’s single!”

www.robloughranbooks.com

Adventures of an e-Book Bookie, 17: "OUCH!"

Jean Paul Richter said, “For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted.” To Richter’s triumvirate I’d like to add “writing”.

Last Friday I tweaked my back.

It felt like a pinched nerve, the way the pain zipped THROBBED and then radiated throughout my lower back. I could walk, I could even put my own shoes and socks on. (The last time I injured my back—pulled muscle—I couldn’t even manage that first-grader’s feat.) I considered calling in sick to work (I’m a waiter) but the back actually felt better walking than sitting so I ate some cookies and ibuprofen and drove to work. I managed a shift with more discomfort than pain, returned home for more ibuprofen and cookies.

And woke up screaming a few hours later with back spasms.

Penny pulled me from bed and deposited me into a hot bath. From the bath I went for a walk and my back hurt, but it was doable as long as I was upright and walking. Sitting stiffly on a wooden chair was okay, so I watched a little college football on t.v. and went off to work. The stiffness—and pain—abated and returned repeatedly but there was one position that was excruciating and impossible.

Sitting at my desk leaned over the keyboard.

So except for some longhand writing at the dining room table on the aforementioned wooden chair I haven’t written for 10 days. I’m currently serializing my newest novel Tantric Zoo on Red Room (redroom.com/member/rob-loughran) but I do that seated (you guessed: wooden chair) with the keyboard on my lap. This is the first “real” writing I’ve done in a week-and-a-half.

Sonuvabitch, I missed it.

Don’t know why; don’t care to know why.

I just missed it.

The theme of this bloggity-bullshit-blog-blather (so far) has been how to publish and sell in the new e-format but these last, almost two weeks, when I haven’t been able to spend time in the company of all the perverts and murderers and rakes and whores and fuckers I write about have been miserable.

And right now (1:48 AM, PST) I can’t sleep, my back hurts, but it’s allowed me about 40 minutes at the keyboard so as to write another misguided installment of this bloggity-bullshit-blog-blather.

I feel pretty good, but please pass the cookies and ibuprofen....

JOKE OF THE DAY

Who is Al Qaida’s favorite football team?

The New York Jets.

www.robloughranbooks.com

Tantric Zoo: PART II Chapters 1,2 & 3 | Rob Loughran | Article/Story/Poem/Essay | Red Room

Tantric Zoo: PART II Chapters 1,2 & 3 | Rob Loughran | Article/Story/Poem/Essay | Red Room