Humour For Tuesday

Okay, I stole this from a site called Bookgasm. I'm giving you the LINK to the original post because it's pretty long (there are 50 reasons in the original) that I've taken the liberty of only posting my top 30 favorites.

30 Reasons No One Wants to Publish Your First Book
Author: Allan Mott

1. Being innovative doesn’t justify writing a Civil War epic entirely in texting slang and emoticons: “ts u hor! i dnt gv dam :< !”

2. There’s this thing called punctuation. You might want to look into it.

3. Where are the vampires?

4. No, seriously, where are the vampires?

5. The world isn’t quite ready for an illustrated children’s book called SOME MOMMIES ARE INTERNET PORNSTARS: “Mommy and Daddy’s door is always locked and your online access is completely blocked! You asked them why and they say, ‘Don’t worry, honey, we’ve just found a fun new way to earn some money!’”

6. Submitting a manuscript handwritten in your own blood does indicate your passion for the material, but not quite in the way you might have hoped.

7. Iambic pentameter? Really?

8. It’s not technically a novel until you’ve written it down first.

9. Yes, enclosing a bag of flour along with your manuscript and causing an anthrax scare will get people’s attention, but it’s the wrong kind of attention.

10. You’re not just being paranoid; there really is a vast corporate conspiracy to ensure that your revolutionary ideas never leave your parents’ basement.

11. Most good books aren’t created with the sole hope that they might someday be adapted into a Martin Lawrence movie.

12. You’re actually the 139th person to submit a conspiracy thriller involving the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, entitled THE MICHAELANGELO CIPHER.

13. And the 78th to submit a chick-lit manuscript about an attractive woman’s sweet tooth and affection for footwear, called CHOCOLATE AND SHOES.

14. You know the part where the protagonist stuffs those puppies into the wood chipper? It’s not quite as funny as you seem to think.

15. A young-adult novel set in the behind-the-scenes world of network reality television featuring over two dozen characters, graphic underage sex and dead prostitutes? Are you fucking kidding me? No, seriously, are you fucking kidding me?

16. You know the talented creative writing professor who told you your work showed so much creativity and promise? Turns out what he really meant was that he wanted you to blow him.

17. Because they threw away their annual budget on the new Lindsay Lohan autobiography, BOOKS ARE RETARDED.

18. Everyone who attempts to load a copy of the manuscript onto their Kindle is found dead three hours later.

19. There’s a fine line between writing authentic regional dialogue and making all of your characters sound like stroke victims.

20. Just be thankful they refused to publish it, since the common accepted response to a novel that ends with the protagonist realizing all the terrible things that happened were in a dream (or was it?) is some stern re-editing of your face with a pair of brass knuckles.

21. Writing a book about vegetarian zombies kinda indicates you don’t exactly know why people like zombies in the first place.

22. God may have told you to write this book, but he didn’t tell you how to give it a decent ending.

23. You may want to revise the query letter you’re sending to agents so it’s more about the book and less about how much you love kittens.

24. For the first 20 pages, everyone who reads it is certain it’s the funniest book they’ve ever read. Unfortunately by the 21st, they finally realize you’re actually being serious.

25. It’s never a good sign when a manuscript’s first sentence is “’Are luck’s run out,’ said the Princess, ‘there unicorns are to fast!’”

26. When writing erotica, you want to avoid graphic descriptions of acne, cellulite and back fat.

27. Life-affirming poetry written by a 10-year-old with a fatal disease is inspirational; that same poetry written by a 47-year-old housewife with a trick knee and occasional indigestion is really, really lame.

28. If you’re going to make your main character a forensic coroner, you’re obligated to know more about human anatomy than what you learned playing Operation as a kid.

29. A general rule to follow when writing for kids: If you could go to jail for saying it to them in person, you’re better off not putting it into print.

30. Historically, books written solely to settle a bar bet seldom make it to print, especially if they were written during a seven-and-a-half-hour period in the same bar where the bet was made.