Why why why...?

Who knows whether my book will ever be published, 

but this is why I write...

Click image to enlarge.

Wondermark, from the pen of David Malki !

#657; The Negotiator

Haaa! Just saw this from David Malki ! over at Wondermark. Love it.

Wondermark tickles me

More from the irrepressible pen of David Malki !

This one's for you mum! x

Click on the photo to enlarge.

The Discovery that Changed the World

Agree. Genius!
Wondermark. 5 March 2010

In which Rob tries to read...

The 'illustrated jocularity' of David Malki ! occasionally goes over my head, but if ever I could conjure up my "six people living or dead I'd invite to a dinner party" he'd be one of them.
Malki's cartoon Wondermark appears online and is updated twice weekly. And here's what makes it different. This splendid dude mines his collection of old books for 19th century woodcuts and engravings, from which he crafts his comics. 
Incidentally, the exclamation mark proceeding his name is intentional. 
"I spell my name with an exclamation point like so: David Malki ! It’s considered an honorific, and used in the same manner as “Jr” or “PhD”: there’s a single space before it. The exclamation point is not pronounced - though many have tried, often with hilarious results."
I give you, my friends, his take on why we read...

*Click on the image to enlarge

Love Leunig...

I like to delve into my bookcase for a little dose of Leunig every now and then.

"I have developed a deep affection for my abiding characters and symbols, they nourish me greatly... They ask for things and do what they will. They surprise, disturb and inspire me. I observe them with bemusement and respect. I let them be and eventually I hear what they are telling me." - Michael Leunig

The rejectors' regret...!

What do each of these famous writers have in common?:

Mark Twain

Walt Whitman

Deepak Chopra

Gertrude Stein

Virginia Wolf

Margaret Atwood

Tom Clancy

Beatrix Potter

e e cummings

Believe it or not their manuscripts were rejected, time and time and time again, by publishing houses around the world.
So they self-published and the rest is… a fortune in literary treasures.
Joseph Heller suffered 22 rejections for (guess what) Catch 22. Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead - 12 rejections. Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull – 20.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig was declared a non-starter by supposed ‘experts’ a soul-destroying 121 times. According to the Guinness Book of World Records it wears the sash for the most-rejected best seller. And yet Pirsig remained resolute, releasing it himself in 1974. Thirty-six years on it’s an indisputable American cult classic. Who hasn’t heard of it?
The self-help career tome that is standard reading for any job seeker, Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute?, didn’t even get an interview. Now in its 37th reprint and having sold over 10 million copies, someone, somewhere, clearly couldn’t see the giant gift horse's big brown eyes staring him in the face.
Imagine if George Orwell hadn’t stuck to his guns and self-published Animal Farm? Should it never have seen the light of day I bet even my 17-year-old cousin, still dripping from being saturated in Year 10 Orwellian satire, would grudgingly admit to being the lesser for its absence.
Mark Twain’s publisher lived to rue the day he ever scorned Huckleberry Finn. Defiant to the last, Twain came up with an ingenious strategy to market and publish his book simultaneously. He hired a team of door-to-door salesmen to sell subscriptions to the as-yet unpublished book, which he then paid to produce himself.
My book is nowhere near publishing stage, but it’s something a wannabe writer can’t help but think about from time to time. What do I do with it once I’ve finally finished the @%*!@! thing?
In the publishing mosh pit one person’s decision might seem to be your maker or breaker. But I reckon if a person fails to see something special in what you put in front of them, put it in front of someone else. If they can’t see the value in it, (besides being nutso) they don’t deserve the rewards it will - undoubtedly - bring :)
And your mum and dad will love it regardless.

A milkshake, French Fries and a meatball walk into a bar...

Season 4, Episode 5: Frylock makes a new dog called 'Handbanana' for Meat Wad using Make Your Own Dog 1.0. 
Season 4, Episode 4: After winning a contest, Carl fears getting his penis cut off and taken by a group of dicks, so Frylock turns him into a woman.
Season 2, Episode 16: Shake uncovers a delicious, demoniacally possessed submarine sandwich in his front yard. A voice tells him if he eats the whole thing he will be killed.


People who can look at the monumentally ordinary and out of it dream up imaginary worlds that fascinate and delight others, are amazing.
Case in point. Right now I'm watching a cartoon series about a milkshake, a packet of French Fries and a meatball who live in a ghetto. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is, like junk food, addictive. 
Master Shake, Frylock and Meat Wad are detectives whose nemesis is the evil Dr Weird and whose escapades see them pitted against characters like a giant rabbit robot with a spray gun full of hair-growth hormone perfume, brain-burning leprechauns with a penchant for rainbows, and a piece of mould that comes to life in a greasy kitchen (and turns out to be a really nice guy). 
With episode descriptors like 'a Pink Man sets out to destroy the moon but can't find anyone to help him', its surreal morbid humour and total lack of continuity between each 12-minute story (at times even within storylines) is completely bizarre. The show has a cult following in America and I can see why. It's ridiculously funny! 
But as a result I'm having a crisis of confidence in my own imagination...
How do people come up with this stuff? 
Will my story be even remotely interesting? 
Why does it feel incredibly difficult to write with an original voice?
Argh - this writing gig is so hard!