Sad Laughter

Writing is like trying to make sense of an inside joke you have with yourself but haha joke's on you 'cause the joke is more sad than funny.

In Sad Laughter, it's The Elements of Style meets Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts as acclaimed author/publisher Brian Alan Ellis roasts the sacred cow that is the literary community via hilariously nihilistic bon mots about academic workshops (Write how you want, edit how you want, just please stop quoting Hemingway), literary journals (Hell is open submissions), writing conferences (where writers spend several days pretending to admire each other's work while drunk), and just the overall pretension involved with being an artist in the social media age (First rule of Write Club: You do not talk about your current word count). Are poetry readings like really weird AA meetings? How can you be upset that your short stories get rejected when you're constantly rejecting love? Would David Foster Wallace embrace the man bun if he were alive today--infinite yes or infinite maybe? Would it have been easier for Luke Skywalker to become a certified Jedi had he first gotten an MFA degree? These tough questions may or may not be answered in Sad Laughter, possibly the all-time greatest non-essential literary manual ever written in the history of writing