Writers Trash Talking Other Writers

How would you like your writing to be reviewed by best-selling, award-wining writers?

Not so much based on these opinions famous authors such as Hemingway, Faulkner, and Twain offered on the works of other famous authors like Orwell, Rowling, and Kerouac.

Buckle your seatbelt ... it's about to get nasty.

Friedrich Nietzsche on Plato: “Plato was a bore.”

Leo Tolstoy on Friedrich Nietzsche: “Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.”

Virginia Woolf on James Joyce: "[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples."

 

Mark Twain on Jane Austen: "I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone." 

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William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway: 

"No courage. Never been known to use a word that might send the reader to a dictionary."

 

Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner: 

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

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Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman: "Like a large shaggy dog, just unchained, scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon."

 

Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope: "There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope."

 

Cyril Connolly on George Orwell: "He could not blow his nose without moralising on the state of the handkerchief industry."

 

Katherine Mansfield on E.M. Forrester: "[Howard's End] is not good enough. E.M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea." 

Harold Robbins on Ernest Hemingway:
“Hemingway was a jerk.”

 

Edmund Wilson on Evelyn Waugh: "His style has the desperate jauntiness of an orchestra fiddling away for dear life on a sinking ship." 

Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac: "None of these people [in the Beat Generation] have anything interesting to say, and none of them can write, not even Mr. Kerouac. It's not writing, it's typing."

 

Tom Stoppard on Bertolt Brecht: "Personally I would rather have written Winnie-the-Pooh than the collected works of Brecht." 

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D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville: 

"Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, 

than Herman Melville, even in a great book like 'Moby-Dick…"

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Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust: "I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective."

 

Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe: "[To take Poe] with more than a certain degree of seriousness is to lack seriousness one's self. An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection."

 

Ernest Hemingway on T.S. Eliot: "If I knew that by grinding Mr. Eliot into a fine dry powder and sprinkling that powder over [Joseph] Conrad's grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear.... I would leave for London tomorrow morning with a sausage grinder."

 

Howard Bloom on J.K. Rowling: "How to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone? Why, very quickly, to begin with, perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do."

 

Norman Mailer on Jack Kerouac:
"His rhythms are erratic, his sense of character is nil,
and he is as pretentious as a rich whore,

sentimental as a lollypop."

 

Dame Edith Sitwell on Virginia Woolf: "Virginia Woolf's writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere."

Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway: "I read him for the first time in the early Forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it."

 

Gore Vidal on Truman Capote: He's a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.

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Flannery O’Connor on Ayn Rand: 

"The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get… 
I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway 
and threw it in the nearest garbage pail.
She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."

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Martin Amis on Miguel de Cervantes: "Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies." 

 

Gustave Flaubert on Honoré de Balzac: "What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write." 

 

Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad: "I cannot abide Conrad's souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist clichés."

 

Ruth Rendell on Agatha Christie: "To say that Agatha Christie's characters are cardboard cut-outs is an insult to cardboard cut-outs." 

 

William Faulkner on Mark Twain:
[A] hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe,
who tricked out a few of the old proven 'sure fire' literary skeletons
with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.

Tom Wolfe on Ernest Hemingway: "People always think that the reason he's easy to read is that he is concise. He isn't. I hate conciseness — it's too difficult. The reason Hemingway is easy to read is that he repeats himself all the time, using 'and' for padding."

Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.'" 

 

Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound: "A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not."

H.G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw: “An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”

Well, that was brutal ... somebody grab a rag and start mopping up the blood.

All Hat, No Cattle

All sizzle, no steak.

All bark, no bite.

All foam, no beer.

All booster, no payload.

All wick, no wax.

All icing, no cake. 

All show, no go.

I’ve met more than a few people in business who fit what one of my former clients, Chaz Carey, called  "pigeons in peacock feathers."

That being said, there are also many people I've run into in my business life who offer far more than what you'd expect from their low-key presentation.

More of the latter and the less of the former, please.

View from a Café. Cinque Terre (Part 2)

Parked at a sidewalk café sipping cappuccino I drink in the flavor of the town with the parade of passers by.

A torrent of Italian words accompanied by a flurry of gestures as an old man communicates an unobserved transgression to a young man.

An aggressive cadre of pigeons patrol for dropped food. Large pieces get shaken, tossed, and fought over. An effective but inefficient city beautification program.

The hiking poles seem unnecessary considering his muscular legs could easily be mistaken for tree trunks.

Punctuated with brief comments in French, each drag on her cigarette is like Snoop Dog maximizing a bong hit. After grinding the butt on the cobblestones with the toe of her ASICS, she takes 3 pulls on a vape pen and then lights up another cigarette.

One is showing off her athleticism with a a second skin of spandex. One is hiding her lack of it in jean shorts and a flowing top. One is attacking the steep incline; one is defending against it. 

His fanny pack looks like his belt swallowed an opossum.

OK? Stop. OK. No. OK? Stop. Now. OK. Two years old with the pout of a supermodel. And the communications style of a master drill sergeant.

Two wiener dogs. One longhair. One short hair. Joyful to be out on a walk. They show no additional appreciation that they are in a destination where the wealthy park their super yachts.

For every fried shrimp he maneuvers from the paper cone to his mouth, one bounces off his belly on to the cobblestones. Companion mortified. Pigeons ecstatic.

That sunburn has to hurt. In a cartoon there would be wavy lines representing radiating heat.

Alligator shoes, perfectly tailored azure suit, crimson tie and crisp pink shirt leads the eye up to designer sunglasses and mousse saturated hair. An island in a sea of tourists in t-shirts and sun dresses.

"You're the one who chose the date," the tour guide explains into his phone. "I am here, you are not. There is no refund." After an extended pause, he speaks again, "You chose the date. You can complain to no one. I am here. You are not. There will be no refund."

"Bambina!" The delighted old woman exclaims as she pulls the infant towards here and plants a loud kiss on the top of its head. Has she not seen her grandchild in months or minutes?

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View from a Café. Cinque Terre (Part 1)

 

Join me for coffee in Amsterdam: View from a sidewalk cafe. Amsterdam.

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NOTE: Cinque Terre is actually 5 different villages. I've combined the highlights of café sitting observations from three of them (Monterosso, Vernazza, and Manarola) and nearby Porto Fino over 4 days in June 2023.

7 Transformative Strategies to Increase Conversions and Earnings

Here are 7 transformative strategies that will help you attract the right prospects, engage them effectively, and turn them into loyal customers. By applying a multi-pronged approach across different platforms, you can increase conversions.

#1 - Shorten All Processes for Your Visitors

It's a fast-paced world ... every second counts. Long and complicated processes can lead to high bounce rates and lost prospects. Focus on streamlining your visitor's journey. Optimize your website for speed, reduce the number of steps in your sales funnel, and make the checkout process simple and intuitive. By providing a smooth and hassle-free experience, you'll encourage visitors to stay engaged and convert into customers.

#2 – Focus Your Message to Repel the Wrong Prospects

Not all prospects are created equal. Don't try to appeal to everyone, target your efforts towards attracting the right audience. Craft your marketing messages and copy in a way that clearly communicates your brand's values, benefits, and unique selling points. You'll repel the wrong prospects, saving both their time and yours, while ensuring that those who resonate with your message are more likely to convert.

#3 - Implement a Controlled Testing Strategy to Enhance Conversions

Understand that conversion rate optimization is an ongoing process of refinement. A controlled testing strategy, such as A/B testing, allows you to experiment with different elements of your marketing campaigns and landing pages. Test variations of headlines, CTAs, visuals, and even different color schemes to see what resonates best with your audience. Through consistent testing and analysis, you'll discover the most effective combinations that drive higher conversions.

#4 - Cultivate Credible Social Proof

Social proof is one of the most powerful tools for gaining trust and credibility among your potential customers. Collect and showcase testimonials, reviews, case studies, and endorsements from satisfied clients. Also, leverage social media to highlight positive interactions and engagements with your brand. The more credible social proof you can show, the more likely prospects will be to convert, knowing that others have had positive experiences with your products or services.

#5 - Employ a Multifaceted Message Strategy

A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works in marketing. Tailor your messaging to different segments of your target audience. Understand their pain points, aspirations, and motivations, and then create personalized content that speaks directly to them. Utilize various content formats such as blog posts, videos, infographics, and podcasts to reach your audience through their preferred channels. A multifaceted message strategy ensures you connect with your audience on a deeper level, increasing the chances of conversion.

#6 - Develop a Strong Pre-Sell Technique

Before asking for the sale, focus on building a relationship with your prospects. Offer valuable content that educates, entertains, and provides solutions to their problems. Anticipate objections and answer them. Nurture leads through email marketing, webinars, and exclusive offers. When you've established trust and demonstrated your expertise, your prospects will be more receptive to your sales pitch and more likely to convert.

#7 - Build a Competitive Edge with Persuasion

Persuasive copywriting is an art form that can significantly impact your conversions. Understand the psychology behind decision-making and incorporate persuasive techniques into your content. Use scarcity, urgency, social influence, and storytelling to engage your audience and nudge them towards action. Reminder: Always ensure that your persuasive techniques are ethical and aligned with your brand values.

By implementing these seven transformative strategies, you can increase conversions and enjoy a boost in your earnings. Remember to continuously monitor your results, adapt to changes in the market, and keep refining your approach. Marketing is an ever-evolving landscape, and staying ahead requires creativity, persistence, and a commitment to delivering value to your audience.