Wrote Rage

"Every writer I know

Hates other writers. Not all others, but most.

The ones who are better or different he has to hate

because they are better or different. And those who are worse

he despises because that is his earned right."

--Virgil, "Ecoglues: Palaemon"

Warning. This is not an inspirational quote. Most writer quotes are. They are here to make you think pretty thoughts and keep your exhausted butt glued to your chair and writing your masterpiece. 

But this quote, this is not one of those. This is some serious business about the way writers think... Maybe. Or it's not. 

If anything, maybe this is a lying liar telling blatant lies. If not, then maybe it's a sad little representative of writers living in a hurtful, petty world. 

Or, bear with me here, perhaps it's a brilliant little writer from antiquity summing up a lot of the feelings that exist in the world of publishing and using satire with a sharp bite and finely tuned edge to make his point and show us writers the motes in our own eyes. 

I prefer to think it's the latter. (I'm a nice guy like that, I guess.)

Let's analyze his words, shall we...

"Not All Others, But Most"

It's way too common in the world of publishing -- though maybe not in the small indie pools in which I swim -- for writers to see each other as the competition. If you are pinning your hopes and dreams on a dwindling number of major contracts with the "Big Boys" or "Big 5" or "Big Whatever the Hell You Want To Call Them," then it's almost inevitable to think of other writers as the person liable to get in there first and take the contract that fate has ordained for you. 

If your goal as a writer is to be on the payroll of an A-list big pubber with money to throw into advertising and New York Times reviewers lining up to get a review copy of your latest chart-topper, then sure, everybody who gets a bigger ad, a more nationally widespread campaign, a better review, and bigger sales is taking away press, attention, or, god forbid, money from you. They are your competition, and therefore even if you don't outright hate them, you still feel hurt by them at best, jealous toward them typically, or downright angry at their success at worst. 

When I first got the gig writing Dominatrix for Gene Simmons (Look, Bobby, I name-dropped again!), I thought the sky was the limit. Then I noticed that didn't transition into new and bigger gigs for dream assignments with DC and Marvel. But it seemed the road to writer heaven opened up for my good friends Erik and Tom, and as much as I was thrilled for them, I was jealous as hell. After a while, I too started to feel a bit of resentment at their success. I even "got mad and took my toys back home" so to speak and pretty much stopped pursuing comics for a few years to just focus on short stories because I figured I could "outperform" them in that arena (and thus recover my lost pride). 

The ironic part is that while I was getting grumpy and jealous, there were many others who are jealous of me and my success. 

But for those lower-tier writers who aren't in any position to become your competition, you can afford to avoid wasting strong emotion on them, at least as long as they don't achieve what you have. 

"Those Who Are Better"

Here's the rub. The one thing we know better than anything else is our limitations as writers. We like to think we know what we're good at, but with those often our humility (or depression and anxiety) can tell me that maybe we're wrong about that. But the thing we know that we know that we know, like, for all the reals, is what we suck at. 

We think we know we're good at dialog, but we really know how bad we are at endings. We think we know we're masters of the art of setting, but we are most definitely certain how poorly we write characters of another gender/sexual identity. And we can name on our fingers and toes up to twenty writers who are our betters at that thing (fill in the blank) we totally massacre. 

So we maybe not hate them, but boy do we resent them. 

There's a scene in the BBC television comedy Coupling that illustrates this idea beautifully. Several women (all attractive and desirable on their own) see a woman across the bar they feel more perfectly embodies the very idea of being gorgeous than they do. They list a  litany of her attributes before declaring, "I hate her." And then, when she reveals that the price tag is still on the bottom of her shoe, they are suddenly elated at how she is brought low by such a faux pas. 

We do the same thing. 

We resent Stephen King because he somehow writes stories that tap into the human experience in a way that compels readers to buy his books, and then feel so much better when we can bag on him for his rushed endings. (Yes, I'm the chief of sinners in this.) 

We resent Sue Grafton because she can write book after book that tears up the best-seller list, and then feel perhaps more than a little vindicated when a reviewer calls her books "light beach reading" since that can't remotely compare to our loftier goals of literary perfection. 

And so it goes. (Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut.)

"Or Different"

As much as we love these folks, we equally are upset by them. Just how do they get the freedom to break the rules? Why are they allowed to be weird and offbeat and zany and out of the mainstream while we -- poor little rule followers we are since we have to play by them to even get our stuff looked at -- can't have the freedom to get a little weird too? 

You know the writers I'm talking about:

• Neil Gaiman and his success despite not writing series or true sequels and jumping genres like children jump puddles on their bikes. 
• Raymond Carver and his ignoring quotation marks for dialog. 
• William Faulkner and his free pass on ignoring damn near everything that gets covered in a creative writing class 101. 
• Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and his intentional misuse of tense and structure and authorial intrusion and using doodles as part of his stories (who also never wrote an epic or a sequel).
• The list goes on. 

The follow-up argument goes like this -- Damn them for setting the standard for their rule-breaking because now even if we did that creative thing we once thought about we'd only be viewed by those who matter as being derivative. Even though we thought of it first. Or at least simultaneously. 

Damned it we do and damned if we don't as the cliche goes. 

The follow-up to the follow-up is when we hit pure fantasy. It is this: They stole my idea. 

Don't go there. That way lies madness. There, there be dragons. 

"Those Who Are Worse... His Earned Right"

Ah, but thankfully, we have these folks to help balance out all that resentment and jealousy and pettiness and grumpiness -- 

-- These poor slobs who still struggle to understand how to use an em dash. 

-- These lost lambs who can't format an ellipse to save their lives. 

-- These freshman newbs who haven't yet learned not to run the faucet on that massive info dump in chapter 1 (or worse, a prologue!)

If it weren't for these literary saps, we'd have to relegate ourselves to the lowest rung on the talent ladder. We'd have to lump our own careers in with the "fail more than succeed" crowd. 

"It may not be Doubleday," we say with unbelieving pride, "but at least I'm published." Or "It may not be six figures, but at least I got upfront money when so many don't get an advance in this career." (Yes, we use the word career as if we don't still work as a teacher or caregiver or construction worker or server or stock clerk to actually pay the bills. ) "I may have been paid in contributor copies," we intone with huffy breaths, "but I at least I would never pay to have my fiction read by editors." Or, "I may only be published locally, but at least I know the difference between that and which."

As long as there is someone lower, we can subsist in our place. 

"Every Writer I Know"

Of course, I jest -- in part. 

But let's be honest, even the nicest writers among us can fall prey to pettiness where our writing reputations are at stake. Even the most welcoming authors can split hairs over what makes one person a professional and another person an amateur in the war of words. Even the humblest scribe (so humble as to never apply such a word as "scribe" to oneself) can get his, her, or their tail feathers ruffled at the intimation one is somehow a "less than" when compared to another -- even when the intimation was never intended. 

It's a defense mechanism. It's natural. (Call it original sin if you want to get religious about it.) 

I choose to believe Virgil knew all this as well. After all, we human beings (and in particular we writer human beings) haven't actually changed much in the past few thousand years. We may do spelling and grammar differently now, but we don't really think or create that differently. The imaginative muscles still flex the same way. 

So, I choose to believe our friend Virge stuffed his ancient tongue firmly in his ancient cheek and took his quill or chalk or whatever he wrote with (probably an IBM Selectric, I'd guess -- after all, those are pretty old) when he penned these words. 

I choose to believe he put them down as a mirror we could and should use to check ourselves in as members of the writing community lest we succumb to these characteristics. 

Or, maybe Virgil was just a dick who didn't have any writer friends. Your choice.