What Not To Do (as seen on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books)
Suppose you are an aspiring writer, with a published story or two to your credit, and you want to know whether you've taken the literary world by storm yet. So you Google yourself, and the first thing you find is a one-line review on somebody's LJ--one that doesn't do much for your ego:
...a bad opening crippled this story for me, plus the various relationships felt off.
Do you:
(a) Sulk for a while, then get over it and write some more stories?
(b) Send the reviewer a long, whiny email calling his review "unprofessional and tacky," then wait around, expecting him to take the review down?
(c) Skulk on the reviewer's LJ long enough to observe that he's going through a prolonged dry spell in his writing and a fairly serious bout of depression, then make a couple of anonymous posts urging him to commit suicide and take his cat with him? (I swear I'm not making this up.)
(d) When the reviewer fails to kill himself in a timely fashion, threaten to do the job for him?
If you're Kevin W. Reardon--a.k.a. Cole A. Adams--the answer is b, c, and d. You win bonus points for loathsomeness by lecturing the reviewer on how he his depression must not be serious or "deeply-felt," if he can't write anymore but plans to go on living. I don't think this is how you planned on becoming famous, but it'll have to do. As someone has already said--much more tidily than I ever could: this is the only writing you'll ever be remembered for.
...a bad opening crippled this story for me, plus the various relationships felt off.
Do you:
(a) Sulk for a while, then get over it and write some more stories?
(b) Send the reviewer a long, whiny email calling his review "unprofessional and tacky," then wait around, expecting him to take the review down?
(c) Skulk on the reviewer's LJ long enough to observe that he's going through a prolonged dry spell in his writing and a fairly serious bout of depression, then make a couple of anonymous posts urging him to commit suicide and take his cat with him? (I swear I'm not making this up.)
(d) When the reviewer fails to kill himself in a timely fashion, threaten to do the job for him?
If you're Kevin W. Reardon--a.k.a. Cole A. Adams--the answer is b, c, and d. You win bonus points for loathsomeness by lecturing the reviewer on how he his depression must not be serious or "deeply-felt," if he can't write anymore but plans to go on living. I don't think this is how you planned on becoming famous, but it'll have to do. As someone has already said--much more tidily than I ever could: this is the only writing you'll ever be remembered for.