Subliminal messaging: Buy Holly Lisle's Books.
So the day before last I posted up links to a new tutorial, both on my page and on several of the writing communities I am involved with.
I was saddened and disheartened when I received a lot of anonymous flames-not from people who had actually READ the tutorial, but just from people who didn’t think I should have written it. (Yes, the mind does boggle.)
As I’m on her mailing list, I emailed Holly Lisle-an author well known for her tutorials and the effort she puts into helping other writers get started. I’m also a huge fan of her books and I’m sure those of you who are writers have been directed to her page at lease twice by me. Grin.
She emailed me back this morning with this to say:
Hi, Talitha,
I'll answer this one privately even though I'll also use it in an
upcoming newsletter.
Yes, getting hate mail, snarky comments, antagonistic writeups on
blogs from people you've never heard of (and some you unfortunately
have), and all the rest of the garbage comes with the territory. The
more visible you are, and the more easily accessible, the more of
this sort of thing you'll get. I looked over your tutorials, and
they're excellent, including the one on doing a query letter, which I
personally would say you're damned qualified to write, since you have
both landed an agent and interested Tor.
There's a price to pay for paying forward. Jim Baen once told me,
"No good deed goes unpunished." At the time, I thought he was
wrong. (I still think he was wrong in the broadness of that
statement.) But he's proving to be right more often than I'd like.
Good deeds aren't punished by everyone, or no one would ever do
anything to help anyone else ever again. But there is a small but
very loud braying jackass segment of the population that delights in
being miserable and ignorant, and in sharing their misery and
ignorance with anyone who dares to aspire to something higher. The
better you do, the louder they'll get.
That tough skin I keep saying writers need? It ain't all about
surviving rejections. You also need it to deal with the consequences
of your own success.
Hang in. It'll get worse, but you'll get tougher. By the way, I was
thrilled to read about your success with the agent and Tor. Please
let me know how it goes. I'm cheering for you.
Holly
By the way, thanks to all my friends who stood up for me. We’re on the winning team.