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I’ve had this sort of thing happen and of course it’s annoying. One time I pitched an agent with my nonfiction concept and mentioned that the proposal was available. He responded by displaying weird ignorance about the subject matter (about which I am an expert), presumed to educate me about it (by informing me that it wouldn’t make sense to try to sell an asexuality book in the queer section because IF asexual people even exist they certainly don’t think of themselves as queer), and explaining to me that if I want anyone to look at it I would need to write a proposal (and here are some helpful resources to teach you how, ya n00b). I did write this guy back and inform him that asexuality wasn’t some weird thing I made up; that communities and studies existed (including multiple of both that indicated asexual people are queer); and that I had mentioned the proposal was both written and available. But I didn’t tell this guy those things because I expected to work with him. If he had offered after that, I would not have accepted. Who wants to work with someone who ignores half the things you say in a relationship that’s ABOUT communication?

But just like you can’t call the human resources department of the job you were rejected for and explain to them how you are in fact the most qualified, talking back to an agent who said no is going to do three things:

1. Annoy the agent, who will either ignore you or put you on a list of people to never work with;
2. Place the blame for the miscommunication on the agent, which even if you are right and they read carelessly, will not result in a positive relationship with that agent if you somehow were to work together;
3. Not result in getting another chance. It will not work.

Take a publishing industry professional’s possibly inappropriate rejection as an opportunity to make your pitch materials clearer. And if it was 100% on them and you literally did not say the thing they insist you said . . . again, they’re proving you don’t want to work with them. Their whole JOB is reviewing these kinds of materials. If they can’t be arsed to read yours properly, you’ve learned that they approach these things carelessly or in a cursory manner. And while everyone makes mistakes, your work deserves proper respect and attention.

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I mean I had other plans for that Sunday but sometimes I don’t have much of a choice. . . .

(Also, it’s probably bad luck to act like I’m upset about it. . . . )

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Don’t beat yourself up if Massive Life Events get in the way of your creative activities ;]

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Another long one for #160! And no, you don’t have to become an expert on everything your characters do, but especially if it’s an integral part of a protagonist’s story arc, at bare minimum you need to not make mistakes representing it. And you may want to say stuff like “OK, so what if my character is an exception?” For instance, what if one of your test readers says your police officer character wouldn’t do a certain thing because that’s not part of the protocol for the incident they’re responding to, and you want that character to break the usual rules and do it anyway? The answer there is you need nuance. You need someone to call it out or later acknowledge that the officer shouldn’t have done that or have the character’s inner monologue note that they’re ignoring protocol. You don’t want it to look like you just didn’t know how to write this.

Think about your own hobby or profession, and then think about the silly things you’ve seen in movies/TV or read in books about the way it’s represented. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, when these things are phoned in! But it’s not just about not wanting to get laughed at by experts. It’s about respecting your own work enough to represent an accurate picture of the character’s life. In researching these things, you may even find some insight that will help your story feel more authentic in general!

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Sometimes hanging out in “writing advice” circles, you see people claiming you have to come to your writing career the same way that worked for them. Some of them are immediately dismissive of anyone who thinks they can sell the first novel they wrote, even if they spent a lot of time and energy looking into how to write it and came up with something great. Some of them say playing around in fanfiction communities doesn’t teach you anything about originality or publishable writing, even though many people who enjoy that pastime have honed their talent and learned how to incorporate feedback better than those who only pursue original writing from the start. Some of them say you just KNOW you’re a writer because you’ve done it all your life and there’s no way you can start later in life because if you were a True Writer, the bug would have bitten you earlier. And some of them say if you’ve written a bunch of unsuccessful books you’ll probably just never get the knack and you should do something else. GUESS WHAT? Nobody’s got the formula that works for everyone, and there is room for all of us.

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Don’t you hate when you’re describing some project of yours and someone replies “Oh, so it’s influenced by [work you’ve never consumed], obviously, right?”

Ughhhhh. And it’s VERY POPULAR so nobody’s gonna believe you that you didn’t get the idea from them. . . .

Psst–you can still do it. If you didn’t actually rip off the thing, it won’t actually look like you’ve been influenced by it, and you’ll just have to change how you approach pitching. . . .  Pretending it just doesn’t exist isn’t a good idea, by the way.

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I know this has come up in some of my previous comics but . . .

*sigh*

Politics have always been part of your favorite stories. Almost every classic story has an underdog fighting oppression, a person seeking justice within an unfair system, a fight for rights or freedom, or at least some acknowledgment of differences in class. I’ve noticed a trend lately for people to say newer stories that intentionally include more diversity are somehow “ruining” what’s good about those stories by including historically and currently marginalized people. Interesting how that automatically makes them hostile to the possibility that it’s a good story (and more likely to blame the diversity for what they don’t like or subconsciously grade it harder because they feel these diversifications can only come at the sacrifice of quality). And interesting how they want to see characters fight the man if “the man” isn’t them.

For these folks to endlessly complain that relatability is so important and then also insist that a straight white man is broadly relatable is a shocking display of hypocrisy. They want the rest of us to continue relating to (and purchasing) entertainment that does not feature us at all (or features us in offensive ways), but if they’re asked to do so for the minority of new stories (whose numbers they will always exaggerate), they claim they are being targeted for exclusion. Well, if not being centered and coddled literally feels like an attack to them, how do they think we feel? With all the whining about “pandering to the woke agenda,” they sure do expect to be pandered to themselves, and think it’s okay for THEM to do it because they believe they’re the ones with buying power. Well, the fact that there has been more of a push for diversification sure does suggest the opposite is true, and you can’t both say your voice is the only one powerful enough to matter AND say the rest of us have the power to drown you out.

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It’s funny how certain authors tend to have common elements across very different works of fiction. For instance, one of my favorite authors in FOUR different novels created situations where human beings encountered non-humans and were exposed, non-consensually, to something that bonded them to the non-humans in a permanent, life-altering way, for some kind of mating-related purpose. She did it four different ways but it was all kind of eerie when I realized how often she liked to write characters getting trapped and transformed in these situations. (And I’m not saying it was a bad thing. I just wondered if the author knew it was a thing she was doing.) The example used here is not actually someone I know, incidentally. Authors, what weird little things do a bunch of your stories share?

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Maybe I just like abuse? I don’t know. It kinda feels like an adventure! Don’t hurt me.

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This isn’t the same thing as the ones where I read old work and cringe. It’s reading an old piece that got professional recognition, one of the first I had that collected NON-rejections, supposedly one of my best that still never made it. And yet. . . .

I look at it and think, yeah, is this actually good at all? Am I just more jaded and critical now but the work remains decent? Or was it always kinda meh and I didn’t know it?

Submitting it despite misgivings seems like a fun way to get my ass handed to me by people who will be happy to say if it sucks. 🙂