Writers are mostly assholes, mostly

Late last night, I went off on a rant on Twitter about this topic, but after I got done and scrolled back, I realized I’d missed a few words here and there, which may not have helped my clarity. I know some people got the gist because they replied to me and offered their thoughts on the topic too. But still I want to keep going with this rant and expand on it. So, fair warning, this here’s a long-ass post.

This started with someone who I’ve read talking down on “popular crap” being the way the publishing industry paid for risks on “real” writers. I get so, so sick of this attitude from writers no matter what level of the market they work in. It’s really common in small-press writers, and it’s one of the things that drove me nuts about the horror writers I hung out with. They will sit around and talk about which books are bad like they’re bottles of wine, and these guys are the undisputed kings of discerning quality.

It’s bullshit. I’ve read the writer who made this claim last night, and he’s a hack. I’ve read his friends, who also talk shit about popular fiction like they’re so much better, and they’re lousy hacks too. All the shit they accuse popular writers of fucking up, they fuck up too. They stroke off writing pastiche crap in homage to their heroes, and very few of them work at being original. Even the good reviews on their stuff say, “This reminded me of the best writing from the 80s.” And while the author gleefully dances over the praise, what they aren’t reading in that review is, “There’s nothing new or original here.” Their “art” is little more than a traced drawing of someone else’s work. It may still please the fans of the genre who liked the original work, but it’s not original art. It’s a carbon copy clone made to collect money off the talents of past authors.

I’ll tell you why it bugs me as a reader. It’s because the prevailing idea under this sentiment about popular fiction is that readers are morons. It’s like “People who read Dan Brown only like him because that’s the only book they’ll read all year. So how can they know what a good writer is like?”

A good writer like the speaker, of course.

Well look, I’ve been reading since I was a wee thing. When other kids were still working on Dick and Jane, I was reading The Rats of NIMH and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. By the time my peers got to those books, I’d moved on to adult books, books that I was often told were totally inappropriate for my age. Well the people who said that had made an assumption that because I was a child, I still had this innocent life. But of course I wasn’t about to tell them “What? You’re worried about me reading sex? Dude, I was molested at 7, and I’ve got two lovers living with me.” Yeah, cause that would go over well, wouldn’t it?

But my point is, when I say I like Twilight, I don’t want to hear that the “real” reason I do is because I haven’t read enough “good” vampire fiction. I’m a huge vampire fan, and I’ve read a lot of vampire books. So I wish writers wouldn’t insult my opinion by suggesting that I’m too dumb to know better.

And I’ll tell you something else. I hate seeing people say “Twilight ruined vampires for me.” Then you aren’t a vampire fan. If all it takes is one book series to ruin the whole trope for you, you’re not a vampire fan. Period. You’re a shitty, petty asshole looking for reasons to diss a whole trope, and Meyer is your convenient scape goat. Before Meyer, you were using Anne Rice as your reason for hating vampires. Really, go fuck yourself. A real fan knows that vampires are forever, and Twilight is just one series in a mountain of fangy, bloody, AWESOME fiction. You don’t like the sparklepires? Cool, toss the books and dig into the rest of the mountain. But if you toss out the whole mountain for four books, you’re no vampire fan. You’re just an asshole looking to diss my precious blood suckers.

Over the years, I’ve read everything. I’ve read crime novels, romance, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, erotica, and penny porn. I’ve read fan-fiction on USENET back before SPAM choked out the groups and made them hard to follow. I’ve read comics books and short fiction submitted to magazines like Omni, Playboy, and Fangoria. So when I say I read a lot, I’m not exaggerating. And after all that reading, I’ve developed my own personal tastes for what works for me. I know what narrative styles appeal most to me, and I know what methods will reduce me to an enraged gibbering mess. Just as all writers develop an inner voice that makes them unique, all readers develop a “cultured ear” that lets them know when a story is working for them. And guess what? We don’t all listen to the same tune and hear the same thing. It’s only the snob who looks at critics of his favored art and says “You don’t know quality like I do.” Because rather than admit that something doesn’t work for you, it’s easier to attack other people as being incapable of recognizing “true art.”

Has all of my fanatic reading made me a super fantastic writer? NO. I like slow introductions, and I hate most of the rules other writers quote about how to write popular fiction. I have crutch words, and I sometimes write ambiguously. And I like to start sentences with And. I’m a lousy hack, y’all. Reading more hasn’t changed that. It’s just given me a bigger pool of ideas to work with when writing new stories. It hasn’t changed my writing voice, and it never will. So if you don’t like one of my books cause you think my narrative voice sounds off, chances are you won’t like anything else I write. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re incapable of discerning quality. It just means that I’m grating on your cultured ears.

When I said last night that I was a lousy writer, a regular follower who’d read some of my books said that my writing must be good, because otherwise I wouldn’t sell much, and I’d get more bad reviews. I had to point out that I really don’t sell much, and I don’t get many bad reviews BECAUSE I don’t sell much. If I somehow got popular (not likely, but one can always dream) I would have to prepare myself for a flood of bad reviews. We’re talking a bonanza of 1 and 2 star reviews. Even the classic authors who everyone reads have a few hundred 1-star reviews.

And you know what? I try to read some of the masters, and I think they’re awful. I hate Matheson and Vonnegut. I hate Dick (Phillip K, that is), Bova, Tolkien, and Austen. I think Lovecraft is highly overrated, and despite my many efforts to read Woolf, she puts me to sleep. And yet, I’ll sit through Anne Rice’s longest and most purple description description of the garden outside the protagonist’s house. I eat up descriptions of Edward Cullen’s dreamy perfect amber eyes. I adore cheesy romantic scenes with all the goo-goo eyes and hand holding and little giggles. I have a cultured ear, but that doesn’t make me any more discerning of quality writing. I just know what I like.

But this gets me back to the other writers. I watch these guys talk shit about Dan Brown, and then say “Hasn’t he ever heard of research? My writing is better because I WORK HARD at my craft.” Well, I file that away, and later when I find something they wrote that sounds like it might grab me, I give it a shot. And, they’s some lying motherfuckers. I remember the guy who proclaimed the loudest that Dan Brown did no research, but he did, and the first story I read from him was so blatantly wrong about the basic details of illicit drugs that it was clear he hadn’t used them or done anything resembling research on how long it takes for said drugs to kick in. He talks shit about others doing research, and he didn’t do a lick of basic research. He’s a lying motherfucker, a cock posing and primping to garner readers even when he knows he’s lying.

I read another author who talked shit about how sex scenes in women’s books were all flowery metaphors, and I read his book and got an emotionless porn scene complete with a pull out and money shot. He couldn’t have made the writing more off-putting without doing an anal scene and having the protagonist pull out and ask for his wife to suck him off.

I read an author who complained that Meyer was terrible about telling not showing, and then her next book was all tell, and no show. And every book of hers that I read after that was dreadfully dull and emotionless. Her stories are connect-the-dots drivel that tell you something, but never back it up with scenes in the book to show you what’s going on. For all her talk about the quality of other writers, she’s a lousy hack.

And this is the sad truth of it, people. All of these little shit writers are bitter about popular fiction. They hate other writers for having the spotlight, and they claim that they’re superior to “those hacks.” But they’re the pots calling the kettles black. And despite the 300 books a year they read, it doesn’t improve their quality in the slightest. Some of the folks who crow loudest about discerning quality are hands down the worst writers I’ve ever read. The people who promote themselves with “move over Dan Brown” should shut the fuck up, because they could take a lesson from Brown, their writing is so dreadful.

“Well, what about you, Zoe? What are you doing with your mean-spirited reviews?” Well look, I’m a hobby writer. I don’t make a whole lot of money off of this gig. But I hear writers make these quality claims, and I see them slam each other. So when I go read their book, you’d better believe I’m going to be bluntly honest. I don’t care if we’re best buds and have been Skyping it up for a year or two, or if I don’t know you from Adam. I will gleefully tear your shit up if I don’t like it as a reader, and I won’t bother with sugar coatings or tact. I do this because when I point to a book and say, “My gosh, they did everything right to please me,” you know that’s exactly what I mean. Does this mean that writing is perfect? No, it just means they didn’t push my buttons and piss me off. Quite the opposite, they grabbed my attention and held it all the way through the book. They stoked my cultured ear like a Ferengi lover with a feather.

I read a lot of popular fiction that I absolutely hate, and yeah, I rip that shit up and say, “here’s why I hated it.” But it’s why I hated it, and it has nothing to do with how other readers took it. I don’t accuse the other readers of being too uneducated to understand why it’s crap. I don’t piss and moan “Why did this get published, and my shit languishes at the bottom of the sales charts?” I languish at the bottom of the sales charts because I write weird shit. Done. So my mean-spirited reviews are done this way because I don’t see a reason to be nice to people who rarely extend the same courtesy to their more popular peers.

Back in the day, I used to send my books to writers I respected, and I wanted to get their opinions. I wasn’t soliciting blurbs, mind you, just opinions. So they told me in emails the reasons why they thought my stuff didn’t sell. And I agreed with their assessments. But, I don’t change because I’m writing the kinds of books I wish I could buy from other writers. I write polyamorous relationships. I write about bi and trans characters. Even when I write about straight people, I’m always sneaking in things that interest me as a reader, the stuff I wish other writers would have done if they weren’t playing it safe and pandering to the white middle-class male reader. I write for me, and I like what I write.

But I also know that my writing is crap. I’m never going to claim I’m better than Stephen King, because I’m not. I’m never going to say “Move over John Lindqvist.” I don’t have his talent. I HATE Harry Potter and Hunger Games, but would I say my writing is vastly superior to them? No. It’s just that as a reader, their writing doesn’t work for me. Quite the opposite, their writing rubs me the wrong way so badly that I throw the books down and go “Fuck you, this is the dumbest shit I’ve ever read!”

And it’s just a gut reaction comment, because if I were objective, I could remind myself that nothing Rowling or Collins wrote is USENET fan-fiction bad. They are much, much higher in terms of quality to the penny porn I used to read. They are miles away from the shitty small-press pastiche humpers I’ve read. But they still annoy the fuck out of me, and so I live in the present, not in the past. I put all those past readings aside, and I lie like a rug that this is the worst thing I’ve ever read, evar. For now. Because there’s always tomorrow to read something else that’s the new worst ever.

None of what I read changes my writing style. I do get inspiration from other books. I take away ideas that I want to play with, and I sometimes lift whole tropes, with permission granted or not. (True story: before writing the werecats in Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies, I wrote to Zoe Winters to ask if she minded me doing a werecats story with house cats similar to her felinthropes in Kept. I got her permission, and I ran with it.) The writing of even bad authors can inspire me. I wrote my first porno after reading Hunger Games. Yeah, I know that makes no sense, but sometimes the creative process doesn’t make much sense.

But what I’m getting at is, I have no loyalty to any writer, even if I liked their earlier works. I don’t see why I need to have loyalty, when most of the writers I’ve dealt with online have been petty, crass, and extremely self-centered. Their writing is micro-brew beer of the highest quality, and popular fiction is Bud Light. Well extending that analogy, a lot of micro-brew beer is bitter, skunky shite, and you actually need a bland, watery Bud Light to get the taste out of your mouth.

But that’s not all of the beers. There’s commercial beers from Europe that are so incredible you can’t believe people aren’t drinking this instead of Bud Light. There’s micro-brew beers doing crazy shit with habanero, raspberry, ginger, and chocolate, and you wonder why the big guys won’t take risks on recipes like this. The Germans have this crazy thing about pouring lemonade in beer, and I thought I’d hate it, but I love that stuff. But at the end of the day, the Bud Light is still drinkable, even after I’ve sampled a hundred other beers. Only a beer snob would turn their nose up at a Bud Light, and I ain’t no beer snob.

And this is what I wish I could get through to some of the writers I follow, even though I know they won’t change. They’re all making their own recipe, and for them, that formula works well. They will not acknowledge that their writing has flaws, or that their writing is below the quality of the popular writers they attack. No one wants to admit that their shit stinks, right?

Well mine stinks to high heaven. I know why my shit doesn’t sell to a mainstream audience, and it’s not because the mainstream is too stupid to appreciate my genius. It’s because I write weird shit that only appeals to a few people. If I were still in the habit of submitting my work to publishers, I know I’d still get rejected. Seven years of writing hasn’t improved my quality much, and it’s not my use of adverbs or crutch words killing my success. It’s my choice of what I write about. It’s my bizarre interests that keep me at the bottom of the food chain. It’s all me, and I accept that.

And despite me being a writer now, I will still read anything that catches my eye with a compelling blurb. I’ll still read from any genre, whether it’s adult fiction or YA. You got a sappy romance book that you self-published as an ebook only? I may read it, if I like the premise. But I’ll also read stuff from people working with the big six. I’ll read the big name folks, and I’ll give them the exact same sporting chance as I do for the small-press folks riding one level above my own place in this market. I ain’t no book snob.

I also will not cut you any slack if your story pisses me off as a reader. I say mean shit about the stuff I don’t like, and if you only want to read nice things, you probably shouldn’t talk to me. But once I’m done tearing your shit down, I’m going to move on. I’m not going to point you out as what’s wrong with the industry. You won’t be the straw man I blame for my lack of success. You’ll just be another writer whose shit doesn’t work for me.

I wish more writers would adopt this policy and admit their shit isn’t Masterpiece Theater, but sadly, it’s always fashionable to complain that the real reason we don’t have success is, readers aren’t discerning of “real quality.” It’s closer to the truth that all readers know what they like, and your shit isn’t selling because the readers don’t like you. Period.

So grow up, pull on your big boy underwear or your big girl panties, and stop complaining that all that fake crap is the reason your shit doesn’t sell. The reason your shit doesn’t sell is, you’re a bitter hack who could stand to take a lesson from the writers you diss. And hey, it takes one to know one, and as a fellow hack, I’m calling you out and asking you to get over yourselves.

Not that you’ll listen to me instead of the voices in your head telling you how fucking great your writing is. But it’s worth a shot, right?