So:
It struck me yesterday how much corrosive, blatant harm I’ve absorbed from editors, publishers, and other writers over the years. I’ve vetted innumerable works, improving them and catching many mistakes. I’ve gotten writers three-book contracts, launched careers, and arranged signings. I’ve promoted books successfully both to boost sales and to win awards by bringing them to the attention of the right people at the right time. I’ve designed anthologies, I’ve edited a magazine, and I’ve convinced agents to lobby for other writers. I’ve done all that and much more, yet, despite having had my work praised by people I respect, including Harlan Ellison, who notoriously pulls no punches, and Ashbel Green, the famous Knopf editor, none of my novels has yet seen print, no one will even respond to requests for first reading or vetting, and, well, why go on? I’m ignored.
And I’m old enough to know now that the fastest way to make people resent and detest you is to do them favors. Once beholden to you, they’ll begin to hate you, and feel burdened by your presence, and won’t want to be reminded of you, because it’s like being reminded of a debt.
So the arrogant, selfish pricks prevail and those of us who pay it forward are crushed like cigarette butts and discarded as others use us to rise like smoke.
Sickens me. Literally.
This realization came about because a friend was angered when I described what vetting was. “And do they reciprocate?” I was asked, and I sat there realizing how incredibly little they reciprocate in any way whatsoever. “Then you’re being manipulated, used, and you’re doing their work for them. Works out great for them, doesn’t it?”
And not even my name on an Acknowledgements page, yeah.
My reply was, I am who and what I am, and I will continue to be myself, and to do what I naturally do. What’s the alternative, become a bastard? Would that help anyone or anything?
And if being a bastard got me ahead somehow, what then? Would it matter to me, to succeed that way, or to know that success in this world is predicated on such crap?
So I’m not complaining. It’s just that I realized that yeah, I’ve been through the Writing Wars and I’m walking wounded. Maybe crawling wounded, by now. It was a sobering realization.
Is it any wonder I’m pursuing a chance to be an editorial cartoonist for a local paper? Not that I’ll cease writing.
What, and give up show biz?
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It is in poise, not isolation, that my patience lies.
–Frater Ayujen Tetari, ALA
