Just for a moment. No I’m not published. No I’m not anyone really, but listen anyway.

Just because someone is hollering at you to do something does not mean you have to do it. Right now there are people yelling at you for:

a) Self publishing

b) Not self publishing

c) Not writing well enough

d) Not writing

They may be right, hell they could all be right (if that’s the case this may truly be the end of all things. Say hi to Cthulhu for me, I’ll be in my bunk), but something that has really gotten out of hand online recently is the tendency for unpublished writers to pick gurus and then relentlessly parrot what they say.

I understand. I did it with martial arts for a long while, if I could just find that one mystical teacher who could show me all the secret moves I’d be undefeatable and never have to be scared of going out for a drink again.*

The same impulse runs rampant through the writing community. If we just find the right teacher all our dreams will come true. If we just jump on the right bandwagon…

No.

Just stop.

If you want to self publish, do so, it might be the best thing you ever did. If so, good for you! I hope you make a million dollars.

If you don’t want to self publish and you want to try for an agent or a publisher, again, good for you! I hope you make a million dollars.

And if you do make a million dollars feel free to share with everyone else how you did it. Wanting to share your success is an admirable thing.

However…

Don’t think that your position in any way entitles you to be a jerk about it. Self published traditionally published or tattooed on someone’s sweating bald head it doesn’t matter, someone else will have a different road to success.

If you want people to listen to you, be nice. You can argue passionately but no matter what publishing path you choose you cannot afford to be jerk about people who have chosen another way to do things. You risk alienating the very people you want to impress, whether that’s readers, writers, agents or publishers.

After all, you might be right, but if you’ve been acting like a jerk, no one will be listening.**

* I actually did find the dude and he did have some awfully cool techniques which still utterly failed me in my first bar brawl because I’d never actually had to fight  anyone while learning the, This has nothing to do with writing, but there’s an important life lesson in there somewhere.

** Before anyone leaves an angry comment, yes some very big names get away with it. That doesn’t make it right.

Any correction beyond basic grammar correction results in dummies being spat, toys thrown out of the cot and a general wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Normally I’d just write that kind of thing off as histrionics and figure these writers would grow out of it when they realised that getting published requires taking some criticism of your work to make it print worthy. However, I recently got barracked by one of these guys telling me that it violated their artistic integrity to take edits from anyone and they’d never do it.
I resisted the urge to leap through the internet and beat him to death with his own ego, but it was a close call.
My answer to the idea that criticism, from readers, agents and editors is somehow impinging on your artistic freedom is this:
Bollocks.
There are only two times when you can say no to critiques. The first is if you’re writing for your own entertainment and don’t care if you get published or not. If that’s the case then by all means, it’s your call. The other time you can refuse to take criticism is if you’re already a best selling author.
Of course if you’re a bestselling author, and you can’t take criticism, then you’re not going to be on the bestseller list for long (in fact, how did you get there at all?).
For the rest of us, no matter how much it sucks, we have to consider all criticism. You don’t have to take it as gospel, unless it’s from a publisher, but you must consider all suggestions made about your work. I know it hurts, especially when the person crushing your ego is right (this happens to me a lot), but your book will not get published if you can’t get over that.
It does get easier. When I first started writing I felt like every critique I received was an attack on me personally*. Now I can be more objective about the suggestions and take them as they are, suggestions as to how I can make my stuff better. If I couldn’t even consider their suggestions, I might as well burn my Work In Progress and take up crochet.
I know this post is s a rehash of one I did a while ago, but it seems like the message isn’t getting through.

* If, for any reason, someone attacks you personally instead of your writing then you can ignore that quite safely. There are plenty of people out there who just like hurting other people, you don’t need to give them any of your time.