Some days it seems as if the world is over-stocked with idiots: editors who reject your brilliant manuscripts or insist on unreasonable alterations; reviewers too nit-witted to appreciate your subtle prose; and there’s always the never-ending parade of dolts in the non-writing world. Luckily, you have the Internet, where you can loose your torrent of fury upon them all with wordy weapons of mass wrath.
I’m here to suggest you not do that.
Every now and then an author gets mad at someone and blasts them with blistering bombast, in full view of the entire Interweb. Sometimes the author demonstrates considerable literary prowess in these attacks, but at other times, the author reveals only the limited, curse-studded vocabulary of an incensed sailor. I won’t link to any specific examples. They’re out there.
Social media makes this easy. You’re angry, so you lash out. Before you know it, you’ve dashed off a response to the most recent slight, a retort designed to make the perpetrator understand just how low on the human scale he or she rates. That’ll teach ‘em. And it makes you feel really good.
For a moment. Then you discover the quasi-Newtonian First Law of Internet Commotion: For every action, there’s an opposite reaction, but it ain’t necessarily equal. Your two-party disagreement has become public, and the public is livid about it—mostly livid about you.
Suddenly you’re the evil-hearted antagonist in this drama. People unknown to you have gathered to defend the original idiot, and cast you in the role of the caped and mustached scoundrel roping young women to railroad tracks.
They’re denouncing you. They’re calling you names. Worse, they’re refusing to buy your books, and encouraging others to boycott your bibliography, to catapult your catalog.
Well, you’ll show them. You’ll mock the mob; you’ll criticize the crowd; you’ll harangue the horde; you’ll…
At this point, a question occurs to you. You start to wonder if there had been some moment in this escalating stimulus/response/counter-response avalanche when you held a modicum of control over the situation. Was there a point before the full-fledged flame war, before the ruination of your writing reputation, where you could have prevented this outcome?
As it turns out, yes there was. It occurred back when you first publicly spewed venom at your initial, well-deserving target. If only you’d checked your fire then. If only you’d written your raging rejoinder and not hit ‘Send.’ If only you’d listened to that angel on your shoulder who’d quoted the Thumper Rule: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”
Yeah, that would have been a grand time to wedge in some sane contemplation between stimulus and instant response. You could have risen above the ruckus, been the better being, grasped the greater good, and suffered in silence knowing your suffering would cease.
Some of you are thinking, “Oh yeah? I’ve read some pretty scorching online rants written by famous authors, so it must be okay.”
The key word in your thought is ‘famous.’ Famous authors can get away with stuff like that. If they lose a few readers because of their boorish behavior, so what? They can count on countless fans to come to their defense and to buy up even more of their books.
But until you’re famous, you can’t afford to lose readers. You won’t find a flock of fans defending you. Instead, you’ll just be one more sad statistic in the growing archive of Authors Behaving Badly.
When that moment of decision arrives, remember to dial down the flame. Remember to listen to the angel on your shoulder. Remember Thumper. And remember the advice of—
Poseidon’s Scribe
Thanks for liking my Goodreads (Sobel) Copernicus review. Notice you’re a pro sailor; I have sailed, crewed up from FLA to MA outside, and on Penobscot Bay, but my own vessel is a 13′ car-toppable trimaran built by a guy whose first trimaran was 42′ and sailed from San Diego to Hawaii. Mine can be seen on the Facebook page, Alan P Bruno.
I’ve taught at a community college for decades, including Slocum’s Sailing Alone and Two Years Before the Mast. Also Moby Dick, which is a brewery in nearby New Bedford. Surprised by your high rating of a book that needs serious editing–as my friend said…he the Board Chair of the Arrowhead House & Melville Society of Pittsfield, where I uncorked 38 bottles of champagne in the 70’s. Didja ever read Melville’s and Hawthornes accounts of England, where H was American consul in Liverpool under his Bowdoin classmate, the US President, and Melville visited him there, addressed him as Mr Hawthorne–much changed from their Tanglewood cottage days. (I lived in Pittsfield for a decade, and here near New Bedford for decades.)
Thanks, Dr. Powers, for visiting my site and for the comment. Sadly, I don’t sail any more, but enjoy reading about it. I’ve read the three books you initially mentioned, by Slocum, Melville, and Dana, but not the accounts of Melville and Hawthorne in Liverpool. Now I write occasional stories set at sea, including “Target Practice,” “Wheels of Heaven,” “Last Vessel of Atlantis,” “Against All Gods,” and others. I enjoyed perusing your Habitable Worlds website and saw the delightful trimaran on your Facebook page. Fair winds and following seas to you, in sailing and in all your endeavors!