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How to be a Problematic Author
Good day class and welcome to Authors Behaving Badly 102. Today we’re going to teach you the finer points of being a problematic author and maybe, just maybe, you’ll end up looking like a bad person as well.
Fingers crossed!
First things first. I’m not going to go in depth into racism, sexism, ableism, hatred towards the LGBTQIA community etc. That should have been covered in 101, which I presume you’ve all taken. But for those who need a refresher:
- You can use microaggressions in your text or dialogue if you want to be subtle OR blatantly make a social post about a marginalized group. Either one is acceptable if you really want to alienate your audience and lose readership.
- An out is the “Mea Culpa” response. You can blame it on things like “you were in a bad space” or “gee I just didn’t know” or “I guess I have some learning to do.”
- Denying everything is acceptable. Just make sure your audience doesn’t trust their own eyes and ears. At all.
- NEVER mention privilege. It’s always been rough on you – even when it hasn’t, it HAS. See bullet above.
Now let’s move on to reviews. Let’s say you receive a review on your novel that goes a little something like this.
I know, I know – TWO STARS? How dare they? You spent literally minutes of your life writing this novel! So how do we, as a problematic author, deal with the situation?
Here’s are a few ways to respond to the review. And yes, you NEED to respond to the review. How else would the reviewer know that their personal opinion is totally wrong?
Say things like:
- How many books have YOU written hot-shot?
- I went through all your Goodreads reviews and noticed you gave low ratings to all the egg and chicken themed books so maybe YOU’RE the problem, Karen.
- Dox dox doxity dox dox dox. Dox.
- Hey author friends, I got a bad review today. Want to talk loudly on Twitter on how we wish to do the reviewer harm? If they’re another author, we can one-star all their stuff and if they’re not we can just drive them off the internet forever.
These are just a few. You can be creative and show up at their house etc. Just remember, your ego is far more important than their well-being or personal safety.
Finally, let’s move on to the content itself. Look in your syllabus under Sensitivity is for the Weak. Let’s say you’re writing something that someone of a certain race, gender, sexual identity etc. may find offensive as it doesn’t truly represent them.
Tough cookies.
It’s ART! And suffering is art. As long as you don’t suffer, dear author – because you’re the only one that matters. Your audience is not the victim, here. They knew what they were getting into. They bought the ticket. It’s your ride. Sensitivity readers will only make sure that you handle delicate situations with the proper respect they deserve. And who needs that?
This covers the basics. In Authors Behaving Badly 103, you can look forward to topics such as Gaming the System, Breaking Promises to your Readers, and the popular Everyone Else is Jealous of Me.
Until then, stay willfully and stubbornly ignorant. Happy problematic writing!
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The Literary Hulk
I have a casual approach to reading. I view ‘hot takes’ as someone’s perfectly valid opinion, and I generally don’t care if someone likes a book that I did not or can’t stand a book I enjoyed. So you could say I’m mild-mannered when it comes to literature.
But then I see something that makes my reader mind angry. And you wouldn’t like me when my reader mind gets angry.
For example:
Mild Mannered Cheryl is surfing the web and generally being a nice person overall when she stumbles across the following quote:
Cheryl’s eyes are turning green but she’s trying to quell the deep rage inside and so she types:
“Hey, um, I’m sorry to be ‘that person’ but Alice in Wonderland was my favorite childhood book. and I’ve pretty much had it memorized since age nine. That quote is from the Tim Burton movie, not the book.”
Random person: “I don’t care. it’s still a good quote though. It could have been in the book.”
Cheryl’s fingers are shaking, there’s a distinct rip of cloth. This may be the start of hulking out, or perhaps that she ate too many tacos at a get-together recently. Either way it spells bad news.
“Yeah, no it couldn’t have been. It was not. in. the. book. It was written by a screenwriter who did not write Alice in Wonderland and is NOT Lewis Carroll.”
Random person: “Who cares? “
There’s no going back now, the Literary Hulk has been released.
Literary Hulk: LEWIS CARROL NO WROTE THIS!! THIS FROM STUPID MOVIE! DUMB DUMB MOVIE WHICH SCREW EVERYTHING UP. HATE DEPP HATTER AND BIG HEAD QUEEN. QUOTE NOT FROM DUMB MOVIE!!
Random person: Um…
Hulk: SMAAAASSSSHHHHH!
Random person runs away in terror – or at least stops engaging with Cheryl online. And soon after, things settle down and all is well. At least until someone doesn’t understand that Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen aren’t the same person.
Then…*clothes rip, bones stretch, brain explodes*
Literary Hulk: TWO DIFFERENT CHARACTERS IN TWO DIFFERENT BOOKS. STUPID HUMANS RUIN EVERYTHING. SMASSSSSH!
The hulk eventually disappears, things calm down. I walk down a road while sad piano music plays…
Mild Mannered Cheryl: “Okay, I think we’re okay now.”
Random person: “I want a love like Romeo and Juliet’s.”
Cheryl: “Oh no…”
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How Silver Shamrock Caught the White Plague
Okay kids, you think Silver Shamrock you think Halloween (3) or perhaps St. Patty’s Day, but this time it’s associated with April Fool’s. Sadly for this publisher and its authors, it was no joke.
Silver Shamrock is (was) an indie publisher that had a nice following, a nice array of authors and quite a few titles under its belt. It seems like they had gotten into trouble last year regarding the editor’s views on content warnings but that book drama escaped me. However, this one did not.
You see, on March 31st, Silver Shamrock put forth a promo on social media for a book entitled “The White Plague Chronicles” by Gene O’Neill. It wasn’t the author or the title that caught flack though, it was the promo copy, which I shall leave for you below in all its um…glory.
That sound you could hear is the sound of racist dog whistles blaring from your computer. Like, who thought THIS was a good idea? Backlash was swift and within a few days there was a loud uproar from the book community. Authors fled the publisher in droves. Mr. O’Neill and his defendants took to social media telling people they need to read the book rather than make assumptions about its content, but offered no explanation how the book was different than the ad copy.
A quick read of the promo is all you need to realize why this book should never have been accepted in the first place but let’s break it down piece by piece.
Time is running out. An unknown terrorist organization has their hands on a previously unidentified virus that is far deadlier than Ebola, and even more sinister, as this horrific disease is genetically targeted to kill only the members of the Caucasian race.
Okay…
- How can a virus kill only Caucasians? That’s not how viruses work. That’s not how science works.
- Even “more sinister than Ebola” because it kills only white people instead of all people? Whoa.
- Who determines what constitutes Caucasian? If you’re biracial do you just get a cough or something? Does the virus look at 23andMe kits to determine who to target?
Two retired Black Ops specialists named Ryan O’Toole and Joey Hotsko are thrust into the unfortunate position of being humanity’s last hope. These aging combat vets have been recruited into a secret international organization known only as “The Association;” their mission, to do whatever it takes to stop the virus from being released.
Um…
- It might be interesting if they were Black ‘Black Ops Specialists’, but I don’t think that’s the case.
- Humanity’s last hope? Without the white people, humans will still exist, honey.
- But what of the Starbucks, man? WHO WILL GO TO THE STARBUCKS?
Together, they must travel from the backwater rivers and jungles of Borneo to the scorching desert outback of Tasmania, to the politically and religiously charged hotbed on the streets and back alleys of Israel. But will they succeed in stopping the madmen responsible for this atrocity before it is too late? Sadly, the answer will be no.
Interesting…
- So we know it’s madmen who are responsible for the virus killing all Caucasians but who and why? You’ve virtually given us no reason to care about any of this.
- Various people online have already pointed out that Tasmania has no scorching deserts, but I’m just putting it in here to use this gif, because I want to.
- Okay, so the global-trotting, aging Black Ops Specialists are unable to stop the virus. At this point we’d probably be halfway through the book and everything we will have read will be futile. Good plan! Top notch promo!
The plague will be released, and the effects of the deadly virus will be even worse than feared, mutating and evolving into a worse case scenario that will change the world as we know it, forever. Economies will fail, governments will fall, countries will crumble, billions of innocent men, women, and children will die, and a new world order will rise in what will ultimately become known as…The Collapse.
Wow…
- So I think you meant “worst case scenario” but I’ll let that slide as someone who doesn’t really care about regardless vs. irregardless and I know I’m going to get a few comments on that one.
- Without the lily-white people, it will be what we all thought Y2K would be. I guess it really was Starbucks that was holding the world together all along.
- As mentioned before who is included in that “billions”? How Caucasian do we have to be?
- New. World. Order. Oh my god, that is the icing on this racist cake made of only the whitest frosting with a side of very vanilla ice cream.
Prepare yourself for a journey into the heart of darkness…and far beyond.
- I have nothing to add except I hated that book.
So what could Silver Shamrock have done? Well they could have removed the promo, admitted their mistake and discussed what they should do to stop this from happening again. That would be reasonable right?
Instead, my friends, they flounced.
In the end, Silver Shamrock took down most of its social media, deleted their website and stopped publishing for good. Did they need to do this? No. Did they do this instead of listening to authors and readers about why this book was all sorts of problematic and perhaps learn the implications of publishing something with such strong, racist undertones. You bet!
Now, lots of authors with books under the publisher need to find their novels new homes and lots of readers who were waiting for those books, need to wait far longer.
They just should have stopped it.
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You’re Not a Real Writer If…
We’ve all seen that phrase before. It’s usually in a post on Twitter or in a blog where some cocky writer with a huge head decides they can gatekeep and distinguish the true auteurs of the craft from the lowly peasants of prose. Usually they go a little something like this:
You’re not a real writer if:
- You’re not a published author.
- You haven’t been paid for your work.
- You haven’t received at least 100 rejections.
- You haven’t received at least (insert odd number here) acceptances.
- You don’t write at least eleventy-million words a day. Before breakfast.
- Your fingers haven’t bled from the sheer volume of writing you do each and every day. And you have the incessant need to tell everybody about it.
The funny thing is, it has become a trope. As soon as someone posts their opinions on what constitutes “real writing”, other authors are quick to jump down their throat, rightfully so, but sadly giving those jerks the attention they’re looking for and don’t deserve.
I find the whole thing kind of boring, but it got me thinking. If I were to keep such a gate, what would the list be? Well, I’m glad no one asked for my opinion, so here it is:
You’re not a real writer if:
- You haven’t poured yourself a bowl of Cheetos, gotten completely engrossed in what you were writing, realize the bowl is now empty and blamed the dog. Except that you don’t own a dog.
- You can also blame a cat. Speaking of which…
- You’re not a real writer if you don’t own a cat.
- I’m allergic. I just negated myself.
- You accidentally hit a button and watched in horror as 332 hours of writing disappears before your eyes.
- After you try and rewrite all those words you lost, it’s never quite as good as before and you know it.
- Your characters won’t do what you want them to do and instead laugh as you lose your God-like dominion over them as they gaily chide you about that time you embarrassed yourself at the high school dance in 11th grade in front of your crush.
- You haven’t killed at least one character to wreak imaginary vengeance on a person who slighted you that day. I’m talking about you – cranky lady at the grocery store who stole my parking spot and then brought 25 items into the 12 item or less lane. I’m talking about YOU.
- You’ve looked at what other authors are doing, felt bad at all they’ve accomplished and asked yourself, “am I a real writer?”
Hey look, there is no magic formula or one true path to becoming a writer. You say you are? That’s good enough for me. You are. Now go out there and write!
Or don’t. I don’t care. Whatever you do – you’re a real writer.
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2021 Didn’t Suck
A lot can happen in a year.
Good stuff, exciting stuff, boring stuff – projects started and finished, major life events. However what we as humans usually tend to do is focus on the negative. At the end of the year, the mentality is usually “thank god that’s over with” but we usually say that EVERY DAMN YEAR.
In 2020, I decided to do this silly thing I saw on Facebook where every time something good happened to you, you put a note in a jar, box, what have you, and then at the end of the year you look back on all the good things that happened. Aha! I said to myself. This will be fun. Looking forward to great things in 2020!
Oh god, if only I had known…
It still worked out okay (even for 2020). At the end of the year, It was pretty cool looking back on some of the fun stuff that happened (for the few short months fun stuff was allowed to happen) and even then some of my notes were like “My hair looked okay on that Zoom call” or “I now have a beautiful collection of pretty face masks.”
But if 2020 was hell then 2021 was ‘2020 light’ with half the calories but all of the COVID, which made it hard to find good things in it. Even so, my happiness box contained quite a few more notes than expected. So here’s what happened in 2021 that made it suck less:
- Joe Biden was inaugurated as President and I celebrated with pizza, beer and an impromptu viewing of Scream.
- I finally beat Resident Evil 3. No, not the remake – the original game from 1999 that I had that I had never bothered to finish.
- Also of note, I remembered the game existed in the first place. And that I owned it.
- Even though I didn’t submit or write much, I still got published a couple of times, so thank ye writing gods for rewarding my laziness.
- Thanks to vaccines I got to see my friends and family safely. And man, did I miss them.
- I saw an old episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 I’d never seen before and can’t believe I missed. As a die-hard MSTie I am ashamed.
- It was The Incredible Melting Man in case you’re interested.
- And finally I survived.
There were a lot of notes in there, believe it or not, but those were the highlights. And yes, 2021 wasn’t the most exciting time and much like last year, I had to look for happiness where I found it but hey, it wasn’t all bad. At least I should probably stop saying every year sucks.
Except 2016. 2016, you’re still the worst.
