On the bright side, after countless sweltering nights and days in the hot season, I woke up this morning to a cool and crisp weather. 🥹 I didn’t want to get out of bed! On the unfortunate side, the writing community’s Twitter was an absolute mess yesterday—the 17th of March.
It started like this: I woke up to prepare for church and saw This Call Out Tweet. I instantly knew there was drama afoot, but it wasn’t convenient because I had to get up, and prepare for church, and be in church for the next 4-5 hours, so the drama would be tough to follow.
Anyway, I started to read further and… I couldn’t—and still can’t—classify it under ‘Twitter drama’ anymore. Often when I refer to something as writing community drama, there’s a comedic angle to it. But this one really is sickening and repulsive.
And the thing is that in my last post about bitterness in the writing community, it’s the same set of writers that I was referring to in the post that are the culprits in this matter. But this time around, their meanness blew up in their faces—because even after so long they wouldn’t let the feeling of bitterness go.
I could summarize what happened on Twitter yesterday, but it is really long and with the linked tweet above, hopefully anyone can make the research themselves. What I mostly want to reiterate is why we shouldn’t let the struggle to get published make us bitter people.
I’ve seen a new set of writers starting to get bitter and lash out at agents in the writing community. And it occurred to me again that these people believe they are owed agents, book deals, bestseller statuses, and so on. That is why when they don’t get it soon or at all, they develop the mentality that publishing is out for them.
Look, it is sad but when you try to get a book traditionally published, there are only two ways it can turn out:
1.) Your book makes it.
2.) Your book does not make it.
Truly, there is a big chance that our books are not going to make it. It’s not a 10% chance. It’s not even a 30% chance. In fact, if you consider the odds, it’s over a 50% chance that the book won’t make it.
Again it’s hard to swallow, but when you understand that this is just the sad reality, you won’t have a sense of entitlement that your own manuscript is supposed to get published. And then you won’t become a Bitter Lemon when things don’t go as you expected. Instead, you’ll think of the tough odds already up against you, let yourself feel sad for as long as you need to, and can decide to try again with another book. (No I’m not just mouthing off; I’ve had two books so far that didn’t make it and I’ve written others to keep trying.)
I have said so much in my linked post about bitterness that still applies, so I don’t want to repeat myself. Letting yourself be bitter is giving the publishing industry too much power over you, over your attitude, over your life. It’s letting publishing shape you for the worst. If you’re lucky, one day you’ll look back and decide, “No, I don’t want to be this resentful person anymore.” and you’ll find ways to bring light to your life. But if you’re not lucky, you’ll let that bitterness boil over and become like these writers above. Bad people who get exposed and quickly flee twitter in shame, instead of being accountable.
They didn’t just bully writers who they felt were getting ahead of them and saw as easy prey. They even bullied agents, and now look how almost the entire twitter community came out to speak up against their bullying and harassment. Apparently, everyone has been biting their tongues and with this case, they decided enough is enough. What a thing to be known for.
Most of them deleted their accounts, one even changed her twitter name and rebranded. But they quickly found her new account. I wish they’d faced more accountability, because once they noticed their vile behaviors had been exposed, they instantly deleted their twitter accounts. But agents and writers are talking about what they’ve done, so it’s not going to be that easy to escape the consequences. The ringleader of the terrible group/group chat has been dropped by her 3rd agent, and the agency she was an associate agent for has publicly denounced her.
You don’t want this to be you. You don’t want to give querying or submissions the power to make you a bad person. Find a way to stay positive, for your own mental wellbeing and career security.
Lucia's Fiction 
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