Depressing and Creepy

By Holly Lisle

I live a quiet life (these days, anyway). I don’t go anywhere, I don’t have any sort of in-the-flesh presence anywhere, I don’t do cons or signings. To everyone in the world except for the tiny handful of people who actually know me, I’m either letters on a page or letters on a screen.

So it comes as a fresh shock to me every time I trip over some little online nest of people who can’t stand me, even though none of them know me. These are folks who take umbrage at the beginner workshops I’ve posted on my site, and who are offended because, A) these beginner workshops—meant to help folks who have been stuck on their writing and unable to get unstuck move forward—are not in-depth or difficult, so by some sort of insane extension, B) I must have created everything I’ve ever done using beginner workshops. They’ll review nonfiction books of mine they admit they haven’t read, put off by the fact that I dare to suggest that some of the simpler things can be done in only five minutes. As if that means you have to have them done in five minutes, and can’t put more time and work into them. They’ll loathe me for making money on my writing. The simple fact of my existence is an offense to them. They can’t stand my novels, either, because those are fantasy that sold commercially, and therefore must be either Tolkien Clones or D&D clones (with D&D being the acknowledged Tolkien Clone of all time). What….read them? God, no. Couldn’t do that. Something might rub off.

In the same way that discovering maggots under a log is both horrifying and fascinating, discovering that there are people who loathe you, personally, even though you didn’t even know they existed and have never done anything to them is horrifying and fascinating.

It’s also something that happens to all writers who have any level of professional success. (Any level. Not just to big names.) Therefore, something you might want to keep in mind on your forward drive to publication. Definitely one of the parts of the job that will creep you out.

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