Couple of caveats before I uncrate this Tasmanian Devil:

1. My observations are anecdotal.
2. I’ve got a file full of screencap examples that would make this post more relevant, but would make me a bigger dick for offering them up as illustrations.
3. I am not – in any way – above or excluded from having participated in the behavior I excoriate below.

So let’s get to it.

God, when did we wannabe writers become such massive dicks? Really.

Perhaps it is my naiveté, but fifteen years ago, the community of writers was much more supportive than it is today.  Twelve years ago when I was cranking on Novel Number Two, there weren’t dozens of social media communities for writers. Writing was such a solitary effort, when we happened to venture out of our writing bunkers and cross paths with another writer, it was as remarkable as two people with identical heterochromia patterns simultaneously reaching for the last bottle of olive oil at Costco.

If any special interest subset needed to build and populate an internet community, it was writers.

Okay, okay, so maybe first would be agoraphobics with sun allergies. Then writers.

And we were soldiers once, and proud. Debate me, but I believe we were supportive of one another a mere decade ago. Who else could truly understand the manic-depressive cycle of creation-submission-rejection besides another writer?

But something happened along the way. Writers became actors.  Which is to say, we were no longer in our writing bunkers, stuffing things with feathers into mailing envelopes and climbing back in our cave to wait for a big break. We started seeing one another. With the advent of online communities, and Facebook, and query tracking forums, for the first time we saw how many of us there really are.  There are a lot of writers out there. A lot. We’re not the rare birds we once thought ourselves to be.

Like actors sitting outside the casting director’s office, sizing each other up and waiting for our turn to be called in to audition, we writers finally saw each other. We sized each other up. We witnessed who moved on to success, who dropped out of the game, and who keeps persisting despite having no obvious talent.

Our perspectives have zoomed out and now we see the magnitude of the competition, we see how few paths there are to success, and we’ve become catty little bitches.

Yes, I am guilty of this. I have taken my turn being a dick. I’m in an eleven-step program, which will get me to enlightenment faster than your slow-ass twelve step program. So nyah! Suck it!

Whoops. Back to step one.

We’re so much stronger when we cross-promote and lift each other up. With the snipers and creep-a-zoid trolls on Goodreads, don’t we deserve at least one flank where we are protecting one another’s backs?

There’s an answer here, but I don’t know what it is. Thoughts? Care to share your horror stories or suggestions for a more supportive community?