Come to think of it, aside from one newbie who was using sock-puppets to promote his new (and thus far only) SF novel, most of the more spectacular flame-outs involved established writers. May be that nobody mentions it when a new author starts talking about reviewer interrogating their text from the wrong perspective….

Sigh…

It’s important to learn who you are, how you write, what works for you, in order to be the best writer you can be.

I totally agree about the genre-trashing thing. This past weekend, I had dinner with a loooong-time friend, and I told him about the contemporary fantasy romance that I’m writing. He pointed out that I was denigrating it myself, an attitude that I wasn’t even conscious of presenting.

Elias - it’s great that you’re aware of your tendency to social awkwardness. Online communities are great places to work out some of those bugs. As for finding the right writing workshop - sometimes, online, genre-friendly options can substitute for less hospitable in-person venues!

As for the sour-grapes-set, or the ‘hook-up’ argument, you’re right there as well. They either quit the business or the work long enough to see there no inducement to a publisher to expend on a run of books based on a personal relationship.

And writers having trouble getting published for the first time sometimes turn to trashing published writers generally: “Oh they must know someone in the business…” “Oh, they only got published because they were lucky/write popular trash/etc etc.” Quite apart from the rudeness, this kind of comment is likely to come back and hit them on the nose later.