Wrote Rage
“Every writer I know
Hates other writers. Not all others, but most.
The ones who are better or different he has to hate
because they are better or different. And those who are worse
he despises because that is his earned right.”
–Virgil, “Ecoglues: Palaemon”
Warning. This is not an inspirational quote. Most writer quotes are. They are here to make you think pretty thoughts and keep your exhausted butt glued to your chair and writing your masterpiece.
But this quote, this is not one of those. This is some serious business about the way writers think… Maybe. Or it’s not.
If anything, maybe this is a lying liar telling blatant lies. If not, then maybe it’s a sad little representative of writers living in a hurtful, petty world.
Or, bear with me here, perhaps it’s a brilliant little writer from antiquity summing up a lot of the feelings that exist in the world of publishing and using satire with a sharp bite and finely tuned edge to make his point and show us writers the motes in our own eyes.
I prefer to think it’s the latter. (I’m a nice guy like that, I guess.)
Let’s analyze his words, shall we…
“Not All Others But Most”
It’s way too common in the world of publishing — though maybe not in the small indie pools in which I swim — for writers to see each other as the competition. If you are pinning your hopes and dreams on a dwindling number of major contracts with the “Big Boys” or “Big 5” or “Big Whatever the Hell You Want To Call Them,” then it’s almost inevitable to think of other writers as the person liable to get in their first and take the contract that fate has ordained for you.
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