I have a confession to make, and I know it will come as a shock to many of you. It’s something I’m sure not a single person who has ever read my blog would expect to hear.

Sometimes…I have a unique perspective on the world.

O.o!!! Weird, right?

I’m sure none of you has ever felt like that. 😉

/sarcasm

I try and make light of it, but it’s frustrating sometimes. It’s something that’s caused me issues in my writing style, in various critique situtions, and in the office.

I’ve had bosses in the past who loved it. They encouraged me to speak up in meetings and would even call me out if I was making faces in the middle of intense discussions, but not saying anything.

Those bosses were few and far between. It’s not something I delve into very often. It’s hard to be the dissenting voice of one in a crowd. Especially in a crowd of egos. Egos who deny their ego’s existence.

When it comes to the workplace, I can usually brush it off. If I feel strongly enough about a change, I have the drive and the ability to sell it to management outside of the group conversation. I’ve done it before, it’s just not often that things like selling life insurance (managing healthcare, advertising to grocery store customers, screeprinting, etc) bring out the passionate side in me.

When it comes to reviews, it’s not so easy to do. I’m always torn there. What I think is good story-telling frequently doesn’t match popular opinion. Popular opinion sells books, so when I give and/or consider feedback, I have to find that balance between what I enjoy, and what everyone else does.

Then there’s the business side of publishing. I have a lot of very strong opinions about this, and for the most part I tone it down anywhere online. I was going to get into it today, but it really borders on rude and harsh…so I will keep the un-cut honesty to myself.

I’ve gone through a large portion of my adulthood online. As in, when I was 19 I discovered newsgroups and forums (AOL 2.0, 14.4 kbs dial-up connection, pentium 75 /geek), and I’ve done large parts of my socializing there ever since. I did online dating before it was an acceptable form of dating, and social networking before MySpace even had a space.

I don’t say this to remind the world how terribly old and decripit I am ^_^ There is one thing that’s remained consistent throughout all my time online. People’s behavior in forums. Every forum. Everywhere. This includes my current critique group, although they’re certainly the kindest, bestest forum I’ve ever belonged to and I don’t want them to think I don’t like them. I <3 them. And I like forums in general, or I wouldn't keep hanging out in them. But certain topics (it depends on the site), tend to bring out a mob mentality in people. They tend to (not always, but frequently) rally around the opinion that make them as a group look the most oppressed, with only a handful of people who are willing to stand up and say “you’re asking for the unreasonable, consider the other side of the story for a moment”. I will almost always back out of those arguments right away. Because 1 – I tend to be on the minority side, and 2 – No one wins an argument like that, because pride becomes more important than the original issue. The short version of this rambling thought, sometimes I think as authors, we’re all a bunch of children throwing tantrums. Myself included. Oh the pouting I do when someone doesn’t like my stories. I might as well stomp my feet and pound my fists and scream. And it doesn’t even have to be when they don’t like my stories. It might just be that they have a different vision of what I was trying to say. Or don’t have time right now. Or it’s not their thing. There might not even be any negative at all, just a different interpretation of my message than I intended, and I become a selfish 3 year-old. The problem with that? As an amazing, supportive community, we tend to rally around that reaction. Which should be a great thing. 99.9999% of the time, I love the support I see in the writing community. But if we’re doing it out of reflex. If we’re soothing and supporting each other becasue it’s the thing to do, or because we’d want the same if it were us, but that support doesn’t help us grow past the obstacle, is it really good in the long run? To be fair, I can think of a list of people right off the top of my head who don’t fall into that trap. Writing bloggers. I see them reply to my ‘I’m depressed and worthless’ threads, and to other peoples. And they don’t offer up the standing “I’m so sorry, you’re amazing and you rock” comments. They’re practical, they’re realistic. They’re still encouraging, but not to the point of false or meaningless hope. I have one critique partner who is a saint to put up with me. She’s a lot better at getting to her reading than I am, so she always gets through more of my writing than I do hers. (Okay, it’s that way with all my cp’s, I’m bad, but…). It occasionally occurs to me that our writing styles don’t mesh. She writes beautiful, flowing, literary YA. I write pulpy speculative fiction for adults. But I can’t leave her. Her feedback is invaluable, first of all. And second, she’s a realistic cheerleader. She’s always supportive, but she’s also (at least from my corner of the world), always realistic. It’s not fake praise, it’s solid encouragement. And I think I’ve so completely lost my original point. Which was, when I think about it, about as rambling as my blog post. We do ourselves a disservice by going along with any group just because they support the popular opinion. Or going against them for the same reason. We have to do what we think is best for us and keep in mind that most people aren’t out to piss on us as individuals, they’re just trying, like us, to survive and thrive, even if their methods are a little different. Or something like that ^_^ (aka I thought the feedback made sense, and if it had been me I would have taken the chance. Since it’s not, you have to do what’s best for you because this is your career not mine, and not anyones but yours. If it doesn’t feel right to you, don’t make yourself miserable by trying to make a fit that wasn’t meant to be).