Networking with Writers: Self-Fulfilling Attitudes

While previous episodes of this series are the expansion of something I wrote last year to explain why a writing group I was in seemed so inclusive to some new members but so hostile to others, this entry is new, based on my experience trying to work with several new writers in the last few months.

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As a writer entering a new group, community, or online space, you must understand that the attitude you bring to the table is the single greatest factor in how you are treated by the group. If you get pushed out, marginalized, or dismissed early on, you can be certain that it is entirely your fault that this happened.

The most common way to earn a negative reaction (and in online spaces, an immediate banhammer) is to have an attitude of confrontational entitlement. Generally, this takes the form of insisting that you "deserve" something which is in fact an earned - that might be something as simple as respect or good reviews of your writing, but it might be something more complex, like people responding to you in a way you prefer.

The hard truth here is that you will get nothing worth having if you don't earn it. You can't assert your entitlement to something earned, and get it - you can either get a hollow facsimile of what you want that way, or you can get a well-earned cold shoulder.

Anyone who has been in a writing group for more than two weeks has seen this play out at least once. A new member asks a question or asks for review of their work and doesn't like the response they get, but instead of asking follow-ups to figure out why their expectation doesn't match the response, they assert that the person who gave it is out to get them, trying to exclude new members, or generally mean-spirited. When multiple people join in to assure them that the response was reasonable, they accuse the whole group of banding together against new members, and generally ramp up the conflict until they are forced out of the group, or leave of their own accord. In some larger writing communities online, this will happen as often as once a week.

Don't be this person. It's emotionally easy to decide that the whole world is out to get you, but this attitude is self-fulfilling - if you act as if the world either gives you everything for free or is out to get you, you will generally cause other people to interact with you in ways that you will interpret as them being out to get you. This is not a problem of the world - it is a problem of your attitude.

Keep in mind that your mindset - how you interpret the world around you - is at least as important to your success or failure in social and productive endeavors as anything else. Since a mindset of entitlement is one which disincentives positive action, it is the single best signal of impending failure that I know. 

If you arrive in a new writing group dripping with a toxic mindset, it is not only expected but proper that they get rid of you as soon as possible. As a new user in a group, your continued presence is very much provisional based on the way you interact with the pre-existing members - if you are going to be a source of childish and pointless conflict surrounding how you demand to be treated, there's no value in having your participation.

Before you start screeching about how "that's unfair" and "not inclusive," or attributing everything to "friends backing each other up," keep in mind that everyone else in that group is a writer, too. They have better things to do than to repeatedly have useful discussions interrupted or delayed by entitled tantrums. Some of them might be a bit hostile to new members, true - but if so, it's because they've suffered too many headaches trying to interact with entitled wretches like you. If, on the other hand, you prove you're not like that, even those with a natural bias will come around.

In summary, get over yourself, nobody owes you anything, and the world isn't going to bend to your demands for respect. Get your mindset in order and then go earn the reaction you want - you'll find it really isn't that difficult.