Well...the Fledgling and Saltation discussions were polite and speculative, and they were happening in an arena that I didn't have to visit. Angry letters didn't arrive in my inbox weekly, engaging me directly.
In fact, I think we only had two nasty moments in the whole overwhelmingly positive Fledgling/Saltation experiment.
One was a reader who was Angry Beyond Words that we should be attempting the experiment at all -- upsetting, but ultimately easy to ignore, because I didn't notice that he was offering to pay our mortgage for us so we'd stop prostituting ourselves.
The other was the fellow who publicly demanded his donation back because when we declared a DRAFT, he pronounced the story Awful and Unfinished and stated that he had lost all respect for the writers. This was actually on the discussion list, not as a private email. I expect he was a troll, but he had sent in money, and as he was only escalating as various of the other members of the group tried to pound nails into a rock express the idea of "draft" to him, I refunded his donation, and he kept his part of the bargain, which was to go away and say no more.
It was a little more difficult during the writing of Longeye because the hate mail for Duainfey had begun to arrive, and it was vicious and nasty and personal, and we still had to turn the book around very quickly and we wanted to do a good job. I think the book suffered from the storm of negativity that it was born in, I'm sorry for it.
As a colleague once said, "The best thing about the internet for writers is that they have more interaction with their readers. ...and the worst thing about the internet for writers is that they have more interaction with their readers."
no subject
In fact, I think we only had two nasty moments in the whole overwhelmingly positive Fledgling/Saltation experiment.
One was a reader who was Angry Beyond Words that we should be attempting the experiment at all -- upsetting, but ultimately easy to ignore, because I didn't notice that he was offering to pay our mortgage for us so we'd stop prostituting ourselves.
The other was the fellow who publicly demanded his donation back because when we declared a DRAFT, he pronounced the story Awful and Unfinished and stated that he had lost all respect for the writers. This was actually on the discussion list, not as a private email. I expect he was a troll, but he had sent in money, and as he was only escalating as various of the other members of the group tried to
pound nails into a rockexpress the idea of "draft" to him, I refunded his donation, and he kept his part of the bargain, which was to go away and say no more.It was a little more difficult during the writing of Longeye because the hate mail for Duainfey had begun to arrive, and it was vicious and nasty and personal, and we still had to turn the book around very quickly and we wanted to do a good job. I think the book suffered from the storm of negativity that it was born in, I'm sorry for it.
As a colleague once said, "The best thing about the internet for writers is that they have more interaction with their readers. ...and the worst thing about the internet for writers is that they have more interaction with their readers."