A Story About A Girl

A girl wanders into the CS forum looking to learn and provide helpful answers where she can. She immediately sees a post implying that CS and Amazon are in cahoots and “stealing” royalties from unsuspecting authors. Girl reads the thread and rolls her eyes. She then posts that she has had nothing but a wonderful business relationship with CS and they’ve never screwed her on her royalties or misreported sales. OP writes back knocking girl’s intelligence and accusing her of having a comprehension problem. Girl replies that she doesn’t have a comprehension problem, but rather thinks the OP doesn’t understand how CS works, thinks CS gave a satisfactory answer, and tells OP that in berating her or anyone who doesn’t agree with him doesn’t make him right. OP slams girl’s comprehension and intelligence again. Then OP accuses girl of writing a bad review of his book, which girl never did. Girl decides to just STFU and not go there because no matter what she says, OP will attack her. Boy walks into CS forum and comes across same thread and politely reminds everyone that Amazon and CS are innocent until proven guilty and then explains CS’s view and OP’s view in a clear and direct manner – telling folks to draw their own conclusions. OP again gets angry and tells boy that he’s either a sociopath, has no comprehension skills, or he’s working for “the man”.  Really?  Girl stops hanging out at forum but watches discussion progress as more and more people tell the OP to stop complaining and get an attorney involved. Finally, girl steps up and tells the OP the other posters are right about how he should be handling it and that she did not give him a bad book review.

Girl goes to another forum to talk about writing with other authors. Everyone is talking about their current releases so girl gets in on the discussion. Girl is met head-on with confrontational literary snob who insists all genre writers are hacks. After all, we all know literary fiction is where it’s at. Evidently all writers should aspire to be the next John Updike and all readers with any taste would read nothing but literary fiction.  Girl finds herself exasperated and feels attacked by the literary bandit and his cohorts.

Girl vows to stop hanging out in writing forums due to all the posturing and confrontation with cliques, aggressive people,  and snooty folks.

One week later girl wanders into the CS forum…