As corny as it sounds, the most important lesson I’ve learned while writing for beer money is that 90% of the time no single answer is foolproof and 10% of the time the answer isn’t even an answer as much as it’s a fucking punchline.

This spiel is inspired by a recent publisher tweet that derided book bloggers for no other reason than to stir some shit and get some negative publicity (because, yeah, that’s how you get them BIG book sales). Let’s also ignore that said publisher was offline for a few months when they could have been, I don’t know, promoting the authors they were publishing.

Bet book bloggers would be helpful in that endeavor.

Anyway, my point here isn’t to shit on that particular publisher or be a hero to book bloggers in order to net some reviews (but I mean, hey, if you’re interested, I totally have a novella out that you can look into over on my Goodreads page…).

I’m more interested in the type of attitude that compels writers to impart worldly knowledge as if they’re Moses coming down the goddamn mountain. Lo and behold, here’s comes King Shitbird to tell you how everything you’re doing is wrong, dumb, and beneath them and only THEIR method to true writing success is the most precious of all methods. And yeah, I am self aware enough to know I’m sort of doing that and also yes, I’ve talked a little bit about this before (two years ago, in fact).

My views are still mostly the same. I still think anyone with more books on how to write than actual published works of fiction are people to distrust. I still think I’M a fucking person you should distrust. Still, it’s important we remember that everyone has their own path to whatever their goals are. Unless that path is littered with actual corpses, I think it might be OK to let folks go on their happy way.

And yeah, don’t shit on people who love reading. That whole “potential customer” bullshit aside, I write because I love reading. If I ever found myself shitting on readers, then I’ve lost the thread.

Be kind.