Online writers

The people you meet online are just like the people you meet offline, but of those who get addicted to writing workshops, I discern the following types.

Self-Deprecators: They say everything they post is rubbish, and accept praise gladly and dismiss blame as irrelevant since they only post rubbish. (Defence mechanism - they don't really believe it's rubbish, but if you say it's rubbish then you can't be disappointed.) Sometimes it really is rubbish and unchangingly so. Other times they progress apace and end up writing marvellous work. Incurable.

Deniers: They defend their own shortcomings and usually become irate when these are pointed out. These are the people of the great denial. They usually move on after a substantial time and come to recognise the error of their former ways. They will then become, like reformed whores, the greatest prudes and fanatics for eradicating the same errors in others. The problem with this rate of progress - one step every six months or so - is that life is so short, they may never get to where they need to be. Curable.

Depressives: Ones who are in the throes a deep depression and cannot seem to accept either compliments or criticism gracefully. They write doom-laden stuff but are often wasting a wonderful talent. They have the capacity to achieve publication and success but nothing ever seems to shake them from their place of misery. From the outside it looks as if they are comfortable wallowing around on the muddy sea bottom, but if only it were that easy. The weight of the world is on them and they can't budge it. Self-healing.

Self-Righteous Cranks: These take the most negative possible attitude to everything. They post platitudinous, mawkish, naive, atrocious, unreadable drivel and usually in a 24 point bold font. They are at the same time full of self-pity and rage against life. They have no talent, but think they are God's gift to literature. Incurable.

Hopeless Cases: These are the nice people who keep trying to improve their writing but are doomed never to make it fly, because they just haven't got the talent or sufficient brain-power ever to "get it." Their work is full of ludicrous glitches that are too embarrassing to point out. It's very hard to tell these people they are wasting their time. However they might be able to put their limited talents to use in some capacity, just not great poetry or prose. They could write for their parish magazine and so on. Incurable.

Non-Committals: These are good writers who are afraid to let go of their babies, i.e., their work. This feeling also affects some who are not very good writers. They range from the mediocre to the wonderfully gifted. Insufferable.

Businessmen: They are trying to find an angle to make money out of the contributors to online groups. They have multiple communities always with lures to pay for critiques or other unwanted supplies and services. As an afterthought, they write trite and ignorant tosh to appear to join in. They probably have never read a book in their lives. Intolerable.

Brazen Ignoramuses: They expect to turn up at a writing group and post something worthwhile without ever spending any time reading and learning what it's all about. They make fools of themselves, and usually are encouraged by other fools who have never read any poetry or prose either. The cure is lengthy and they are not usually interested in taking it. These are not the same as people who are still learning. Not every good writer can spell, conjugate verbs, and use literary terminology fluently. That is a different problem. People who are learning are not ignoramuses, they are entirely admirable. It's the don't know, don't care, don't want to know and pushy-with-it people who are the brazen ignoramuses.

Pontificators / Instant Experts / Pedants: They have read one or two things, and now set out to prove the saying that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." They are prone to following instructions to the letter, especially in regard to trivial matters of punctuation, spelling and grammar. They get very excited about whether there should be one space or two after a full stop and whether proportional fonts or fixed space fonts are preferred by publishers. The one thing they appear to have little interest in is great writing.

The Vengeful: they spend their time writing little allegories and doggerel where people they disagree with end up getting their heads smashed in, or being shot and left for dead in pools of blood.

Where are the nice ones, the helpful, the sincere, the charming you ask? Yes - where? What you see most in writing workshops is the narcissists in a recursive, death-rattle embrace with the control freaks. The people who live to hear good about themselves are in a struggle to the death with the people who want to make everything as it should be, by the power of their saying so. The whole writing workshop scene is a slow-motion, internecine massacre between the unregenerate child-adults and the misanthropic no-lifes.


Malachy Dunhill