Plot Monkeys

Warning: I’m getting serious today (which you all know I don’t do very often!) Don’t worry, it’s not anything earth-shattering, I’m just going to discuss something that I feel is important and often isn’t talked about.

When we started Plotmonkeys, the four of us vowed to keep this site fun and light and lively…we don’t want any flame wars here, and have managed to get through nearly a year without any. So I don’t intend to start one now. I just want to get something off my chest. Here it is:

Professional Jealousy Sucks.

There. I said it.

Sometimes we romance writers are portrayed as this loving sorority who all like each other, get along, and would do absolutely anything for anybody. And for the most part, that’s been my experience. It most certainly has been with the three amazing friends here with me on this site.

But…every one of us has also been nipped in the tail by that ugly jealousy/spite thing.

Carly has probably had it the worst. When she was fortunate enough to have her first single title book, The Bachelor, chosen by the Reading With Ripa book club, we all knew what it would mean for her…and were absolutely thrilled about it!

Some other people…weren’t so thrilled. She suffered slings and arrows that were cruel and unfair, from offensively-worded interviews and to-her-face slights, to back-stabbing by way of whisper campaigns. As her friends, it hurt to watch her go through it. Being the fighters Janelle and I are–and Julie being 10x us!– it was hard to sit back and let it go. But we did, mainly by keeping our sense of humor and forming a tight circle around her when any hateful, jealous beeyotches got too close.

(BTW: What slayed me was that people acted as though her success was their loss–as if it had cost them something. Or they merely acted as though she didn’t deserve it. Ahem: She got on the New York Times bestseller list the first time because of that book club. She’s hit it again and again since then by having the goods to back it up and delivering damn fine books!)

But it isn’t just the people at Carly’s level who get the knife between the ribs sometimes. I’ve felt it. Julie has. Janelle has. It can come in many different ways. I know of authors who’ve had other authors write crappy anonymous reviews of their books. Who’ve used them for personal gain, then dumped them once they get what they needed. Who’ve raved about their books to their face while panning them to everyone else within earshot. Who’ve lost to someone in a contest and turned around and called them a “nobody” to their face. Or simply those who play this bizarre game, being so sweet in person or in an email to someone…then laughing about the other author to their “real” friends. (I personally don’t believe people with so much negative energy and spite in their souls have any real friends!)

Sounds so ugly, I know, and I hate to expose this underbelly to you readers who’d maybe prefer not to know it exists. But if we’re going to talk about the reality of our lives as working romance writers, this subject simply has to come up. I don’t know anybody in this profession who hasn’t been touched by it in one way or another. (And I’m sure many other professions experience it, too!)

There are only two ways to get past the ugliness. The first is by having true friends who you know you can trust, no matter what..

Like the Plotmonkeys.

Believe me, when I found out about something awful that another writer–someone I’d never even met–said about me to of to a bunch of people at a conference once, I was horrified. Julie however, (once she peeled me off the ceiling) totally had my back. So did my amazing editor, who had handled the whole ugly thing long before I ever even heard about it.

Which brings me to the second thing that helps you deal with this nastiness:

Karma Exists.

I firmly believe it. If you are shitty and hateful to other people, if you make snide public accusations, if you smile to someone’s face and say nasty things behind their back, not only will it make you look bad, but it will often come right around and bite you in the ass.

More times than not, you will get caught. People talk. A lot. And those things have a way of getting around. Sometimes they get back to the people you were talking about. Sometimes they get back to that person’s friends. Sometimes they even get back to that person’s editor…who you might want to sell to one day.

Karma, baby. I am all for it.

I am not a Pollyanna. There are people I don’t like, and I am sure there have been times I’ve griped about them to my friends. BUT I am not predisposed to disliking anybody and I’ve sure never chosen to hate someone because they: got a better cover/have more readers/get better sales/signed a great contract/hit a list/beat me in a contest/got in a hot anthology/got a great review…blah blah blah.

And I most certainly don’t waste my time and energy on being deliberately hurtful to anyone.

My husband and I have raised our girls under one never-ending principle that is not determined by religion or race or nationality. It’s simply the golden rule, in our own unique lingo: “Don’t do anything to anybody else that you wouldn’t want them to do to you.”

Period.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It covers a multitude of sins (has certainly covered anything that’s arisen in our family) and yet also applies to the business world. Even the romance writing one.

If only more people would remember it.

How about you? Any green-eyed monster problems in your work lives?