I belong to a writers group and there is one individual of that group that I've recently gotten into a flame war on Face(titious)book re: American politics. One complaint is his writing. He responds to my posts with responses that are all over the place, responses that would fail a student taking a debate class, full of mind-numbing changes of subjects, half-baked analogies, unadulterated emotion - none of which have anything to do with the initial topic - while of course, establishing a claim that he's not reactionary or an apologist. There's that but it's not the major thing that really bugs me. What does is his reference to people who are not fellow writers as "rabble." As in "the great unwashed," the "proles." He pointed out that writers are supposed to be above that, which I agree with to a tiny degree, but then I called him out on such a position that it was rather presumptuous and demeaning to those who may know more about an issue or a manner of existence and experience than writers – who are always in a state of research - may only presume to know. Again, crickets. So my question here, does anyone else have a writer acquaintance who seems to embody poor or cliched qualities yet fails to acknowledge those qualities? Who instead looks at them as a badge of honor and superior writing skills? And how the hell do you deal with them?
There's a guy in my writers' group who is totally pompous and arrogant. He's a horrible writer, but blows off legit criticism under the guise that the "critics" (i.e. the rest of us) just don't understand him and his genius. The rest of us just roll our eyes, tolerate him, and focus on achieving our own goals.
