Among other things, my previous post commented about the rude, obnoxious, or even threatening responses I sometimes receive after sending rejection letters. Privately, someone pointed out that there’s a second tier of authors that choose to share their cranky thoughts via blogs, forums, and conventions. It’s not all that surprising. I’ve been hearing them for years thanks to Google alerts, Twitter search, and word-of-mouth.

These typically aren’t in the same class of rude as someone who emails an editor directly, though sometimes it can be. Being frustrated about rejections is natural and definitely not restricted to new authors. It becomes problematic when it turns to anger and hate, makes up outrageous claims, or wishes harm to someone. My favorite of the lesser claims is that “they don’t actually read submissions.” [This is typically a criticism of fast-response markets. Newsflash: Longer-response markets spend the same amount of time on your story. For all that extra time, the story is just sitting there in their pile.] The worst I’ve seen? Some mean-spirited things said about my heart attack, not long after it happened.

I’m not saying you should censor yourself, but you should pay attention to what you say and how you say it. I recall listening to a podcast where an author railed on and on about how we were killing science fiction. He even cited a specific story to back up his claim. Despite this, he continued to send us his work on a regular basis. Was that podcast ever held against him? No, absolutely not. He even managed to get a few of our top tier rejection letters, which would never go to someone I didn’t want to work with. You’re allowed to be critical of a market for publishing something you didn’t like. Although dramatic, he reasonably defended his position and never once stooped to the childish “they rejected my stories, but published this crap” or name-calling that I’ve seen from others. I can respect that.

When I worked at a high school I had to regularly remind students that the Internet is forever and nothing there is truly private. Friend’s-locked posts, email, and private forums don’t provide nearly as much protection as some authors obviously think. Maybe they don’t even care.

Do I track this stuff? Only the worst offenders, which might amount to a few each year. None of them have ever submitted a story good enough for this to have held against them. Their small numbers are why they went largely forgotten in this weekend’s post.