Isolating Yourself from Other Writers: Sometimes Good;
Alienating Yourself from Them: Always Bad

Seems that somebody who just completed their first manuscript asked horror writer Douglas Clegg for a blurb that would impress the agents and editors he's trying to woo. As Clegg describes the situation on his blog, even if he was willing to read unpublished work, he didn't feel that he had the time to read the novel and comment on it in the three weeks this guy gave him, and he said so. At which point, "he told me he read this journal and apparently I was free enough with my time to spend a day at Coney Island."

Now, some writers would take this opportunity to rip the unnamed twerp a new one, but Clegg's bigger than that--he veers over into a thoughtful meditation about how writers manage their time, and about his own missteps in blurb solicitation when he was younger. The whole thing made me come away with a lot of respect for Clegg, of whom I'm sorry to say I haven't heard before now--but I'll be doing my best to correct that oversight in December, once I've put The Karen Black Project to bed.