"The big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing."

Title courtesy of The Eagles, because their words on the subject of overwhelming entitlement I've come across in the past few weeks, are probably far more courteous than mine would ever be.

Anyone who just expects their work to be accepted in this industry are either several buckets of crazy, or submitting stuff to their best friend. And your `friends` can hold contests and ficathons open months past the deadlines that the rest of the plebs had to meet, your `friends` can ride your coat-tails to Kingdom Come and back, they can kiss your ass and lick the parts of you that you can't reach, but they aren't agents or publishers. They aren't people putting their own necks and their own money on the line to take a chance on your work because they see something in it, something special, independent of any ass-kissing, or head-count of lackeys.

Don't get me wrong, I've had my share of rejections and my share of private teeth-gnashing and sulking and kicking the cat. Emphasis on private. To publically question the mental capacity and personal biases of editors or judges who dared reject the work you expected to be accepted, to disparage work that was accepted (work that, if you had been privvy to reading in the first place, had come from a place of trust -- really nice of you to treat that trust with the respect and courtesy it deserved, huh?) in your rightful place, is about as unprofessional and ungracious as it gets.

It's been shown time and again that a writer doesn't know when their work might bring them back into contact with an editor/publisher/whatever they've happily bitched about elsewhere. So why bother? Disappointment is one thing, immaturity is another thing altogether. If I was an editor who had to make a decision on your work in future, I would be swayed by that kind of behaviour and those kind of remarks, rightly or wrongly. In the end you're just shooting yourself in the foot.