Evocative Characters. Intriguing Crime. Compelling Stories
(Who is happily meeting readers and writers at Left Coast Crime in Monterey!)
I recently saw a chart for Successful versus Unsuccessful People. I think it could also have been for Happy versus Unhappy People, or even... drumroll... Writers You Want to Know versus Writers You Don't Want to Know.
We hear things all the time about how gracious Laura Lippman and Lee Child are. They come across to readers as generous and kind and well... writers as people who readers want in their lives. Writers as people who readers want to cheer for.
Other than the obvious—that writers write stories readers enjoy reading—here's what I've come up with:
Writers You Want to Know
|
Writers You Don’t Want to
Know
|
Have a sense of gratitude
|
Have a sense of entitlement
|
Make decisions out of love (there's passion in every story)
|
Make decisions out of fear (they write to formula)
|
Take the high road
|
Take the expedient road
|
Exercise forgiveness
|
Hold grudges
|
Want others to succeed and
be happy
|
Secretly want others to
fail and be miserable
|
Share information and data
|
Horde information and data
|
Understand they owe their
readers
|
Believe their readers owe
them
|
Operate from a
transformational perspective
|
Operate from a transactional
perspective
|
Understand it takes a
village
|
Believe they are the village
|
Trust others
|
Doubt others
|
Continuously seek to
improve
|
Believe they’ve got
everything covered
|
Believe in others
|
Believe only in themselves
|
Set goals
|
Have that sense of entitlement
thing going on again
|
Are honest in their
assessment of how hard they work
|
Either say they slave away
24/7 or that they simply have the magic touch
|
Accept responsibility for
their failures
|
Blame others for their
failures
|
Include as many as possible
in as many ways as possible
|
With each ladder rung achieved, they pull the steps up behind them
|
