Dear Author wrote a topic a few days ago titled: should authors shut up and write? Ms. Joyce responds and hang on to your seats, I’ve high­lighted some of the good parts and read­ers, some of it is rather insult­ing but don’t be. It’s the ego talking.

I’ve never read Lydia Joyce. Quite frankly, her books sound like the kind of nov­els that I’d enjoy read­ing since I do pre­fer “dark” books. Alas, but I digress.  I admit to not read­ing the com­ments she made in it’s entirety and thus I started skim­ming and then these com­ments jumped out at me like this one: 

Yes, there are some peo­ple who are “too stu­pid” to under­stand my books. But they don’t bring up a par­tic­u­lar plot point they don’t like. They com­plain that none of it makes sense and that there are so many big, con­fus­ing words that the books are IMPOSSIBLE to under­stand. These peo­ple just aren’t my read­ers. I’m des­tined to piss them off just by hav­ing “big words” in a book.

I am half-way tempted to read one of her books just see all the “big words” she claims to use that seems to con­fuse read­ers. Next time I’m in the used book­store, I’ll get a copy as there’s plenty of her books to be found there, left by stu­pid people.

Here’s another eye-rolling moment:

As far as “stu­pid” read­ers go–those peo­ple I ignore pub­licly. Why would I waste my breath talk­ing about peo­ple who aren’t even in my audi­ence? Why would I want to, when what I really want is to snatch my book out of their hands and for­bid them from ever com­ing within 100 yards of another one?

Oh and I just love this one:

I don’t expect my read­ers to be bril­liant. They are, how­ever, not stu­pid. My atti­tude isn’t about arro­gance. It’s about respect. I can either treat peo­ple like idiots and write to them like babies, or I can treat them like rea­son­ably intel­li­gent peo­ple and risk occa­sion­ally con­fus­ing an intel­li­gent per­son as a result–particularly an intel­li­gent per­son who’s used to being treated like a baby most of the time, anyway.

Oh and I also had no idea that Ms. Joyce was a mem­ber of Mensa  because she goes on to say:

Yeah, I’m smart, and I got sick to death of hid­ing it along time ago. I refuse to do it any­more because it shouldn’t be some­thing to be ashamed of or hated for, and I hope that my stand­ing up will help oth­ers who have faced dis­crim­i­na­tion, too. (I guess I’m still too much of a hyp­ocrite to post my IQ range, but I can still hope that the day will come when it won’t be any dif­fer­ent than dress or shoe size.) There is noth­ing in the world wrong with being smart any more than there’s some­thing wrong with hav­ing blue eyes or brown skin, and it is NOT “show­ing off” to refrain from talk­ing down to peo­ple any more than it is show­ing off for a tall per­son not to stoop.

 And to con­clude this topic made up of most of Ms. Joyce’s own words (well most of them anyway), I don’t have to worry about her com­ment­ing here at my blog because:

If I address some­thing pub­licly, it’s because I respect a person’s opin­ion enough talk about it.

Dear Author’s topic of “should authors just write and shut up” is so aptly named for Ms. Joyce and clearly sets the exam­ple of an author who should do just that.  My next project for myself will be to read a Lydia Joyce book. I’m sure some­one can rec­om­mend a book for me?

Edited to add: Monica’s com­ments here: Hypocrisy in Action.