Once writing was the most solitary of professions. Now it's the most social.
What has changed? Need we say it? - The Internet's arrival means that people who once worked in inspired isolation now are online, gossiping, exchanging tips, bucking up each other, cheering each other on, frequently making secret review-and-boosterism pacts with each other, solitary no more. The business of the self-publishing world, in particular, is conducted in the 24/7 electronic corridors of the Web.
What you rarely if ever hear is someone gently saying, "Well, my cherished friend, is it just possible that those gatekeepers were correct in rejecting your work?" Wonderfully intentioned positivism eclipses the genuinely thoughtful, difficult exchanges that we like to think might have ennobled a lunchtime shared in Montmartre's heyday. "What if it's not any good, my love?" -- this is largely an unthinkable thing to ask, unspeakable, even by the "close" friends of one's far-flung digital village. There are pockets of honesty, surely; short and potent Twitter lists of friends one might ask for a straight answer. These are rare and never widely visible.
Honesty has never been easy, has it, even in the best of society's engagements