I recently wrote a bit about treating others with respect, even if you disagree with opinions they have or positions they take.

When it comes to writing, treating others with respect strikes me more as not wanting to burn bridges. Why would a writer want to anger a potential reader, a potential agent, or a potential publisher? I don’t have an answer for that question, but I see some writers who get a rejection, one way or another, and seem to go ballistic about it. It seems the possibility that their writing might actually be the problem that caused the rejection doesn’t enter into their minds.

Sometimes, I wish I was confident enough in my own writing to be able to comfortably presume that anyone who doesn’t like a story I’ve finished must be out of their mind, because clearly anything I write must be the greatest thing ever committed to paper.

Then I smack myself and I quickly snap out of it.

During a recent blog-jog, I came across “How to Make Friends and Win Over People,” a post written by Jason Sizemore, the publisher and managing editor of Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest. Sizemore has suggestions for writers who are hoping to make a sale with editors, the main one being to behave like a professional.

Then, the responses begin. One writer, whose story was apparently rejected by Sizemore and who made reference to the quality of the magazine’s content following that rejection, weighs in. And the string of comments takes on that train wreck quality: it gets very, very bad, but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t make yourself turn away!

Eventually, one other commenter advises — no, she begs — the writer to stop.

I suspect that the writer — whoever he is — enjoyed dropping insults on everyone. But the way he seems to revel in his insults seems to suggest two things: first, he’s comfortable with the fact that Sizemore will never publish anything he submits again; and second, he must be convinced that editors never, ever talk to other editors so he’s safe in heaping insults on this one editor because no one else who might be in a position to buy from him will ever know.

And if he really is as good a writer as he seems to think he is, the readers have as much to lose as he does. Unfortunate on all sides.