I was reading this and this about writers fighting and vendettas with other writers and I just wonder why? Why all the animosity?
Other than field and blood sports where you are supposed to defeat the competition I can’t think of another profession with so much infighting and back biting.
I don’t know if it happens all that often, but when it does I’m usually struck by the pointlessness. As far as this thread goes, I don’t really see either of these as fights. The Wikipedia thing isn’t a story about writers fighting, it’s about one guy being a dick. And I don’t think I would call the Claire Messud thing a fight either. It’s a discussion of likeable and unlikeable characters, and I thought the conversation was really interesting.
Beyond that I think writers fight with each other for the same kinds of reasons as anybody else: ego, alcohol, things like that. And more ego.
Right. I think the biggest thing is that when writers fight, it end up, you know, written. So we can all see it and know that they’re fighting. When accounting executives fight, it’s done by voice and e-mail and passive-aggressive interoffice memos, and things that us outsiders don’t see.
A textbook case of observation bias and selection bias. And that’s all it is.
And sometimes it’s worth reading! But it tends to get self-important and ludicrous in a hurry.
From The Simpsons:
Groundskeeper Willie: It won’t last. Brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots! Or Welshmen and Scots! Or Japanese and Scots! Or Scots and other Scots! Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!
Principal Skinner: You Scots sure are a contentious people.
Groundskeeper Willie: You just made an enemy for life!
Just replace “Scots” with “writers”.
Seriously? My experience is the opposite: writers seem to get on better, and do less infighting and backbiting, than almost any other profession I know. With the very odd exception, they’re nice to each other. I’ve always put it down to the fact that they’re not stuck in a big cube farm together eight hours a day, so they don’t get into interminable complicated bitch wars about whether Mary moved Joe’s lunch in the staff fridge or Jim said something nasty about Sue’s stapling skills. Instead, because they don’t get a lot of chances to hang out with other people from the same profession and swap shop talk, they really enjoy it when they do.
But when writers do fight, there’s a decent chance it’s going to be in writing; there’s a decent chance it’s going to be well-written enough that readers will bother passing it around; and there’s a decent chance one or both participants will be well-known enough to make it interesting. When writers just hang out and have a laugh, on the other hand, no one’s going to pass that around.
Too late for edit:
I agree with Marley23: the Claire Messud thing isn’t a fight at all, it’s an interesting discussion not just about likeable characters but about genre boundaries and gender perceptions. Yeah, that’s going to get passionate; that doesn’t make it a fight.
That reminds me: I hear that Harlan Ellison often has an axe to grind with others.
I’ve been in the sf writing community for over 30 years and it’s rare to see this sort of thing. Writers know that writing isn’t a zero-sum game and it doesn’t require other peoples’ failures for you to succeed. Most writers are on very good terms with others in the field.
Not that there aren’t exceptions, but it’s no different from any two colleagues in any other business. Not a personalities get along.
Harlan doesn’t tend to grind axes with other writers; he can get testy and sarcastic, but much of it is for show. He supposedly had a feud with Isaac Asimov, except when Asimov got sick with his heart troubles, Harlan was one of the first calling him to to ask if there was anything he could do to help and in my one interaction with him,* we both were fighting over who would be the nicest.
*Harlan had contributed an article to the SFWA Bulletin. It was supposed to be 1000 words. Harlan wrote 1500. I called about paying him for the additional words; he kept saying not to bother. Eventually, I let him win. 
Artists getting in fights with each other?
I’m shocked! Shocked!
Interestingly, I remember once reading something written by a woman who worked behind the scenes at book promotions. And she said one of the unspoken rules of the business was that if you had two or more authors appearing at an event, you kept them separated because otherwise they’d get into an argument. But she said there was one exception - science fiction authors. She said you could put a bunch of science fiction authors in a room together and they’d all get along just fine.
Agreement: there may be a handful of nasty primas donnas, but, by and large, the SF community (at least) is extremely friendly and mutually supportive.
Every year, I go to the “New Writers” conference in San Diego, sponsored by the library. It’s a reception for local writers who have had a book published in the last year. It’s always very friendly, cheerful, and supportive – even when there are significant ideological differences. One guy published a Creationist book, and, while it was obvious that few agreed with him, everyone clapped politely. Similar for a guy who wrote a book claiming he was the reincarnation of a Japanese WWII fighter pilot. There were some private, whispered conversations saying “That guy is a loon,” but nothing public or out loud, and even this subdued gossiping was very mild and minor.
I’ll single out David Brin as being assertive, but proper. When he disagrees with you, you know it…but he says it all with a happy smile, and always maintains a friendly disposition. And he also makes an extra effort to make new writers feel welcome. He’s a big best-seller, but he treats the lowliest midlist hack with the respect of a professional equal. That, friends, is class!
I first met Harlan in 1971. I have two close friends who spent time living in his house. I’m not saying I’m a close friend or anything like that. Just that I’m more knowledgeable about the sf community than you are, just as Chuck is undoubtedly more knowledgeable than you are. Name some names, or drop it and apologize.
The sf world is more divided today than it ever used to be. A certifiable lunatic ran for SFWA president and it got very ugly. For years before that, their message board stirred up so much animosity than many people, including me, will no longer post on them. Writers do have rampaging egos and sf writers are worst of all.
The OP’s question is still inane. It’s like asking why people on the Dope fight with one another. Because they’re people. Period.
I did get an interesting comment when I was going for my Masters. The professor, who wrote mainstream fiction, said the good things about being a science fiction writer is that you are judged on the quality of your work. Evidently, in mainstream fiction, there was a lot of logrolling and getting published because of who you knew. I suspect that was because mainstream was often small press, which didn’t look to make money, while science fiction was commercial so that if you published inferior work because you were friends with an author, you’d go out of business.
Ironically, that professor later has a few science fiction stories published in SF magazines.
But SF is very congenial. When I showed up at my first con, with only one short story sale, the authors there treated me as an equal, even those who’d been publishing for years.
Writers are at the bottom of the celebrity scale. Getting in fights is one of the few ways they have to garner attention because writing books doesn’t seem to work.
In the amateur/indie realm, it’s usually between who gets published vs. who doesn’t. Or sometimes it’s who self-publishes vs. small press (the former is still looked down upon as “not having the chops to be noticed by any sort of press” while the latter “doesn’t have the chops to be aligned with a mainstream publisher”). If you hang out long enough in any writerly message board or venue that’s part of a larger entity, they’ll seem congenial at first, but you can discern the divisions if you read enough between the lines.
A lot of it is what I consider to be artiste cattiness. I see it a lot in cake decorating forums, too. For every person who is genuinely kind and helpful, there are three or four in the shadows who are tearing apart your work and snickering while doing it. I’ve seen similar in other creative/visual art venues. I don’t know if there’s a concrete reason why it exists, but I do have a couple of theories.
BTW, I’ve heard sci-fi people are the most down-to-earth. I’m not part of that group, but I know people who are, and they all fit that description.
Bingo.
This runs completely counter to my experiences. I’ve been a freelance writer for almost 30 years, and owned a bookstore for over 11 years. I’ve attended numerous book conferences, writer’s conferences, and other literary events, and I’ve never once seen authors behave like that. It’s more common that we end up in the bar buying each other drinks and comparing notes about publishers, editors, and agents!
This is not to say that there aren’t writers who are complete asses. There certainly are. But as RealityChuck pointed out, this isn’t a zero-sum game. If you and I each write a cool book with similar setting or subject, interested fans will buy both. This isn’t like professional tennis where I have to lose for you to win. Especially at the dawning of the age of e-readers, our virtual bookshelves are effectively unlimited in size. Even in the magazine world, where there’s competition for every inch of space, the move to the web is removing the page limits. There’s plenty of room for all of us.
Except nobody cares if two people who aren’t famous fight with each other. This stuff only gets noticed if it’s two writers some people might be familiar with.
If gets them on TV or gets them some internet buzz then people will become familiar with them. Following that someone might read their books, but more likely they’ll just recognize the names if the feud gets more notice. It might even result in more people claiming they’ve read the books even though they haven’t.