Anonymous wrote:So what is the line between just being terrible and plagiarizing?

Anonymous wrote:I'm on Dorland's side in this, also, and think the group texts were unbelievably mean, but I'm not sure the way he wrote the story is due to deceptiveness. He sifted through a lot of material, and presumably had live interviews that we didn't have here. Where he came out in the story isn't necessarily where we would come out. That doesn't mean he was trying to hoodwink us. Remember too that there was a Boston Globe exposee of the whole thing earlier and nobody seemed to have a problem with what Larson did there (though presumably they didn't expose the group texts.)

Anyway, ymmv.

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the Corker letter proves what people say it proves. If I were a writer trying to get someone to talk to me, or a detective trying to get a murderer to talk to me, I would try to see the story from their point of view and explain as well as I could how I found their POV relatable. Even if maybe I didn't, completely. Corker had already been working on the story for a while with material only provided from Dorland, so he had to know that Larsen would need a reason to be persuaded about how he wasn't already biased against her. So he gave her that.

I don't feel one way or the other about who Corker really sided with or what he was trying to do when he wrote the article. But the only way he was going to get Larsen to talk to him is if her persuaded her that her point of view would be represented in the story, and that he was a good person to articulate what the POV was.

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the things that bothers me deeply about this whole mess, and other similar stories like the Isabel Fall story, are that they seem like a confirmation of sorts of what I have suspected MFA programs and writer groups to be like, and what it is like trying to make it as a new writer. (Of course, the cruelty itself is the worst thing, but that's been covered by many others, so I won't rehash here.) I have been writing for years, I've had positive feedback and encouragement to go further with writing, and I would love to dive in and get an MFA and really learn about the craft of writing. I want to become better. However, I've always held back, because I've been worried about exactly this sort of thing. I'm a quiet person who isn't very sophisticated when it comes to navigating treacherous social waters like this. I'm neurodivergent; this is beyond my literal social abilities. The idea of trying to hang with groups like GrubStreet in order to become a better writer is completely intimidating. I am not worried about my ability to learn and improve my actual writing in an MFA program, but I know I could not excel at the social climbing and general nastiness that seems to be part and parcel of the programs and the writers groups.

Because, let's face it, Celeste Ng, Sonya Larson, NK Jemisin, Roxane Gay, Chip Cheek, Calvin Hennick, and the other writers at the center of inexplicably cruel destructions of budding writers like this, well, nothing will happen to them for what they've done. Their victims won't recover, but they'll be just fine. Isabel Fall is literally destroyed as a person. Dawn Dorland will never publish even if she wanted to, unless it is a predatory "tell all" contract, but probably not even that since what else is there to say? Meanwhile literary gatekeepers like Helen Rosner are out there defending the indefensible, so you know where the publishers stand.

I want to learn to be a better writer, but at what cost? Does improving your writing mean losing your ethics? Does it mean you have to be willing to savage people behind their backs? To turn into someone who delights in mindless social destruction? Is it even worth trying if you know you don't have the social skills to navigate such treacherous interpersonal waters? I don't know, but the whole story saddens me on an additional personal level because I know one thing for sure: I'll never fit into that world. I can't. And it seems that's the price of admission for learning to be a better writer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the Corker letter proves what people say it proves. If I were a writer trying to get someone to talk to me, or a detective trying to get a murderer to talk to me, I would try to see the story from their point of view and explain as well as I could how I found their POV relatable. Even if maybe I didn't, completely. Corker had already been working on the story for a while with material only provided from Dorland, so he had to know that Larsen would need a reason to be persuaded about how he wasn't already biased against her. So he gave her that.

I don't feel one way or the other about who Corker really sided with or what he was trying to do when he wrote the article. But the only way he was going to get Larsen to talk to him is if her persuaded her that her point of view would be represented in the story, and that he was a good person to articulate what the POV was.

Hmm, disagree. Journalists are supposed to be neutral, and he should have gone into the story without an agenda - yet he stated it. Therefore anything he found that refuted that he couldn't well use because then she could (rightfully) claim he'd duped her. There's absolutely no reason he couldn't have said: "Hey Sonia, Dawn pitched us about your legal entanglements. I'm going to write a feature about it for the NYTimes. I would love to have your input to get the full story and represent both sides...." Then, tack on the line he actually wrote "As I hope you'll see from my other work, I do not come into stories as a judge and jury." Honestly, if she didn't participate, he could have written the story about Dawn, but that wasn't his angle. He even said he wanted people to "experience it" what she (only Sonia) went through.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here they are, in all their Chunkster glory. So glad they named names so I can know who to avoid buying books by in the future.





The Chunky Monkeys. Back row (l. to r.): Calvin Hennick, Sonya Larson, Whitney Scharer, Chip Cheek, Grace Talusan, Celeste Ng, Christopher Castellani, and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. Front row: Becky Tuch (l.) and Adam Stumacher. Not pictured, co-founder Jennifer De Leon.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/80887-two-boston-writing-groups-produce-12-books.html

Wait, that's Sonya Larson!? I would have 10000% assumed she was White

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the Corker letter proves what people say it proves. If I were a writer trying to get someone to talk to me, or a detective trying to get a murderer to talk to me, I would try to see the story from their point of view and explain as well as I could how I found their POV relatable. Even if maybe I didn't, completely. Corker had already been working on the story for a while with material only provided from Dorland, so he had to know that Larsen would need a reason to be persuaded about how he wasn't already biased against her. So he gave her that.

I don't feel one way or the other about who Corker really sided with or what he was trying to do when he wrote the article. But the only way he was going to get Larsen to talk to him is if her persuaded her that her point of view would be represented in the story, and that he was a good person to articulate what the POV was.

Hmm, disagree. Journalists are supposed to be neutral, and he should have gone into the story without an agenda - yet he stated it. Therefore anything he found that refuted that he couldn't well use because then she could (rightfully) claim he'd duped her. There's absolutely no reason he couldn't have said: "Hey Sonia, Dawn pitched us about your legal entanglements. I'm going to write a feature about it for the NYTimes. I would love to have your input to get the full story and represent both sides...." Then, tack on the line he actually wrote "As I hope you'll see from my other work, I do not come into stories as a judge and jury." Honestly, if she didn't participate, he could have written the story about Dawn, but that wasn't his angle. He even said he wanted people to "experience it" what she (only Sonia) went through.

Anonymous wrote:I think one reason I feel so upset and bothered by this is that I know what happens to you, mentally and emotionally, when you get ganged up on in this kind of way. When it happened to me, I became depressed, self-loathing to a disturbing degree. I started self-harming, my husband worried that I would do something terrible. If I hadn't been a mom, I would have worried too -- caring what happened to my kids and needing to protect them from the situation got me through.

The Vox piece upthread about Isabel Fall brought all that back. Getting rejected and humiliated in this way (and I wasn't dealing with a Twitter mob of thousands, just a small group of friends and professional acquaintances upon whom I'd based a huge part of my sense of belonging in the world) is life changing. I do worry for Dawn, and part of what makes me so angry is that people don't seem to understand that no matter how annoying someone is, they don't deserve to want to die because of it. Like you don't have to punish socially awkward people for being socially awkward -- it punishes itself! You can just leave people like this alone and move on with your life instead of giving into your perverse need to crap all over them until they hate themselves as much as you hate them.

Anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think one reason I feel so upset and bothered by this is that I know what happens to you, mentally and emotionally, when you get ganged up on in this kind of way. When it happened to me, I became depressed, self-loathing to a disturbing degree. I started self-harming, my husband worried that I would do something terrible. If I hadn't been a mom, I would have worried too -- caring what happened to my kids and needing to protect them from the situation got me through.

The Vox piece upthread about Isabel Fall brought all that back. Getting rejected and humiliated in this way (and I wasn't dealing with a Twitter mob of thousands, just a small group of friends and professional acquaintances upon whom I'd based a huge part of my sense of belonging in the world) is life changing. I do worry for Dawn, and part of what makes me so angry is that people don't seem to understand that no matter how annoying someone is, they don't deserve to want to die because of it. Like you don't have to punish socially awkward people for being socially awkward -- it punishes itself! You can just leave people like this alone and move on with your life instead of giving into your perverse need to crap all over them until they hate themselves as much as you hate them.

Anyway.

I feel like this is one reason I have always consciously/subconsciously avoided group friendship scenarios. Too scary to contemplate being turned on by a whole group, and I think I always sensed that I would end up ostracized if I tried to enter a group. I am very happy with the close 1:1 friendships I have, happy to meet my friends' friends every so often. But getting enmeshed in a "friendship group" ... shudder.

Anonymous wrote:I think one reason I feel so upset and bothered by this is that I know what happens to you, mentally and emotionally, when you get ganged up on in this kind of way. When it happened to me, I became depressed, self-loathing to a disturbing degree. I started self-harming, my husband worried that I would do something terrible. If I hadn't been a mom, I would have worried too -- caring what happened to my kids and needing to protect them from the situation got me through.

The Vox piece upthread about Isabel Fall brought all that back. Getting rejected and humiliated in this way (and I wasn't dealing with a Twitter mob of thousands, just a small group of friends and professional acquaintances upon whom I'd based a huge part of my sense of belonging in the world) is life changing. I do worry for Dawn, and part of what makes me so angry is that people don't seem to understand that no matter how annoying someone is, they don't deserve to want to die because of it. Like you don't have to punish socially awkward people for being socially awkward -- it punishes itself! You can just leave people like this alone and move on with your life instead of giving into your perverse need to crap all over them until they hate themselves as much as you hate them.

Anyway.

Anonymous wrote:Here they are, in all their Chunkster glory. So glad they named names so I can know who to avoid buying books by in the future.





The Chunky Monkeys. Back row (l. to r.): Calvin Hennick, Sonya Larson, Whitney Scharer, Chip Cheek, Grace Talusan, Celeste Ng, Christopher Castellani, and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. Front row: Becky Tuch (l.) and Adam Stumacher. Not pictured, co-founder Jennifer De Leon.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/80887-two-boston-writing-groups-produce-12-books.html

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the Corker letter proves what people say it proves. If I were a writer trying to get someone to talk to me, or a detective trying to get a murderer to talk to me, I would try to see the story from their point of view and explain as well as I could how I found their POV relatable. Even if maybe I didn't, completely. Corker had already been working on the story for a while with material only provided from Dorland, so he had to know that Larsen would need a reason to be persuaded about how he wasn't already biased against her. So he gave her that.

I don't feel one way or the other about who Corker really sided with or what he was trying to do when he wrote the article. But the only way he was going to get Larsen to talk to him is if her persuaded her that her point of view would be represented in the story, and that he was a good person to articulate what the POV was.