Writer's block is deadly, even more so when you are committed to penning a weekly serial as I currently am (Bleeder is ongoing at BleederBook.com and on Wattpad at http://www.wattpad.com/story/856099-bleeder, if you want to check it out). This week the dastardly demon reared its ugly head and forced me into battle. Here are some the weapons I utilized in combat.

1. The Book's Soundtrack

There's been a lot of commotion happening in the online horror writing community this week over the editorial work of one Anthony Giangregorio of Open Casket/Undead Press - and with just cause, I might add. So before I launch into this, let's get two things clear. ONE: A good editor works WITH a writer to shape a story into the best piece of fiction it can possibly be. TWO: A bad editor insinuates themselves all over the work and gives the writer absolutely no recourse in the matter, except to scream about it on the internet after publication when it's too late to do anything about the travesty that his or her name has been attached to. And that is exactly what Giangregorio did, with a side helping of freshly grown grammatical errors (in the story's title no less!) and an extra serving of beastiality for the plot. Who wouldn't be upset?

I feel for Mandy DeGeit and the other authors involved who are starting to come out of the woodwork and tell their stories. I had a similar experience once upon a time, as a newbie author, with a different small press. It was so devastating and embarrassing that I actually stopped writing for a whole two years of my life. Unscrupulous companies like these find easy prey in new writers who don't know what to expect from the publication process or how they should demand to be treated during it. When it happened to me, in my early twenties, I didn't know that I should be asking for a final proof of the book to sign off on before it went to print - I trusted that the publisher knew what it was doing. Trust, as I quickly discovered, is a dangerous thing when put in the wrong people.

I ended up starting Burning Effigy Press as a direct result of this humiliating experience. It was my way of turning a major negative in my life into a positive, and moving on. The original idea behind the press was to give up-and-coming authors a supportive and quality first publication experience. Over the past thirteen years that direction has changed fundamentally as we've become a genre imprint for more established talents, but the love and care and author involvement in the publishing process hasn't changed one iota.

For those who care - and for Mr. Giangregorio, who seems to need a primer - this is how we do a book:

Once we buy a story, we do a full edit complete with fully visible notes and changes. Minor things such as grammatical errors, duplicate word usage, occasional adjective replacement, issues with sentence structure and other mechanical errors, I tend to correct and/or make suggestions for. Larger plot problems, namely continuity errors, unbelievable character arcs, scenes that require a little bit more emotional weight and/or resonance all get sent back to the author to correct themselves, with specific notes from me. It is still their story after all, not mine, even though I paid to publish it.

The author then gets this entire edit to go over, tweak, sign off on and make the requested changes to. The author also works with their edits/changes fully visible, so that I can see what has been done to the story when it returns to my desk.

At this point I do a sign-off/copy-editing pass. If there's anything we are still butting heads over or not quite seeing eye to eye about, we have a meeting where the author can argue his side and I can relay mine. The meeting does not conclude until we are both in absolute agreement about the story. That's not to say I'm a push-over - anyone who has worked with me knows that there are certain things as an editor I slam my foot down on firm and hard about - but I always like to give an author a chance to prove me wrong, and I kind of love it when they do. I think these sorts of debates and challenges only make for a stronger, tighter, toothier story. Editing should be a collaboration, not a steam-rolling tanker truck.

And as an editor, I don't want to steal your story or splatter myself all over it - I have my own writing to do that in - I just want to finesse it into something we are both 100% proud of publishing, which is why nothing at Burning Effigy goes to print without full sign-off from myself and the author, and this includes both interiors and covers. I would rather delay a book, than release it without these checks and balances in place.

Maybe that's why four of our titles have made it onto the final Bram Stoker Awards ballot, and maybe that's why we have the reputation that we do.

Either way, I don't buy that excuse about writers not being able to edit. I'm both a writer and editor professionally and other than struggling to find the time to do both, I've never found it particularly challenging to keep them separate. I don't edit because I can't write or can't succeed as a writer, I edit because I love stories.

In fact, I've often thought that being a writer may make me an even better, more intuitive editor, because I know how writers like to be/should be treated, and I have a unique perspective of both sides of the business. If anything, a writer should have more respect for his or her colleagues, because they are members of the same creative tribe. But just as not everyone is meant to be a writer, not everyone is meant to edit.

But how do you protect yourself as a newcomer from the bad eggs? Talk to people. Google the company. Read a book they've put out. Don't just blindly submit. Find out about a publisher's reputation first. Ask someone who has worked with them what the experience was like. The internet was still in its infancy when this happened to me, but now information is as close as your fingertips twenty-four hours a day - so use it!

When people ask me about what Burning Effigy and I are like to work with, I encourage them to ask some of our authors. After all, why should they just take it from me? Go to the source, see if it's an experience you want to have.

Remember, writing is a job, so treat it with that same level of commitment, even if you are just starting out. You wouldn't apply to work at a sketchy sweatshop, so don't allow your fiction to get the same ghetto treatment. And when it does, don't be afraid to name names and point fingers. Because if this week has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that the genre world is wonderful at self-policing and calling out those committing wanton douche-baggery. So yes, use that too.

I wrote this post three days ago, and I've been sitting on it ever since, wondering if I should release it. I've ultimately decided to, but with this little introduction attached.

Before you read on, I want you to know that I did not write this looking for pity or sympathy, I have spent years coming to terms with these experiences and have long moved past them. I did not write this to make my family feel bad for what they didn't/couldn't do to help me back then. And I certainly didn't write this to gain attention for myself. I wrote it to discuss the very personal matter of bullying and how tragedy and childhood struggles do not negate its effects, but if anything make them that much worse. I wrote it to add my voice to a recent controversy surrounding the documentary Bully. To share my side, as someone's who had been there and somehow survived it. I wrote this to explain that how no matter what a child is dealing with, being bullied makes those things ten million times harder to overcome.

Now, onto the post...

* * *

Just because something is true doesn't mean it's valid.

In this bit of Bully controversy, a reviewer calls out the filmmakers for not disclosing a teen's mental health in the documentary, nor a couple other potential mitigating factors in his suicide. Factually, this is one hundred percent correct (they didn't, though they've discussed it at film fests and in the media, so it's not a big secret either), but the problem is, that "truth" doesn't change the validity or the horrificness of his bullying one bit. If anything it makes it that much more callous, and this reviewer's between-the-lines suggestion that this victim's mental health or personal struggles in any way negate or lessen the effects of being bullied is absolutely beyond recourse.

I know this. Intimately. Because once upon a time that was my life.

A lot of people I know look back on their childhoods fondly, wish they could go back to relive them. I do not and never have. My childhood was the single most hellish thing I have ever lived through. And if I hadn't survived it, you could have blamed it on any number of things: my social awkwardness, my mother's death, my own depression, but that stuff was just damned hard, it was the constant bullying and ostracization that made it nearly unbearable.

I was one of those children who never fit in. Right from the first day of kindergarten. I didn't hang out with kids my age much before starting school, so I hadn't properly learned how relate to my peers. It wasn't a far fall from exclusion to "torment the misfit."

Then my mom got sick with depression. I stopped being allowed to go to birthday parties because we could not reciprocate. I stuck out even more. I had no friends. My home life was weird and confusing, and my school life was a daily misery. I started acting out in class. I know now, I was silently screaming for help that I didn't even know existed. But I wasn't brave enough to say the words, so I just got sent to the hallway for time-outs a lot.

When I was seven, my mother killed herself. Let me tell you how long sympathy lasts among second graders: one week. Then the bullying had a brand new soul-destroying flavour, and it was one that would stick around for next six years: crazy dead mother.

Okay, here's something that most people will never have to go through, and I honest to god wish it on none of you. Grieving the loss of a parent while being forced to endure a daily barrage of ridicule about his/her illness and subsequent death, and at yourself, for being the offspring of "the crazy" and thus also crazy (you gotta love playground logic). Grown-ups aren't emotionally prepared to deal with that, let alone seven year olds. I'm not sure I properly mourned my mother's passing until I was in my twenties as a result, and I can't even begin to tell you the profound effect that bullying had on my childhood. It changes you. It changes your whole life.

There is no way that something like that doesn't.

And that's the point of this little story. It doesn't matter if this Tyler kid had ADD or Asperger's or was bi-polar or anything else, he was still being bullied. And unless you're suggesting that it is okay to bully someone because they are sick (in the head or body) then it's a non-starter.

In fact, chances are there was some cause and effect going on there. His medical issues likely gave the bullies a soft spot to pick at - I know this, because this is exactly how they work, they find the weakness and then exploit it endlessly. (My best friend, who came into my life like a ray of light eleven months after my mother's death, told me many years later that the kids on our school bus used to swap tips on exactly what to say to me to make me cry.)

It's impossible to heal, to move on, to love yourself, to nurture any self-esteem, to overcome medical/personal obstacles when everyday is a battleground, when everyday you are beaten back down, and kicked where you are already bruised.

So yes, reviewer, you are right, there were omissions in the film, but at the end of the day, they only add to Tyler's story (and perhaps make it that much more poignant and powerful). They certainly don't change the facts or its tragic outcome.

I could have been Tyler. And that's why I defend him, because there's no way to understand or really conceive of how bad it can be, until you've lived through years of it yourself.

Watch Bully, get informed about the issue and then fight to be the change you want.

No childhood should be hell. We can do better.