Lately there has been a running word battle on the Worlds of Fantasy group on Yahoo.  One commentator who posed the question "Can anyone write great epic fantasy?" has taken offense that others have asked about his writing and if he has published anything.  The poster said he had written 150 pieces for friends, none published, and pointed out his father had published two books and that a published writer was his mentor.  Needless to say  the young man demanded to know by what right the other posters thought they could judge his work.  A rather one-sided war of words ensued, with most posters trying to be civil and the young writer (who is clearly male) remaining offended and hostile.

I offer my response to this rumble, hugger-mugger, dispute, melee or whatever as I posted it, with some additions in brackets:

Dueling wounded egos is seriously uncool.  No one is as good as they think they are.  [Nor as bad as they fear they are.] We can all learn from others' writings and it's good to stretch your wings and even break the rules.  But first you must learn the rules--otherwise you're simply disregarding the rules and more than likely you'll be merely repeating amateurish mistakes and hackneyed cliches.

And being defensive [and hostile to boot] is certainly not a wise idea.  The immediate impression you give to other people is that you are an unremitting a**hole.  That does you no good. 

Similarly, telling us who is your mentor/teacher can be seen as name-dropping by a poseur.  I have a degree in professional writing from the journalism school at the University of Oklahoma.  I've studied with the late novelists Jack Bickham and Robert Duncan, and took a mystery writing class with Carolyn Hart.  I'm glad I did, but to make a big deal of it ignores the fact that others also took those classes and probably (defiinitely actually) have been more successful.  The teachers' cachet or your having well known writers as friends doesn't mean jack if you can't get your writing published. 

I'm just now getting some success, but it was the result of hard work and persistence.  Samuel Johnson once said that anyone who wrote for anything but money was a blockhead.  But if you are not able to get published, it's as if you had never written at all.  I have a saying in a frame on my desk: "Writing without publishing is like acting without applause."

Don't tell us how great your work is.  Starting sending it out and getting some rejection letters, develop a hide like a rhino and take the rejection as a measure of the quality of that piece and not a judgment of you.  Every rejection builds your skills as a writer.  I've had a novel published and one recently accepted.  Both of them had been submitted and rejected multiple times, but I tried to learn what I was doing incorrectly.  A minor rewrite of the ending of my novel Ukishima probably was the change that took it over the top to acceptance.  My other novel, The Gonaymne Weapon began as something I wrote as an undergrad and totally revised twice.  The final version has no resemblance to the first draft, other than the name of the protagonist and his basic character.  From the start I got that part right, but it took me time to bring everything else into clarity.  I grew as a storyteller with that manuscript, and finally learned about outlining a work rather than flying by the seat of my pants.  But that wouldn't have happened without editors telling me what was wrong or without me realizing I wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Without that self-criticism (what Russians call "samokritika")  I 'd probably not have anything published at all.

Writing is both a craft and a habit that must be continually practiced and refined.  Even sluggers keep taking batting practice, but they know that a great hitter still fails about 70 percent of the time.

In other words, a writer who thinks he's a god (or goddess)'s gift to the world has a fool for a fan club.

Do I have the right to judge anyone else's work? Yes.  But I must be a harsher judge of my own work and to develop a thick skin when taking criticism, especially my own.

Check your ego at the door.  It's not about you.  It's about the work.  If your piece sucks, ask why it sucks, take the criticism, and incorporate those suggestions which make sense.  As you become a good craftsmen, you will make the changes appear so seamless no one will ever know that the revisions weren't what you meant all along.