Even adults get bullied. What to do about it?

On the blog today I have a guest post by Tahlia Newland author of You Can’t Shatter Me, a new young adult novella about bullying. Tahlia writes magical realism and contemporary fantasy for young adults & adults. Her short story A Hole in the Pavement  is free on kindle until the  7^th July.

When I wrote You Can’t Shatter Me, although I set it in a school situation with teens as the main characters, I wrote it for everyone no matter what their age and situation because even adults get bullied. One of the reasons bullying is so entrenched in our society is because it permeates all strata of life, often hidden beneath an ‘acceptable’ veneer and unrecognised for what it is.

Bullying is a persistent, deliberate attempt to hurt or humiliate someone. There are different types of bullying but they have three things in common:

• They involve deliberately hurtful behaviour
• They are repeated over time
• They involve an unfair balance of power which makes it hard for those being bullied to defend themselves.

Unfortunately, bullying is alive and flourishing on the internet. Perpetrators of cyber-bullying are called Trolls, and prolonged & shockingly systematic attacks by such people on authors are becoming far too common. Katherine Ashe, one author who has borne the brunt of this kind of behavior, says, “That fellow authors and their friends would behave in this way on the World Wide Web is worse than shameful. It’s unprofessional and infantile.”

It is also quite simply wrong. However, stopping it is not a simple matter because those who bully enjoy the drama and feeling of power it gives them. Also, they are likely to find valid-sounding reasons to justify their behavior and may even not be aware that what they are doing is actually bullying.

So what are we to do if we are the butt of bullying?

First we need to accept that we can’t control the bully’s behavior, but we can control how we let it affect us. Normally, we get angry and defensive. We lose our peace of mind. But instead of reacting with fear and hatred, we could use the situation to arouse our compassion. Having compassion in our heart calms and strengthens us, and through our changed behavior positively affects the behavior of others. Here’s the logic.

People bully because they are feeling one or more of the following.

• Afraid
• Jealous
• Envious
• Cruel
• Angry
• Insecure
• Unhappy
• Arrogant
• Weak

These are unpleasant mind states to be in. So the bully is unhappy or, at the least, ill at ease in some way. Just like us, they want to be happy, but they aren’t. Imagine how it would be to live with a mind and heart full of any of those emotions listed above? Ouch. Not a good feeling, right?

Now, try wishing that they be well and happy.  Visualise them as so well and happy that they no longer feel the need to hurt others. It takes courage to turn our attitude around like this, to wish well the person who is hurting us, but each time we do it, we become stronger and more able to stay cool, calm and collected in the face of abuse.

With this attitude we will naturally be less inclined to inflame and more likely to ease the situation. A compassionate attitude is so radical that actions imbued with it can stop bullies in their tracks.

So for online bullying I’d say

1. Don’t take it personally, even if they mean it to be. It’s just a bad role they’re playing in a cruddy story. Don’t make it yours by buying into their drama.
2. Ignore it if you can, and use the perpetrator’s suffering to arouse your compassion. Think, how awful it must be to be them, and remind yourself that their behaviour will do them more harm in the long run than it will you.
3. If you need to respond to a valid question, or correct a misunderstanding,
• don’t attack them back or use language that will inflame them. Don’t even call them Trolls in direct communications with them, instead appeal to their better nature. Even though they may seem like it, they are not Trolls by nature, just people behaving like Trolls.
• Be very respectful and kind. Leave a short, polite, non-emotive statement. Let them know that you respect their opinion and would appreciate it if they could, in turn, keep their comments respectful.
4. If it continues, it’s best that you ignore it, but if you must reply, leave another polite statement that indicates that you’re sorry they feel that way, but the manner in which they express their opinions is hostile and inappropriate.
• If they are still raising the same concerns or arguments, don’t repeat yourself, instead leave links to places where you have already addressed their concerns.
• Let them know that you do not intend to engage with them any further.
• End by wishing them well.
5. Then, say no more. Let them talk into a vacuum. If you reply to them, the whole thing will keep going. Simply don’t visit the forums where they abuse you. It will blow over eventually.

I use analogies and metaphors for the magical elements in my writing. One that helps here is that bullies are playing a game, but you don’t have to play with them. For a game to continue, it needs two sides, one to throw the ball and one to hit it back. If you don’t hit it back, they are left chasing the ball. So don’t play and tell your friends not to play either.

The next time someone hassles you, remember that they are unhappy in some way and wish them happiness. See how it changes how you feel. A heart full of love and compassion is the best protection.

These are the kind of ideas that pervade You Can’t Shatter Me. How do they sound to you?

You can find Tahlia's book at: 

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Shatter-Me-ebook/dp/B008DME8PA
Epub files for Nook, Kobo, Sony etc: http://catapult-press/shop
Files for all devices: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/174488

book website: www.simon-de-montfort.com
personal website: www.katherineashe.com

Katherine Ashe is the author of the  four volume Montfort novelized series
http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Ashe/e/B004OTWHNQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1398361940&sr=1-2-ent

Trolls, Harpies and Civilized Discussion

From the time two years ago when the first book of my four volume historical novel Montfort was published, it and I have been the target of a little group of on-line attackers.

How did this happen? The initial and ongoing target is not actually my books, the attackers for the most part haven’t read them. It’s the blurb for the first book. 

The blurb actually came into being in 2005, long before the books were in print. I had my doubts about using it since it wasn’t intended for book promotion, but my academic advisers loved it. 

When the blurb, and by implication the book, was attacked by this little group of trolls I asked Amazon to change the blurb. Their response, in red print, was “93% of the people who see this page buy the book.” They would only slightly amend the most targeted statement to a question. Here’s how the blurb came into being.

I had been working on Montfort since 1977, but I also wrote plays and screenplays. After seeing “The Lord of the Rings” it occurred to me that Viggo Mortensen might be a good choice to play Simon de Montfort, so I wrote to my Hollywood lawyer/agent. It had been a while since I'd written to him and my letter came back – he had moved. 

Letter in hand, I was grumbling. Our house guest, an acterss and film producer, asked what the problem was. I told her, and she immediately exclaimed, “Viggo! I know Viggo. I have a friend who wants to produce an epic trilogy with him. Would there be a part for Johnny Depp?”

My friend, be it understood, really does know nearly everybody in Hollywood. All she asked of me was that I sum up my book of 1650 manuscript pages in five or six compelling sentences. I managed to do that.

He was deeply religious and the greatest knight of his time, 
but he married a nun who was the King of England’s sister. 
Was he the Queen’s lover and father of the heir to the throne? 
King Henry III wanted him dead at any cost. 
He conquered England and founded parliament.
For 700 years it was a hanging crime to speak his name: 
Simon de Montfort.

While that summation differs from the works of most other authors, it was, in brief, the conclusions thirty years of deep research, much of it in 13^th century documents, indicated.  

We got a return email from my friend's friend asking for the scripts – three of them. I said “Who is this friend of yours for whom I’d be doing all this work?” “Oh,” she replied, and named the CEO of a major Hollywood studio.

I spent the next three years writing those three scripts – and a fourth, a single script of the whole span of the story. For, by the time I had finished the three, the CEO had left his company and was starting up his own company, with my scripts in hand.

When I decided at last that I really must stop this endless research and readjustment of my manuscript, and get Montfort into print, I consulted my academic advisers, professors of medieval history. They urged that I use the blurb. They felt strongly that the blurb was just the thing to reach beyond academia to new readership. No doubt it has.

But very soon it picked up a troll review on Amazon – someone who made a point of not having read the book but ranted over the blurb because it differed regarding Edward I’s birth from conventional modern histories and a popular novel written some years earlier.(The troll review has since been toned down.) 

Professors who specialize in the period think my views regarding Edward intriguing. I’ve never claimed that I’ve discovered an irrefutable truth.

Shortly after the troll item appeared  on Amazon I found that a search of my name turned up a lengthy attack on my book and on me in an Historical Novel Society chat thread. Here was an astonishing exercise of several established novelists behaving like bullies attacking the "new girl on the playground."

None of them had read my book, but they accused me of commercial lewdness. One of these attackers said that (I apparently) had Queen Eleanor so devoted to sex that when she wasn’t in bed with someone she was masturbating(sic!) 

There is a Queen Eleanor in my book, but this remark was so remote from anything I’ve written that it left me entirely astounded. Later in the chat it appeared that I was, perhaps deliberately, being confused with another author, one who wrote of Eleanor of Aquitaine (which I do not) and whose work these trolls evidently didn't like.

The Historical Novel Society’s own review is strong in its praise of Montfort: 

When reading through the ample “historical context” notes that follow each volume of Katherine Ashe’s utterly remarkable tetralogy of novels based on the life of 13th-century warrior-statesman Simon de Montfort, one thing becomes obvious: she could easily have produced the most authoritative English-language biography of her subject ever written.
See:   http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/montfort/

Since the HNS chat attacks in 2010, I’ve had complaints from readers who claim they’ve been brutalized on Amazon chat sites for writing enthusiastically about my work. These attacks have been by some of  the same established authors who attacked me before, with the addition of a few new recruits.

The most recent manifestation of this bullying occurred over four days this past week on my Facebook site, with one of the old, implacable bullies and four new converts. 

Only one of the five appeared to have read my work. The crux of his complaint seemed to be that I write so persuasively I have a responsibility to be accurate. He then brought forth selections from 13th century writers and later historians that differ from my views. 

The surviving records from the time of Simon de Montfort are filled with differing and contentious views. It’s been my business for over 30 years to sort through them, taking into consideration the politics and purposes of each writer.

The aim of my books has been to use the novel form to take a fresh look at what these 13^th century sources may mean. I state clearly in each Author’s Preface that the following pages are speculation, and I provide 181 pages of  bibliography and Historical Context (footnotes) in the 1585 pages of the four volumes of Montfort, citing my sources, with page numbers, and explaining the reasons for my interpretations. 

The absurd theme of my hecklers is that I don't support what I've written -- no one else supports their historical novels as I do. My aim, as I've often stated, is to use the novel form to offer speculations where what remains of an historical record is vague, implausible, contradictory. And where other authors have freely glossed over these problems with their own fictions or interpretations.

I welcome discussion. My speculations are indeed controversial. I ask no one to "believe" what I write. Belief isn't the domain of any novel. And Montfort was very deliberately written as a novel. What I ask is: does this line of thinking make sense of the surviving material.

The Web offers tremendous opportunity for a community of  free exchange of ideas. How do we change this rude and hostile blighting of a great intellectual asset?

book website: www.simon-de-montfort.com
personal website: www.katherineashe.com

Katherine Ashe is the author of the  four volume Montfort novelized series
http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Ashe/e/B004OTWHNQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1398361940&sr=1-2-ent