I feel like entitlement and resentment are two separate, if related, things and Scalzi is conflating them. I've had enough experience with both to tell.
Basically, I'm restating your first paragraph. Because I can't be expected to read that far all at once.
Oh, I can see that. Starting from law school, my legal career could have gone in some much more impressive directions than it has. If I weren't very clear that mostly, my career track is explained by a combination of laziness, lack of focus, and disliking the sorts of entities that pay lawyers lots of money, I could definitely get into blaming The Man for keeping me down.
That confusion might be me rather than Scalzi. I don't remember if he calls it "entitlement" (though he calls it brain eating, which seems even less precise).
Speaking of the corrosive effects of entitlement, it being Cinco de Mayo reminds me of His Imperial Majesty, Maximilian I of Mexico.
White men made me drop and break my earring this morning.
I'm sorry, heebie.
Didn't we have a post a long time ago about the point at which we all ceased to be promising?
I don't recall. Probably sometime in 2003 or so.
The latest title for my never to be written autobiography is Somewhat Disappointing: The peep story
That title has already been used for a review of the candy.
Through the Peep-Hole: Somewhat Disappointing
10: Really? My wife said it the other day when she went to get a slice of cheese and it turned out there was just a 1/2 a slice left.
Except when there's only 1/2 a slice left.
13: No one by choice. But sometimes we give a 1/2 slice to our little dog.
Maybe they ate 3/2 of a slice of cheese. Don't be a numerator primalist.
Omg, a student fell asleep taking the final exam.
They bite if you wake them suddenly.
It's best to get your hands wet, go over to them, give a giant fake-sneeze and shake droplets of water all over them.
In high school, a friend of mine fell asleep with his head on the desk. A teacher woke him by dropping a book on the desk. The friend is dead (car accident) and the teacher is retired and entitled (voted Trump because liberals).
18: I didn't want to have to tell you this, heebie, but now I think I have to tell you the truth. Your final exams are boring.
I made this one short! I finally realized that a long, comprehensive final exam mostly punishes me, for relatively little pedagogical benefit.
|| In CdM news, my granddaughter is a descendant of the kid sister of Gen. Ignacio Mejia, one of the leaders at the battle of Puebla, thereafter governor of that state. (And, eventually, a member of the Juarez cabinet.) She -- my granddaughter -- was captivated by my rendition of I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande this morning. |>
Entitlement and resentment are different things, but I took Scalzi to be talking about how a person who feels entitled by virtue of their success comes to be resentful. A lot more writers get to where Scalzi was five years ago than to where he is today, and more people get to where he is today than get to "permanently beloved elder statesman" status. But you don't get to where Scalzi was five years ago without receiving the kind of success that makes it seductive to think "Yes, I am actually really good at this, and I can make it, and there's no reason not to imagine that I won't [xyz that never happens for most people]." Then they need an explanation for why their career track suddenly stalled out at the 90th percentile of success, and it can't be "that other guy just connected better with more readers" or "just bad luck," and that's when the resentment comes in.
I think this is different than "I could have been somebody if it weren't for all the forces working against me," because you can't tell yourself that story if you've already won a Hugo.
If you were a good writer, you can tell yourself any sort of story.
My comment from over at Scalzi's, starting with a quote from his post:
"They might also recognize that in writing, at least, it is never too late -- as long as you're writing and submitting and putting your work out there, there's always another chance for you and your work. "
I wonder about this just a little bit. Authors who publish under new names because publishers look at a track record under their original name; authors whose books get lost in the shuffle when editors move, or whole imprints get folded; authors who get older than the young editors or sales forces; there are probably more ways for it to be too late, but I haven't been a bookseller in a while, and the field moves on. Barry Hughart chronicles some of the things that happened to him and Number Ten Ox and Master Li, by way of explaining why there are only three of those books. Judith Tarr has written about how industry changes meant that her advances were going to zero. Elizabeth Willey's first book was characterized as "nice princes in Amber," which is both very apt and something that seems like it ought to sell by the bushel. She published three books in the 1990s. Was that all she wrote? Is she still writing? Who knows?
So I wonder.
I think Scalzi might be musing on this recounting from Leckie about better-established writers giving supposedly friendly but actually unhelpful advice as she came up, and her later realizing how invested they were in their "established expert" status. From other stuff I've read I think the advcice often boiled down to "everyone knows this weird gender stuff just doesn't sell".
I wonder if somebody told Chuck Tingle what would sell?
Ah yes: "Pounding conventional wisdom in the butt: Chuck Tingle's rules for success"
"The brain eater" is a standing trope about science fiction writers when they get old and their occasional tendency to pick up fringe science notions and move sharply to the right politically.