[Discussion]: Friend is delusional

Throwaway for obvious reasons!

A friend has written a book - massive achievement whoo!! It’s a children’s book with fantastical elements, very tropey. She cannot decide who the main character is so you are constantly changing perspectives. It’s not written well and overall it’s just bad.

Recently, she posted to her bookstagram, wherein she detailed how no one would read her book and how she just needed ‘a mentor’ and ‘guidance’. I had multiple people message me to ask if this was indirect shade being thrown at me, and we all agreed that it probably was.

Oh boy here we go.

I’d like to preface that I have tried helping her multiple times and have a background in this world.

For example, she constantly expects me to drop what I am doing and will call multiple times until I answer so I can help her - only for my tips to be ignored. The latest being her synopsis.

I sat through that thing and went line by line to help. I was completely dismissed when I ask if she was writing the synopsis for an agent because it definitely did not read like one. She said no and that she was writing it for a publishers so she could ‘get some feedback’. HELLO??

I warned her about vanity presses and she said she’d never pay money to be published. Guess what guys, it was a vanity press.

She has then proceeded to email my old lecturers and is mad no one is sitting down to work on her synopsis with her or reading her book. I linked her to r/betareaders, r/writing and this sub, as well as the Writers and Artists Yearbook and she just brushed me off again.

But it’s not just me this is happening to!! Our friend actually did read the first chapter and it took her 3 hours to make edits due to how bad it was. Once the feedback was given, the writer decided our friend was wrong and constantly references her ‘bad feedback’.

I just think she cannot handle any criticism of any kind and expects to waltz into a publisher with the next best thing. This industry is brutal, hard and soul-sucking at times and she seems to be delusional about it all.

Do you have people like this in your lives? How do I tell her in a really nice way that I don’t want to discuss her book anymore or help her if I’m going to publicly blasted and dismissed?

TLDR: Friend’s book is bad and she will not listen to anyone