There is a thought I've expressed elsewhere in these pages, namely that publishers sometimes dismiss a pitch because the person sending it clearly has low social skills and poor judgement -and that's not unreasonable, because low empathy leads to bad writing. You need empathy to write characters, or at least a sense of how people behave.

Does this mean that all writers are sweet, empathic people?

Well, obviously not. Most of the ones I know are very nice; I suspect some writers act badly because they are, by their nature, emotional people who can overreact; but some, possibly, are just ratty, unpleasant gits.

However, you may notice, if you peruse discussion websites for aspiring writers, that some people take this as evidence that there's no need to observe the usual etiquettes when trying to find yourself an agent or publisher. 'Why should I have to go out of my way? Lots of successful writers don't.'

This is a position I would counsel against. For one thing, when approaching publishers, if you really want your book published then you ought to do whatever maximises its chances of being considered, and it's simply more in your interests. It can do no possible harm to observe the etiquette, and it may do you harm if you don't - in which case, the biggest loss will be yours. But for another, the behaviour of other writers is no guide to your own.

The analogy that occurs to me comes from a documentary I saw about speed dating. (Comparing publishing to dating is, as you know if you've been hanging out here for a while, something I do from time to time, mostly because it seems to work.) Three of the men taking part in this filmed speed date were, secretly, members of some club that taught an Aggressive Flirting Technique. Its principle was to make the woman want your approval by acting like you were out of her reach and putting her on the back foot with negative remarks - I'm sure the method will be familiar to many of you. The technique was supposed to be infallible, a bulletproof limousine ride to lots and lots of sex with compliant, beautiful, submissive women.

To my gleeful amusement, these men had the absolute worst approval rating of all the men taking part in the experiment. Most men there got between two and six matches, based on acting naturally and trying to be likeable. Not so our Infallible Technique friends, though. One of them got one match, way below average. The other two guys got no matches at all; not a single woman wanted to see them ever again. One woman, having written either 'yes' or 'no' on her scorecard for most of the men, filled in an Infallible's box with, instead, a note reading 'arse'. They were not popular.

But chatting to friends, I've heard people say, 'I've seen that technique work'. And quite possibly it has. The making-a-woman-want-your-approval method is, I suspect, copied from watching a certain kind of sexually successful man, generally of the kind that leads gentler men to mutter 'Why do girls always go for bastards?' into their pints. Such a man has sufficient looks, status and confidence to get away with flirting-through-negation. It works, he does it and lots of pretty women sleep with him. Sounds nice, no?

But it's a Pen Fatale technique. He can make it fly because he learned it through a combination of trial and error, instinct, and feeling out what suited his personality. Social confidence and social skill enable him to navigate a tricky technique without crashing and burning. I have the strong suspicion, however, that a man who tries that method because he's read in a book that it works is not going to have the skill to pull it off. If he could make it work, he'd have worked it out for himself. It's a high-risk strategy, that only some people can do successfully. In that little experiment, women who the Flirting School men tried it on thought the guys were arrogant and rude, not cool and desirable. It backfired, because the guys were doing it mechanistically, following an instruction manual, rather than out of a sense of what worked for them. (If they'd had better judgement to begin with, for one thing, they might have realised that might work over several hours in a bar, surrounded by mutual acquaintances who aren't openly on the pull themselves, does not transfer smoothly into a speed dating environment, where you have only three minutes apiece to spend with twenty different women, flirting while surrounded by strangers, all of whom are flirting as well. But that's what I mean. A sexually successful, socially skilled man would have had the wit to adapt his technique to the environment; they didn't, because they were going on imitation rather than intelligence. Silly boys.)

And here's the thing: the people who can do it successfully already know who they are. They've tried it, and it's paid off, and they're pretty sure what they're doing - sure as in 'this has worked before and I know I can manage it', not as in 'this theory sounds so good I'm sure it ought to work'. If you're not sure you can make it work, then you can't. And if that's the case, you're better off trying to be nice. Some people can get away with acting too-sexy-for-this-conversation, but most of us can't. Niceness, however, works pretty much whoever tries it. It is a far safer strategy.

The same thing applies to writing. Possibly a genius can act out and still be published, but are you a genius? Are you sure? Not absolutely certain? In which case, be nice. And don't forget, being nice won't do a genius any harm either. Discourteous behaviour is something that people get away with, occasionally, not something that brings success, whereas courtesy and professionalism are predictably useful whoever tries them. They won't get a truly unpublishable book published, but they will get manuscripts read with a more favourable eye and make professionals more willing to work with the aspiring writer. It works in every area. Some writers don't need any feedback, for instance, but they're statistically very rare. The odds are very heavy that you aren't one of them. (Neither am I, for the record. Feedback is good. Nor, incidentally, am I suave or brilliant enough to get away with being rude to publishers, hence I try to remember to say 'please' and 'thank you' like everyone else.) Some people can boss publishers around, or get special treatment, or have exceptions made for them, or bypass parts of the usual process - but all that means is that they can do it. It doesn't prove anything about anybody else. The exceptions are exceptional.

So next time you hear a story about a writer throwing their weight around and getting away with it, imagine the story in a book form - and remember, you're reading a biography, not a self-help guide.