traditional publishing
image by Lumenoid
Around 12:10 a.m. on January 1st, just after 2019 began, I made what I hope will prove to be my worst choice of the entire year: I started watching the latest “Black Mirror” project on Netflix, alone, in the dark.
“Black Mirror” is eerie at best and often genuinely disturbing, and probably should not be watched alone in the dark in any case. In particular it should not be watched under those conditions when it’s not just a regular episode, but a stand-alone interactive movie that is asking you questions and presenting long stretches of new narrative based on your decisions. Because then? So much for sleep.
The name of the “Black Mirror” movie is “Bandersnatch,” and its choose-your-own-adventure format has given rise to the shorthand “bandersnatching,” which can either mean 1) watching the movie (not as interesting for our purposes today) or 2) making a series of irrevocable choices from behind the scenes.
So though you’ve probably never thought of it this way, you are, in short, bandersnatching your whole life. In the “Black Mirror” episode/movie, you’re bandersnatching Stefan — will he choose Sugar Puffs or Frosties for breakfast? take what he’s offered or refuse? go into a certain building or off down the street? — but of course, that’s not how life works. We may not be fully in charge, but no one else is, either, so it’s our choices, our decisions, that make the difference.
And sometimes it can feel like someone else is bandersnatching your writing career. Early in a traditional publishing career, someone else, an agent, is making the decision on whether or not to ask for your full manuscript when you send them a query letter or pitch them at a conference, and then makes the decision on whether to represent you; and in any author’s career regardless of publishing format, someone else, a reader, is making the individual decision of whether or not to buy the book. There are editors and sales teams and Costco decision makers and cover designers and book clubs and event organizers and festival committees and awards judges: sometimes it feels like everyone gets to make decisions about your book/s but you.
But it’s you, deep down. You’re bandersnatching. You’re making the most important choices.
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At the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, south of Athens. Image – iStockphoto: ISO3000
‘Actionable Epiphanies’
One of the first extended efforts in features writing I did on the way to journalism, many years ago, included an effort to describe the peculiar sensation of the holidays.
Across a lot of articles, I worked on issues around color and light; the seasonal commonality of a greeting (“happy holidays” as a unifying exchange phrase); and–inescapably–the magical realism of much of the scriptural literature, and of the “Christmas industry” that it has spawned, of course.
What was striking during all this–and I couldn’t let it filter into these pieces at the time–was the negative layer of disappointment that underlay so many aspects of all this.
The readings and interviews I was doing inevitably had something along the lines of, “Of course, that’s where the sadness always comes in.” Even among the happiest of yuletide Christian celebrants (and clergy) I encountered, there was a baked-in anticipation and expectation of a letdown. Many spoke without prompting of the “post-holiday blues.”
I found this frustrating. To me, the idea of life after the holidays being in various ways less cheerful was a given, and not where any emphasis was needed. There’s the return to work, the cold and darkness in many parts of the world, the quiet disappearance of the colorful light and trees.
But many years later, I’d find a short line that I think gets at what’s behind the cycle of emotional experience around the holidays. I’m adding the feminine to it because I hope its author would have wanted to do that if he were alive today.
Every man and woman regards his or her life as the New Year’s Eve of time.
Isn’t that a remarkable observation? Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, a writer in 18th-century Germany, was known as “Jean Paul.” He’d taken the name in honor of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It’s said that he was too given to humor, satire, irony, and realism at times to be a full-blown Romantic. It’s also said that he was appreciated by women readers more than most authors of the era because he gave female characters a rare level of personality complexity.
His idea of how we think of our lives is exhilarating in the oddest way, and it relates, I’ve realized, to some of the literary work I respect the most. That’s where my provocation for you lies today. It has to do with what Writer Unboxed founder Therese Walsh has called “actionable epiphanies” in a comment below, a brilliant phrase I’ve updated this article here to include.
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I’m writing this at 11:15 p.m. in a hotel room in Dallas, in a bed that is not my own. I meant to be asleep 15 minutes ago, and then I realized that—even though I’d written this on my planner 3 days this week!—I forgot to write today’s post.
It’s been a year of every type of emotion imaginable. A year of so much writing. So much traveling. So much book touring (almost non-stop) for Everyone Knows You Go Home since it came out in March. So little is actually in our hands when a book releases, so I told myself earlier this year that I would do everything I could do for it. For me that translated to doing events. Meeting readers. Crashing at friends’ and family’s places all across the country and sometimes, oftentimes, being home no more than a week or two at a time.
This is the dream, right?
Kinda.
Things that make it absolutely beyond worth it for this introverted homebody who would rather be writing in bed:
The young mom in California who brought her young son to my reading because he’d never met an author before…and getting a note from her the next day telling me how her eyes had teared up hearing her boy telling her grandfather all about it later that evening.
Having readers ask me to make their book out to their mom. A book that I wrote as a gift to my mom…becomes a gift to theirs.
Standing-room only crowds full of loved ones.
Standing-room only crowds full of strangers.
Three-person crowds on a cold and rainy day—and pulling up a chair and just chatting.
Hearing my literary hero (the author who inspired me to write fiction!) introduce my book before a reading using words like masterful and magical (how is this real life?!).
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Um, I don’t think this is the kind of bucket they’re talking about…
I believe it’s healthy to have goals. After all, having something to aim for can give us a sense of purpose, and can help us keep our efforts focused. We often hear of “the writer’s journey,” and I think it’s an apt metaphor, because this can turn into a VERY long trip. For those who manage to stay on the path, there are many milestones along the way – along with many hurdles.
While a writer might start out with a single goal (e.g., write the damn book), if that writer is serious about getting published, she might soon find herself adding multiple items to her to-do list. Armed with this list, off she goes on her journey!
And then, reality sets in.
For most – if not all – of us, it soon becomes apparent that this whole writing-and-publishing-a-book thing can take a while. Sometimes quite a while. Given how long it can take to get a writing career off the ground, a writer’s to-do list can start to resemble another list that has become popular in recent years: the “bucket list.”
Note: For those not familiar with the idiom, this is a list of things you want to accomplish before you kick the bucket. (And for those of you not familiar with what “kick the bucket” means, it’s a reference to an ancient – and anatomically challenging – romantic ritual involving a large bucket, three pairs of oversized steel-toed boots, 12 gallons of tapioca pudding, and 23 well-trained riverdancers, preferably double-jointed. Honest.)
For today’s post, I’ve attempted to assemble a typical bucket list for an aspiring writer, based on a combination of my own initial plans, accomplishments to date, and ongoing goals. As my journey has progressed, the items on this list have tended to shift and evolve – if you ask me next week, my list might look quite different. But for today at least, here’s my first stab at a bucket list for writers:
1. Finishing your manuscript
This is huge. Seriously, this could be the only item on your list, and it would still be a MAJOR accomplishment. By completing a manuscript, you’ve done something 99.999999% of the population hasn’t done.
Even more impressive, you’ve done something that probably 98% of the people who ever said “I should write a book” have never gotten around to actually doing. So if you have done it, you should congratulate yourself on a significant accomplishment, and celebrate it in whatever way you see fit. (Caveat: you might want to avoid celebratory activities that require a large bucket, three pairs of oversized steel-toed boots, 12 gallons of tapioca pudding, and 23 well-trained riverdancers – even if they’re double-jointed. I’m just looking out for your safety here.)
2. Signing with an agent
Okay, if you’re self-publishing, this won’t be on your list. But since I started my journey back when stone tablets were still more common than e-books, this represented a well-established rite of passage that I was eager and determined to complete.
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Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Authorpreneur is a term often used to identify authors who embrace the business side of writing. And though the term doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, it does capture the essence of what writers who hope to make a living from their writing have to be—author entrepreneurs. Even authors with traditional contracts will tell you there’s much more to a successful writing career than daily word counts.
From designing graphics for use on social media, to preparing for a rainy day, the savvy authorpreneur should have a virtual toolbox on hand to help them with the business side of a writing career. Fortunately, there are dozens of affordable apps and online tools available to help. Here are five I’ve researched and either currently use or plan on using in the near future.
Design
Consistent design across your author platform helps establish your brand. Yes, you have a brand. At its simplest, your author brand is how you present yourself to your audience. It includes things like your book covers, website, blog posts, and messaging. The good news is that when it comes to social media and web content imaging, you don’t need a design degree or Photoshop to bring cohesiveness to your messaging. Enter Canva. Canva allows even the most design-challenged writer to create visually appealing social media graphics and presentations, including Twitter and Facebook headers and posts, image quotes, and business cards. Canva has both free and paid options.
The author before and after learning how to use a semicolon
I get approached from time to time by aspiring new writers, asking for advice on how to get started. The longer I’ve been doing this, the harder it gets to answer them. At this point I’ve been in the game nearly 20 years, so how do I condense what I’ve learned into a quick conversation or a brief email? And what if they are interested in a completely different type of writing than the kind that has made me as rich and famous as I currently am? (Hmmm – now that I think about it, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. But I digress…)
So how to advise them? Do I lecture them on the ever-changing industry? Warn them of the dangers of reading the works of Clive Cussler? Or simply hand them a dog-eared copy of The Elements of Style and turn around and run? Depending on who asks, it’s hard to determine which advice would be the most useful.
When in doubt, fire up the time machine!
I’ve been binge-watching the old Stargate SG-1 TV series recently, and several of the stories focus on time travel, a concept that has always fascinated me. In a couple of episodes, the main characters manage to pass messages to versions of themselves who are living in a different time.
This got me to thinking: what kind of messages would Current-Day Keith send to Past Keith?
After considering obvious nuggets like “buy stock in Amazon” and “don’t enroll in Trump University,” I started thinking about what I would tell Keith The Writer From The Past (or, KTWFTP). Since SG-1 episodes usually incorporate a ticking clock or some other increasingly urgent complications, I decided to ramp up the pressure, and limit myself to five pieces of advice. Here’s what I came up with to share with the younger (and yes, hairier) Keith.
1. Know your genre – and its conventions.
Probably the biggest – and hardest – lesson I’ve learned as a writer is that genre matters. Historically the genre of a book just wasn’t something I thought or cared about – as a reader or as a writer. But after writing one hard-to-categorize manuscript after another, the first message I would pass on to KTWFTP is to pick a damn genre already. It will make things SO much simpler.
Why? Genre simplifies things by setting expectations. It helps an agent sell your book. It helps a publisher market your book. It helps a reader choose your book.
And if you’re self-publishing, it helps YOU market your book, which is utterly crucial. In an era when anybody can publish anything, you need a way to make your book stand out to your potential readers.
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‘The Spirit of the Printed Word’ is one of Arthur Crisp’s murals in the reading room of Canada’s Parliament Building. Image: Parliament of Canada, House of Commons
Torching for It
Murals are among some of the West’s most interesting public art.
This one is The Spirit of the Printed Word by Arthur Crisp, 1921. It’s in the reading room at the Canadian House of Commons. I came across it during our coverage at Publishing Perspectives of the Canadian Parliament’s hearings on the 2012 Copyright Modernization Act–which has led to terrible losses (some $50 million annually) for authors and their publishers.
Crisp’s Spirit shows us the allegorical figure lifting high her “torch of knowledge” and her mirror, which the curators’ commentary tells us “reflects the news of the world.”
No fool she, Spirit has engaged, as you can see, two small boys to do all the work. I readily join her in commending this labor approach to you. The guys appear to be slogging through the business of lugging stacks of paper and handling typesetting. These kids need Kindles.
There’s a deco-sleek pigeon gliding by near Spirit’s torch on the right, a bird said to represent the transmission of information. On the left, there’s a more fluttery dove, symbolizing good tidings.
Notice that a mural is work of aesthetic advocacy. And in his testimony to the Canadian parliament committee, John Degen, who heads the Writers’ Union, said that some Canadian authors have stopped writing because the copyright exceptions assigned to education have simply gutted their copyright-revenue earnings.
That’s a case in which trade- and textbook authors are watching their publishers get nothing for the use of their titles in close to 100 school districts and ministerial areas of Canada. It’s an obvious moment in which author advocacy is critical. Degen is up to the mark, too.
“Fully 80 percent of our licensing income has simply disappeared,” Degen told the legislators, “because schools now copy for free what they used to pay for. Each year in Canada more than 600 million pages of published work are copied for use in educational course packs, both print and digital, and the education sector is essentially claiming all of that work for free. The world’s authors are also watching this process with great interest and considerable anxiety.”
If anything, what the Canadian copyright crisis reminds us is how loosely an author corps is formed in a national setting, and how vulnerable it can be to unthinkable policy blunders like the Copyright Modernization Act of 2012.
And that gets us to our provocation today.
Who’s on Your Advocacy Mural?
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
In terms of industry players on the policy level, authors are the ones from whom we hear the least frequently. Publishers are better organized and in Canada were integral to the development of the copyright revenue agency that’s now under attack in that country. The publishers association’s folks speak eloquently to the issue, they’re terrific advocates, actually, for themselves and their authors.
But one of the defining factors in any picture of the publishing business has been that it’s an industry based on the voluntary submission of its fundamental product, the content, by people it does not know (until […]
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image by Pjerell
This fall was a very intense writing time for me, as I took my third book (wow!) from a first draft to the version I submitted to my editor. Before the end of the month, I’ll finalize it and it’ll go off to copyediting, to become a Real Book. My editor and my agent are absolutely key to my writing process, but so are a handful of other trusted readers. Some writers work best in isolation; I’m not one of them. I need to focus alone on producing that first draft, but once I have it, feedback is crucial to my ability to make each book the best it can be. This fall I asked half a dozen crucial readers for feedback, and every one came through.
Every writer has to decide for herself what level of feedback to ask for and whom to get it from. Once you have that feedback, you have to decide what to do with it. Lots of great writers have talked about that process (you have a copy of Author in Progress, right?) so I want to take a slightly different angle today.
The feedback you don’t get can be just as important as the feedback you do.
When I finished my first draft in September, I felt happy and relieved and all that; what I didn’t feel was satisfied. I didn’t feel like I had a book. I couldn’t put my finger on why. Was it because this was the first book I’d written in years without a critique group? Were the characters thinly drawn, the plot unbelievable? Was the book actually — gulp — no good?
I needed help, and I reached out for it.
My first round of readers told me a few key things. One zeroed in on the lack of historical detail, a hallmark of my books — that was missing, she said. Another questioned a couple of character issues, places where they said or did things that didn’t entirely track.
Instantly it began to feel like a real book to me, and not just because of what they’d said, but also because of what they hadn’t said.
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Tis the season, right? There are plenty of great gift lists around on what you can give the writers in your life, like this one from Modern Mrs. Darcy. And an aptly named bottle is generally welcome.
But there are other gifts, and I’d like to recommend that this December, you think about a very important writer in your life: you.
What gifts are important to give yourself, as a writer?
First of all, time. There are two ways in which time is the most important gift you can give yourself as a writer. One is to make sure that you have time to write, blocked off with intent and purpose. In my life, that’s a once-a-week block of babysitting, where my kids are taken care of and no other errands or responsibilities are allowed to intrude. For others, it might be a week-long retreat, a daily morning ritual, or nearly anything else. But it’s important to make sure you have it. Wherever you are in your career, whatever your process may be, it’s important that you write.
The other way in which you need to give yourself time: during a draft. Don’t just write something and call it done. That is not a gift. The gift is to chew on it, turn it over, dig through it. To set it aside and come back to it as a stranger. It’s possible to write a book very quickly — like during NaNoWriMo, when speed is the point — but even if you can write a good book quickly, you can write a better book slowly. Write in haste, edit at leisure. Let yourself have time to make it the best book it can be.
Also: company. While it isn’t always easy to find other writers to share the journey with you, I still think it’s incredibly important. And while it sometimes seems like writers who’ve gone through MFA programs have the advantage in this regard, I can tell you this: only a few of the writers I regularly rely on for critique, company, sympathy and support are from my MFA program. Far more of them I’ve met in other ways. Yes, mostly on the internet. Online groups like Writer Unboxed itself (yay!) have been an incredible resource, as well as conferences that might provide an in-person introduction but then go on to become close working relationships over Facebook, e-mail and Skype. Don’t think of it as networking in the sense of “oh, I guess networking is good for my career” — think of it as making friends. Friends who are also writers. They are gifts, every last one.
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Authors have many things to watch out for when evaluating a publishing deal, but one of the most common—and most serious—dangers is something the author doesn’t see: the vital clauses and protections that are often missing from “short-form” publishing contracts.
Most authors look at standard publishing contracts (which can easily run from ten to twenty pages, or even longer) with a combination of confusion and concern. For those not versed in legalese (or, more precisely, Publisher-ese) standard contract terms can range from “complex” to “might as well be written in Sanskrit.”
Because of this, some authors see a three-page form and think “hey, this is great!” and “finally, a contract that makes sense!”
Beware…that way be dragons.
Publishing contracts are usually long because they deal with many important legal issues. (Note: anthology contracts are often short, because of the rights involved—this post addresses contracts for novel-length works only.)
“Copyright” is actually a bundle of rights, each of which needs to be addressed in some way in the publishing contract—if only to state that the ones not expressly granted to the publisher stay with the author.
Failure to deal with all of the relevant issues creates ambiguities, and in short-form deals, many of those ambiguities cut in the publisher’s favor.
I’ve recently seen a number of “short-form contracts” that claim to offer authors a “better deal” than “old, traditional, complicated forms.”
Again: beware.
Short form contracts do often include quite a few important clauses, such as grants of rights, royalty statements (and royalty levels), and when the publisher has to send royalty checks. However, short contracts often omit other critical provisions. When problems arise, the author goes to the contract, only to discover the “friendly form” doesn’t address the issue (or, worse, it does, but the publisher prevails).
Here’s a list of just a few important provisions short-form contracts often don’t include:
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In Vienna. Image – iStockphoto: Alexey Novo
Beware the Smiling Sock Puppet
Today, my provocation for you has to do with one aspect of author community.
The incident I’m going to tell you about didn’t occur in the Writer Unboxed community. This commentary isn’t about the Writer Unboxed community, per se, nor about my bro Vaughn Roycroft and the other great people who shepherd that group so faithfully, nor about the terrific writers who draw strength and aid from it. You’re all golden. And I’d like you to give me your input on this issue.
We’re going to talk about false consumer-review ratings of the happy kind. I’ll tell you about the incident that prompts this.
Last week, a friend of mine who’s an author–a very good one–needed help in putting the cover image of her forthcoming book into a listing on a big Web site we all know well.
She went to a major writing community of which she’s a respected member, and she put out the call for help.
Happily, my friend got the assistance she needed from a kindly fellow author, who helped her get the image into place.
And then my friend got a five-star rating for the book from that kindly author.
The kindly author hasn’t read the book. Because it’s not out. She hasn’t been given an advanced reading copy, either. She gave a five-star rating to a book she’s never seen, surely as what she felt was a generous gesture.
My author friend who was helped with the image was just as shocked as I was. She’d asked for no rating or review-ish support whatever.
So this is a case of a good-Samaritan writer, our “kindly author,” responding to the supportive-community concept with some technical assistance…and a bogus rating. Our kindly author evidently thinks it’s okay for her to give a five-star endorsement to a book she’s never seen. On the site in question, a five-star rating is the best possible.
As my provocation today, I propose that we examine this event for several important issues.
Is our kindly author a representative of the goodness that can come from author community? Or is she making a wrong-headed interpretation of the one-for-all dynamic?
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My freshman year in college, I lived in a large dormitory. It was a tough year, because I was bullied relentlessly by two other freshmen, one of whom was my roommate. While his assaults were verbal, the other guy, who lived down the hall, was far more threatening to me, with the hint of violence always looming behind his taunts. This guy – I’ll call him Jake – was a street-hardened bully from a rough part of northern Indiana, and I knew I didn’t stand a chance against him in a fight.
So I took the abuse. For months on end.
I found solace in my studies, attending what was then the largest music school in the world, so I could disappear into my musical world for most of the day. But eventually, I’d always have to go home.
One night I returned to my dorm to find Jake standing in front of my door, barring my entrance. He greeted me with the obscene nickname he and his buddy had come up with for me, which they found every possible occasion to use, often humiliating me in front of my friends and classmates. As I approached, he bobbed and lunged at me, daring me to try to get past him and open the door.
For some reason, on that particular day, I’d had enough.
Without thinking, I grabbed Jake’s head in both hands, and slammed his head against the door. Then we stood, staring at each other. Jake was speechless, his wide-eyed expression making me think he was probably feeling more surprise than pain. Whatever the combination, it did the trick. After a long moment, Jake walked away without a word.
But a weird thing happened once I got inside my room. In what should a been a triumphant Hollywood moment, I instead found myself feeling nauseated. While I’d been in the inevitable scrape or two as a teen, this was by far the most violent move I’d ever made against somebody. And now the thought of it was making me feel physically ill. And what was even weirder: I felt incredibly guilty. Even though that punk completely deserved what he got.
I’d never been a very aggressive or violent guy. By nature, I’m conflict-averse. (This is perhaps not a great trait for a fiction writer, since conflict is our stock-in-trade. But I digress…) Now I had learned in a visceral way that violence really just wasn’t in my nature. This was a surprising revelation to me, given how much I liked violent, action-packed movies and books. It was quite confounding: here was this bully who had tormented me for months, and now I found myself debating whether to go find the guy and apologize? Seriously, what the hell was going on?
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Kudzu, by Katie Ashdown
It’s been more than six years since my debut novel, The Kitchen Daughter, came out. Most days that seems like an eternity. Publishing is slow and merciless, like kudzu: in a race against a turtle it would lose every time, but if you gave it a trellis tall enough it would grow to blot out the sun. The Kitchen Daughter is the only novel I’ve published so far under my own name, and it’s entirely possible it’ll be the last.
When you finally break through into traditional publishing, the world is full of possibilities. Disappointment almost inevitably follows. This is, believe it or not, not always a bad thing. The most you can hope for is that the possibilities are many and magical, and the disappointments are small and fleeting. The book becomes a New York Times bestseller or it doesn’t; you earn out your advance or you don’t; you’re offered the chance to publish again or you’re not. But it isn’t as if there are only two possibilities, success or failure. The best and worst thing about publishing is that you can and probably will live in the space between those two poles for years, even decades.
And so, six years. Six years in publishing is forever. The Kitchen Daughter will get no more newspaper or magazine reviews. You won’t find it on the shelves of your bookstore. It isn’t included in roundups of 5 Food Novels That Make Your Mouth Water or Six Novels With Narrators On the Spectrum Whose Worlds You Need to See — not because it doesn’t fit, and not because it isn’t good, but because it isn’t new. And publishing coverage is about the new. (See above: kudzu.)
But you know who doesn’t care about whether or not publishing has moved on? Readers.
I got an email the other day from a man requesting a signed bookplate for his wife, who has been reading The Kitchen Daughter during her recovery from breast cancer. Once a year, I hear from high school students who are reading it as an assignment for their Honors English class. I see messages on Twitter and Facebook, not necessarily intended for me at all, in which readers on the autism spectrum recommend the book to each other or to loved ones. (Those sometimes make me cry.) Even out of print, the book lives on in thousands of copies in thousands of places: on readers’ nightstands and bookshelves, in Little Free Libraries, for sale at used bookstores and in church basements, and of course, eternally available in e-book with just a few clicks. (I still get semi-annual royalty checks from the sale of Croquembouche, a 99-cent e-short story, and I don’t mind telling you that I laugh at how small they are and then I cash them anyway.)
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DISCLAIMER: The views presented in today’s post do not necessarily reflect those of Writer Unboxed or its other contributors. They are solely the opinions of the author of this post, and should not be read while flossing, practicing goat yoga, or ghost-writing a book for James Patterson.
Last September – before being eclipsed by our current all Trump, all the time zeitgeist – a flurry of conversations erupted across the internet focusing on cultural appropriation. Fanning the flames of this topic was a keynote speech best-selling author Lionel Shriver gave at the 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival. Regardless of where you stand on cultural appropriation, it’s well worth reading the text of her whole speech.
Taking the stage wearing a sombrero, Ms. Shriver quickly made it clear where she stood, lashing out at political correctness and flat-out dismissing the concept of cultural appropriation – particularly when writing fiction. She cited a recent incident where some college students were excoriated on social media for a cruel and hurtful act of “ethnic stereotyping” – because they had been photographed wearing miniature sombreros at a tequila-themed birthday party.
Ms. Shriver observed, “The moral of the sombrero scandals is clear: you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on their hats.” She went on to offer numerous examples of important books that would not have been written if the authors hadn’t dared to explore experiences or cultures other than their own:
“If Dalton Trumbo had been scared off of describing being trapped in a body with no arms, legs, or face because he was not personally disabled – because he had not been through a World War I maiming himself and therefore had no right to ‘appropriate’ the isolation of a paraplegic – we wouldn’t have the haunting 1938 classic, Johnny Got His Gun.”
A disrespectful vocation
In her speech, Ms. Shriver pushed back – hard – against the notion of writers being somehow morally restricted to writing only stories that are “implicitly ours to tell.” Instead, she maintained that “any story you can make yours is yours to tell, and trying to push the boundaries of the author’s personal experience is part of a fiction writer’s job.” Taking her defense a step further, she said:
“This is a disrespectful vocation by its nature – prying, voyeuristic, kleptomaniacal, and presumptuous. And that is fiction writing at its best. When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall.”
Stating her hope that the concept of cultural appropriation is just “a passing fad,” Ms. Shriver worried that if writers restrict their work to only what they have directly experienced, “all that’s left is memoir.”
I agree – in theory – with much of what Ms. Shriver said. But it soon became clear that plenty of people didn’t…
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