Is It Fair To Ask Writers To Be ‘Good Literary Citizens’?

<p>Until recently, I thought I was a pretty good literary citizen.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s true that I&rsquo;m not the book world&rsquo;s answer to Jimmy Stewart in&nbsp;<em>Mr. Smith</em>&nbsp;<em>Goes to Washington</em>. I&rsquo;ve never gone to Congress to rail against the stranglehold Colleen Hoover has on bestseller lists or the $80 million a year James Patterson is said to make while the rest of us earn peanuts.</p> <p>But I try to do my part. I vote for other authors&rsquo; books with my credit cards at indie bookstores. I&rsquo;ve been elected vice president of a national book critics organization. I&rsquo;ve given speeches at writers&rsquo; conferences to promote my political causes, such as: Write in plain English, and never say &ldquo;eschew&rdquo; &mdash; except ironically &mdash; when you can say &ldquo;avoid.&rdquo;</p> <p>But lately I&rsquo;ve learned that I&rsquo;m a slacker compared with what an alarming number of editors and publishers expect.</p> <p>In the past decade or so, the phrase &ldquo;a good literary citizen&rdquo; has been cropping up in articles about what writers are supposed to be. It&rsquo;s become a publishing clich&eacute; when &mdash; that&rsquo;s right &mdash; writers are supposed to&nbsp;<em>avoid</em>&nbsp;clich&eacute;s.</p> <p>Trite or not, the words &ldquo;good literary citizen&rdquo; sound harmless, even admirable. Editors and publishers seem to be asking you to be a 21st-century Thomas Jefferson wearing &mdash; in my case &mdash; a black Gap T-shirt and gray Vuori sweatpants instead of a powdered wig. Nobody wants to be publishing&rsquo;s Benedict Arnold, a traitor to the cause of literature.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/the-pub/is-it-fair-to-ask-writers-to-be-good-literary-citizens-e260804d9015"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>