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

Until recently, I thought I was a pretty good literary citizen. It’s true that I’m not the book world’s answer to Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I’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. But I try to do my part. I vote for other authors’ books with my credit cards at indie bookstores. I’ve been elected vice president of a national book critics organization. I’ve given speeches at writers’ conferences to promote my political causes, such as: Write in plain English, and never say “eschew” — except ironically — when you can say “avoid.” But lately I’ve learned that I’m a slacker compared with what an alarming number of editors and publishers expect. In the past decade or so, the phrase “a good literary citizen” has been cropping up in articles about what writers are supposed to be. It’s become a publishing cliché when — that’s right — writers are supposed to avoid clichés. Trite or not, the words “good literary citizen” sound harmless, even admirable. Editors and publishers seem to be asking you to be a 21st-century Thomas Jefferson wearing — in my case — a black Gap T-shirt and gray Vuori sweatpants instead of a powdered wig. Nobody wants to be publishing’s Benedict Arnold, a traitor to the cause of literature. <a href="https://medium.com/the-pub/is-it-fair-to-ask-writers-to-be-good-literary-citizens-e260804d9015">Learn More</a>