I only ran across this article the other day, but the second I read it, I was like “I must blog this.” The cautionary tale of Kosoko Jackson perfectly illustrates the one big fat reason I keep my mouth shut when it comes to current events, social issues or anything not having to do with my writing.
Jackson, in a nutshell, is an underknown YA author like me. Not afraid to make his opinions known, he found himself the target of social media outrage when an upcoming novel met with accusations of insensitivity. Before you could say ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ Jackson’s book was dead on the vine, a victim of the controversy. Kosoko Jackson has since moved onto other projects.
So imagine that you spend hundreds of hours developing and writing a story. Hundreds more finding an agent, a publisher, an editor. Here comes your moment, the part in the story where your book, your novel, is out there in the universe. Then, before that moment can happen, your project explodes. You watch your dream, your baby, burn like a roman candle. The dream is over before it got started. What an awful, sickening feeling that must be.
Reason makes no bones about the implications: “Maybe there’s some actual fire here, but determining that would require a close read of the sort that sociopathic social-media dogpilings rarely afford. Zooming out, these episodes will inevitably affect YA publishing, and perhaps other areas of publishing if the fever spreads.”
I’m just a guy, a guy who writes stories. News like this make me want to crawl in a hole, be happy with my disability check, and forget I ever heard of book called ‘Mesh.’ It also helps explain why my social media engagement is pretty neutral when it comes to controversy. My voice is something I’m responsible for, and honestly I can’t handle the responsibility of being a mouthpiece. Please don’t ask.
All of this makes me think of that famous quote: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt. – Maurice Switzer, but commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln
I’m keeping my mouth shut, and writing my books. I hope, at the end of the day, that it’s worth something.
I started writing ‘Battlefield Surgeon’ in response to the following writer’s prompt on Reddit: “You are a surgeon working the front lines of the American Civil War. 2 soldiers bring in another, shot twice, one in each leg. Looking closely you realize it is your brother. “Fix him up enough that he can be hanged for desertion” one of them says.”
