In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Topic: Censorship in the Name of Inclusivity
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“For a writer’s voice to resonate, it must be true to the writer. Twenty-five years ago, when my first novel was about to drop, I took the one writer who gave me early advice out to dinner in a very nice restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia. It’s one of those old-money places where people speak in hushed tones and eat baked Alaska for dessert.
“The writer in question was then and is now a huge bestseller, whose violence and sex are *very* graphic. I asked him if it was uncomfortable facing his neighbors after that. He took a pull on his wine and said, very loudly, ‘John, f**k your neighbors! Let ’em write their own GD book.'” John Gilstrap in response to a commenthttps://killzoneblog.com/2021/11/editing-for-inclusion.html#comment-97310 on his post “Editing for Inclusion”
Topic: Censorship in the Name of Inclusivity
Yep, I’m gonna talk a little about censorship brought on by so-called “political correctness,” or as I call it, “lies of evasion.” The more politically correct you are, the less anyone knows what you really believe and the less trustworthy you are. Let’s get to it.
As part of the post referenced above, John Gilstrap wrote,
“I recently dealt with a Facebook PM exchange wherein a distressed reader complained that I had not included trigger warnings in by latest book. When I told her that the title Stealth Attack, combined with a cover image of a bullet and gobs of barbed wire, should have carried that water, she maintained that such was not enough.”
As I added in a comment on the post, I felt sorry for John’s critic. Never in her life will she actually enjoy a story, whether printed or presented in video or audio. She’ll sit, pen in hand, ready to note each word, phrase and image that she self-righteously believes is not politically correct. How very starved for attention she must be, to believe a complete stranger actually cares what she thinks.
On the broader stage, to anyone with a brain and despite the constant screaming from both coasts, inclusivity in the real world is a non-issue. By and large, it’s not only the way things should be, it’s the way things are.
In my experience, most people have friends and acquaintances (and some even relatives) who bridge the gap across races. That doesn’t mean I can ever know personally what it’s like to be a person of a different gender or race (or even family) in America—face it, I can never really know what it’s like to be any other person, even of my own race and gender—but I know enough to focus on our similarities instead of our differences.
And I know enough, as do most individual human beings, to judge others based on what they say and do rather than their appearance. Or as MLK put it, based on “the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”
That is in direct opposition to those who make so much noise specifically about the color of skin or nationality just to draw attention to themselves and virtue-signal to the rest of us how very “woke” they are. Guess what? Most of us don’t care. To most of us, those folks are only a minor annoyance, and all their virtue signalling is BS. They’d be better served to move out of their parents’ basement and get a job.
The rest of us don’t crave the attention and we don’t need a special word to describe how to artificially fawn over people who are superficially different than we are. We simply live and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It’s an honest, straightforward approach that breeds friendship instead of mistrust and simmering hatred.
So yeah, I’m all for actual inclusivity in the real world. But the politically correct “Oh-everyone-look-how-perfectly-wonderful-I-am-for-saying-the-approved-thing-in-precisely-the-approved-way” appearance of inclusivity? Not so much.
When I write, I write to let the story unfold and find out what happens next. I don’t write to impress anyone, and I CERTAINLY don’t write to appease anyone, least of all those who believe they have the right to control others. When I learn that readers enjoy my work, I’m pleased and happy for them. When I learn that they don’t, I shrug and go back to my writing.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m annoyed with all the meaningless noise when there are so many real-world problems waiting to be solved. And frankly, I wouldn’t give a self-righteous, virtue signalling control freak the time of day if my middle finger was a watch. And as for writers who actually pander to these slobs? Shame on them.
Should we go out of our way to hurt someone’s feelings or sensitivities? Of course not. But neither should we walk on eggshells to avoid “offending” someone who makes being offended their life’s work.
Talk with you again later.
Of Interest
See “Editing For Inclusion” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/11/editing-for-inclusion.html.
See “What would happen if the speed of light was much lower?” at https://www.space.com/what-if-speed-of-light-slowed-down. Pretty cool.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 820 words
Writing of WCGN 5: Tentative Title (novel)
Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX
Total fiction words for November……… XXXX
Total fiction words for the year………… 623282
Total nonfiction words for November… 1430
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 179920
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 803282
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 13
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 66
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.