An open letter to The Story Siren
I’m sending this to you (can’t find your email…) posting it to your blog and posting here…hopefully, you’ll see it and I hope you realize I’m not trying to attack you. Personally, I have no problem with you. I don’t know you and I can’t have a personal problem with you, aside from the fact that you did exercise some seriously questionable ethics and you’ve yet to take full accountability for it.
And that’s mostly what I want to talk about…accountability.
You’ve got people on your blog…mostly your loyal followers, I’m going to assume, who claim ‘nobody likes to take accountability’ or ‘admit they were wrong’ and ‘it’s human nature’ *that comment is gone, it appears*… oh, and ‘Kristi addressed everything she needed to address.’
No. Nobody likes to take accountability, but true leaders will, and true leaders do. That is what separates a strong person from a weak one, what separates a champion from a chump.
You’ve yet to do it.
By taking full accountability, you simply do this… you admit, without excuses… I was wrong. I screwed up and nobody made me do it. .
Until you do it, and stop making excuses… I don’t know how it happened…. and I was under a lot of pressure… ah… I’ve written over 60 books since 2003, I have three kids and I blog. I’ve managed to do my job without stealing anybody’s work or their words.
You made the decision to do it, for whatever reasons, now you need to face the consequences. Are they harsh? Yes.
But you are in a unique position…the position where a lot of people look up to you. Do you want to be a weak leader? Pass it off as… these things happen giggle… I’ll do some educational posts on it and everybody will love me again. .
Or do you want to come off as a woman who has learned from her mistake, somebody who wants to make an improvement, and teach others? A real leader? Are you trying to be a champion? Or do you just want the people who already like you to keep gushing?
The people you’ve alienated aren’t going to be impressed by what you’re doing and the people who already follow you just don’t care. For some reason, the fact that you stole doesn’t bother some of them.
They aren’t all that bothered by the fact that you stole.
Think about the message there…how disturbing is that? Is that supposed to be okay?
A real leader would say no. So I have to ask myself… do you want to be popular? Or do you want to be a real leader?
You could turn this around and say guys… instead of getting angry at the people who are angry with me…listen to what they are saying. Because they have every right.
And they do. You didn’t just hurt the people you stole from. You deceived fellow bloggers who liked you. You deceived those who’d started blogging because of you. You blogged about how plagiarism was wrong, then you do it…and you deleted those posts speaking out against plagiarism.
You were deceptive.
You can’t change this, but you can fix it, going forward. If you’re trying to re-establish the position you had, it’s a possibility, but not with the route you’re taking.
Because until you take full accountability, without exceptions, without excuses, what you’re doing is meaningless.
Because while your loyal followers attack those who spoke out, and you sit silently by, you give silent permission to bully and harass. In case you weren’t aware…yes, there were attacks. Bullying emails sent to a number of the bloggers who spoke out.
Because while you moderate those who attempt to speak their minds…you’re making this about you. You are just window-dressing. You’re not trying to change or improve. You’re trying to win your popularity back.
Because until you apologize, full stop… I am sorry no excuses, no rationalizations… all of this is empty. It makes it about you.
Your followers may see it otherwise…but are they the ones you’re trying to re-establish yourself with? They are already here.
Or are you trying to fix the bonds you broke? If you’re trying to fix the bonds you broke, you need to re-evaluate.
Again… I am not trying to be mean, and I am not trying to be harsh. But I’ve never set myself out to be ‘popular’. I speak my mind and I try to be fair, I try to not to be unkind.
But sometimes, the truth just is harsh.
The internet doesn’t forget things…I can remember things that happened in blogland/romanceland 5, 6, 9 years ago. Authors, readers, reviewers…bloggers. There are going to be people…a lot of them who look back and talk about the big YA blogger who plagiarized. Do you want that to be what you’re known for? Or do you want to make a change and show people that you can actually be more than that?
