Fight for Your Right to Write

Nine or ten years ago, when both of our first novels were out, our agent invited both me and Carolyn Parkhurst to a party and dinner.   Carolyn's novel The Dogs of Babel was a bestseller,and I watched in awe as editors lined up to thank her for refusing to blurb their books in such a polite way.  (Really!)

Later, at dinner, Carolyn, who had blurbed my book, Donorboy, I'm just sayin', was kind enough to say some nice things about in person.  I admitted rather sheepishly that I hadn't read her book because dead wife. (Both I and the protagonist of her book had one.) 

"Yeah," Carolyn said, "I struggled with whether I had a right to write that story."  

I had a very eloquent response about the role of an artist, but I fear it got garbled--there was a great deal of wine served with this dinner.  

But here's what I meant to say: of course you have a right to write it.  Because everybody has a right to write whatever the hell they want. Because making stuff up is what artists do.

I see this argument come up a lot on the internet these days: people saying other people don't have a right to tell certain stories, or that thus and such "isn't their story to tell."

You know what is your story to tell?  The story you want to tell.  I thought about listing great works of literature that would never have existed if people had only written what they had personally experienced, but the list is too freaking long.  

You don't get to make the rules about what artists are allowed to do.  This kind of thinking is toxic and anti-art. Now, you can certainly say that they didn't do a good job of it, but they are absolutely allowed to tell whatever story they want.  They can make their main character whoever they want and write whatever secondary characters they want and they can base their story on any event or scenario that sparks their  imagination. And you can like it or not. Because that's your right.  

Just as it's their right to write whatever the hell they want.