Your "polarizing" opinions are part of what you write with

I imagine that lots of Making Light's regular readers also read John Scalzi's Whatever, so I don't link to posts by John every time I find myself in strong agreement with him. (Which is frequently.)

But I want to especially note this fine rant from today, particularly if you're someone who aspires to write and sell genre fiction, or if you're someone in the early stages of an actual career doing that. John is responding to an article in a publication of the Romance Writers of America* that advises upcoming writers to avoid discussing controversial--their term is "polarizing"--topics on social media, lest they turn off potential readers. John points out, correctly, that this is terrible advice, and goes on to list the several ways in which this is the case. They're good points and you should read them all. But the one that interests me most is this:

Speaking as an explicitly commercial writer--I write books that I plan to sell! To a lot of people!--I'm of the opinion that one of the worst ways to be a writer is to shear off or trim down all parts of your life that are not obviously designed to further the goal of selling tons of books. Why? Because then you're cutting off the parts of your life that inform your writing, and which allow you to create the work that speaks to people, which is to say, to write the stories that people want to read and buy, and make you an author they wish to support.

I couldn't agree more. Good fiction doesn't come from struggling to offend no one.** Good fiction comes from being in touch with certain deep parts of yourself, parts necessary to pulling off the trick that is making stories people want to read. Those deep parts will not come out to play if you're bending your efforts toward being the Most Acceptable Kid At The Prom. To actually do the job you've got to be your troublesome and awkward self, because that's all you really have.

There's an enormous amount of well-intentioned terrible advice to writers about the crashing importance of "social media" and the absolute necessity of having a "platform" and all the desperate supposed do's and don't's of what writers must and mustn't do in our brave new age of ubiquitous interwebness. Some of this advice is slung forth in the time-honored diction of Grizzled Old Wise-Guy Pros, and some of it is tremblingly proffered as dire warnings of monsters hiding under the bed. Almost all of it is complete bullshit. In writing, just like in motion pictures, William Goldman is still right.

* Just one article. Not the official position of the Romance Writers of America. Obvs.

** You also don't have to take a public position on any "polarizing" topic if you don't feel like it. Also obvs.