I am often inspired by the simplicity of Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech of 2012. His message is this: Make Good Art Whenever I get stuck, and I get stuck often, I remember that maxim. Make Good Art. When I think about the quagmire that is ethics in fiction writing, I ask myself why can’t we all just Make Good Art, without worrying about small things like who we are and where we came from, and whether or not we are telling the truth?

In a recent writing group meeting, we discussed ethics in fiction writing, about using other people’s lives to tell stories, and about writing without hurting others. But even a zero harm standpoint is problematic. Zero harm is not necessarily applied to other artists; no one told Marcus Harvey not to produce a portrait of serial child killer Myra Hindley composed of children’s handprints. The painting provoked anger from, among others, the mother of one of Hindley’s victims. Myra Hindley wrote from prison asking for the portrait to be removed. Art was made, harm was done. Forget Zero harm then, what about truth.

What if the painting had been a book?

What if the painting had been a book written by a relative of one of Myra Hindley’s victims?

What if that turned out to be a literary hoax, a lie, told in order to sell more books?

We live in a world where lies alternative facts are everywhere, like when Scotty from Marketing says there’s no link between the climate emergency and Australia’s bushfires, or when the writing on my tub of face cream says it’s proven to reduce the signs of aging.

To borrow from The Cranberries debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? In art, in government, in theatre and in music, people write and deliver content that provokes, outrages, nurtures or empowers, and they enjoy a liberty that is becoming endangered for writers.

Perhaps the arguments that try to limit fiction writers to being harmless, being benign, being truthful, are doomed. Perhaps they are doomed because they move too close to censorship. Perhaps our task is to get better at making, enjoying and enabling Good Art. When we have done that, there will be no need to hide our authenticity or our identity behind another fiction. Making Good Art is a difficult task in itself, and some days it will seem unachievable. On those days, I look to Neil Gaiman again when he says, simply pretend. Pretend to be a person who can. 

---