Lie to me...

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Revisiting an old subject because of a matter that came up last week.

The worst book ever written

The matter at hand is a book contest. I am a judge in the contest. The contest is mostly about marketing, how well the book is presented, designed, laid out, etc. Writing does figure into the judging, but only as a minor concern.

One of the entries submitted was one of the worst books I have ever read. Absolutely horrible writing. The problem is the writer is a WWII veteran, injured in the Philippine theater of the war. This is his first novel. It is self-published. After reading it, I can understand why. No publishing house would take this one on without some major rewriting, if it would take it then.

So, I judged the book on the marketing side - it got a grade of fair - and when it came down to the writing side, he got the expected marks. But the contest organizers also ask the judges to provide feedback to the authors and publishers. I gave feedback on the marketing side. I decided to skip the writing advice side. Call me a wuss if you will.

I am not going to be the one to tear this honored man down. That statement is some pretty hefty hubris on my part, n’est pas?

I declined to comment on the writing because of who this man is. His service to the country means a lot to me. As he’s old enough to be my grandfather to boot, who am I to criticize his writing? Hubris thusly retracted.

What we hear too much of

I am sure this man’s friends and family praised him for his work. Indeed anyone who actually writes a book is worthy of respect in my world. But I also seriously doubt he got any realistic feedback on the book.

In short, a lot of people lied to him.

As my longtime friend Paul (http://writeryourbabyisugly.blogspot.com/) opined, friends who tell you your book is great and so forth are not real friends. Real friends will take your manuscript and bleed all over it, hand it back to you and tell you in ultra precise terms what’s wrong, how to fix it and whether or not the MS is really worth any more effort. The real friends won’t lie about your MS.

Which brings me to the question du jour: Is it ever OK to lie?

My Christian friends will no doubt say it is never right to lie. I suggest they spend a bit more time reading the Old Testament. David, the paragon of the Old Testament lied a lot and was never accused of it being a misdeed. Lots of others did so as well with no punitive repercussions.

Some of my friends of other religious persuasions will say it is not OK to lie. I can’t tell you what their religious texts have to say about such matters.

A few of my atheist friends say it is quite all right to lie under certain circumstances.

I give you a real example. Grandma was dying. She knew it. We knew it. Congestive heart failure. She also had diabetes.

A month or so before she went on, she developed some black spots on the bottom of a foot. She asked what it was. We all told her we did not know.

We did know. It was necrosis, the step just before gangrene set in.

We lied to her.

I ask you, what good would be served by telling her it was pre-gangrene? Then she’d spend the last few days of her life worried about a doctor cutting her leg off. The problem with her foot was not important.

She went on to God intact. No doctor took a bone saw to her leg. She went to her Maker without worry.

Was it right to lie to Grandma under these circumstances?

If you say “no, you should have told her the truth,” you’ve got a much harder heart than I do.