November 3

Anyone who approaches writing seriously, which is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do, will at times feels compelled to place his or her work in a public forum and subject it to scrutiny. As Robert Heinlein pointed out, “writing is nothing to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards”. Putting that to the side for the moment, once what you have written is exposed to the gaze of the world at large you have to expect to receive criticism of your work. Some people will like it and others will despise it. Marie Gouze[i], a playwright, journalist and feminist, writing as Olympe de Gouges in the eighteen century, wrote a great deal and received a great deal of criticism of her literary oeuvres. Criticism can at times be very cutting, at times more cutting than one should reasonably expect. Marie’s troubles began when she adopted the heretical position that "Female and male citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honours, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents." On the 3rd in 1793, poor Marie[ii] was beheaded for her literary efforts. It seems that the publishers’ tool ‘Sorry, not for us. Better luck elsewhere’ had yet to be invented.

[i] In 1791, in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, the work principally of the Marquise de Lafayette, de Gouges wrote Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.
[ii] She was arrested in 1793 following the publication of her book The Three Urns, or the Health of the Country, By An Aerial Voyager.