Censorship

Every time I look at this blog, I keep having this one thought. Does the fact I have this labeled as "Adult Content" scare people off? I did it because since this is a collection of my thoughts, I refuse to censor myself. To quote Mark Twain, "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it". On my serious stuff, I do find myself censoring my writing, but then again, a book filled with a ton of cursing will turn off a lot of readers. It might work for certain kinds of movies, but a novel filled with street langauge doesn't fly in the publishing world.

Does it mean all my writings are squeaky clean? Hell no.Quite a few of my poems do have swear words, as well as some of my stories. The main novel I started on did in the very first draft, but I cleaned it up. Using slang is like adding salt to food: it's good in moderate doses. It adds a certain flair to a scene, but you don't want to see it on all pages. Even in some heated debates, I didn't resort to any cussing at all. Just some times, adding the word fuck impacts the dialogue better than fudge. Example:

"Get your filthy fucking hands off of me!" sounds better than "Get your freaking hands off of me!" when a woman is screaming at creepy man at a bar for touching her inappropriately.

In fact, that werewolf scene I posted is slowly becoming another novel. I'm taking the main concept behind it, and making it my own unique story. Will it be filled with all that cussing? Maybe a little. I'm making an adult theme story in a lot of ways, but I don't want to break the record for the most use of fuck in a book. If I kept it the same way, the first thing any editor will want is for me to clean up the language. You can write an adult themed novel while keeping the dialogue at a PG-13 rating. It can be a challenge, but if writing doesn't challenge a writer, they will never becoming better. Besides, that is what a thesaurus is for.

Now, for the love of Pete, if you're writing a young children's book, and you are using slang, you might want to reconsider your book very quickly. I don't think a publisher will take you seriously if the book you wrote about a cute bunny's first day at school sounds like NWA's "Fuck The Police". If a type of book does make it to the presses, I would hate to see what society is like as a whole.