Profound Profanity: Beware the Fireman

 What Temperature do your books burn at?

I started writing this blog for several reasons.  I had written a newspaper column in the past and I liked having to work against a deadline, so that was a part of my decision to gear the blog to a certain day, thus the title Sure Happy It’s Thursday, or the initials.  I obviously realized there was a word in the title that some might find offensive, but certainly not my fellow writers.  I was wrong.

As a writer, naturally I want as many people as possible to know about my books and I use the blog to do it.  I also belong to a number of writer’s groups, some of which meet and some are only on line, at least for me.  I always send a link to the latest blog to all of these sites as well as other groups like my old high schools, family and others.

This week I was told not to send my blog to a particular group of writers in Georgia because my title included profanity.  If this had been a children’s book group or a religious one, I might have understood a little better, but this was not the case.  This was a group (so I thought) that was open to writers of all genres. In today’s world I find it hard to believe that any writer who is true to his or her characters can do so without having some profanity, at least by this group’s standards in the manuscript.

When my first novel came out I was very proud and sent copies to several friends and family to include my mother.  I was on active duty at the time and I always tried to call her every Sunday afternoon because I knew she would be at her sister’s house for a family dinner. After having my book for about a month, I broached the subject in the phone call.  “So, mama, how did you like my book?”  Dead silence for a looong time.  “Where did you learn to talk like that?” she asked.  I tried to explain that it was my character speaking and not me. Nice try, but it didn’t work. “You never talked that way around me,” was her final shot.

Of course, I never did, nor would I ever talk like that around my mother, but times have changed and today kids use language that would have caused a WWII veteran to blush.  If you’re writing a scene where a man hits his thumb with a hammer, I doubt your editor is going to let you get away with him saying, “Oh, gosh, golly gee whiz that hurts!”  I know the last time I slammed my finger in a door, I embarrassed everyone within hearing range.

I’m going to get off my soap box in a minute, but I do want to make a point since I plan to send this to several writer’s groups.  Be true, not only to your characters but to yourself as well.  If your character needs to say something that may offend a reader, if it is appropriate to the person and the situation, go for it. I’ll bet the reader’s eyes can skip over a word or two if they don’t like it. And if you get thrown out of a writer’s group, let me know and we’ll form our own.

Bottom line, if we can have TGIF, we can have SHIT.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.