Writing Obscenity, and Listening to Jonsi. (Neither of which are actually related to each other...)

Before we begin: 

I've been a bit lax in my blog posting. I'm a little worried about what theme I should pick for it, since it appears most blogs have some sort of subject. I don't really want to pick a specific thing to focus on, though. Maybe that's a bit lazy of me to do, but it's been that kind of a year. Or two. I've been lazy, or at least, I've been rethinking ambitions and what place they should have in my life, which makes one seem  lazy. And this whole blog-business was supposed to be about discipline, and making sure I wrote something at least five days a week or so. So here is this random post about a couple things I've been thinking about. 

Thing #1: Vulgarity and Obscenity in my own Writing. 

I've been feeling more and more paranoid about this. I don't think of myself as all that vulgar or obscene, but it would seem that I maybe give off that impression, somehow. A friend recently observed: "You're like the Skinny Bitch writer, because you swear all the time!" True? Not sure. I don't mince words, anyway, and I don't really avoid talking about topics that might be considered "inappropriate." Plus, I think adolescent-boy humor is amazing. 

So, when I am writing, I do use somewhat colorful language at times, usually in character dialogue. It has to make sense, and it shouldn't detract from my writing, but it often feels necessary. Although a lot of the stuff I write is not "realistic" or realism, I think in order for a reader to suspend belief, they have to really believe in all the surrounding elements of the story. If everything is complete nonsense, then the book becomes nonsense. 

For example: In a film or a television show about gladiators, we can expect a certain amount of blood, dismemberment, foul language, lewd everything, sex, and other stuff. But in the show Spartacus, the level to which all of these things are taken is so extreme it becomes a joke. The writers probably had conversations like this: 

"Hm. We have not seen a single bare breast in this scene in over five minutes." 

"But this scene takes place at a Chuck-E-Cheese..."

"Yeah... but there has to be some way we can make this sexy and/or violent." 

"I know! We'll have a woman with gigantic implants start stripping and gyrating against the play-place before she openly breast feeds her eighteen year old son!"

"Yes!"

"Brilliant."

"And then, Chuck-E comes in with a sword through his stomach, spurting blood everywhere!"

"Yeah! Great!"

 (All right. Slight exaggeration. We all know there aren't any play-places at Chuck-E-Cheese.)

I do understand that this over-the-top extremism is a fantasy. People don't watch Spatacus to get a history lesson. It's a guilty-pleasure kind of show. I've never been into guilty pleasures. It's probably the wet-blanket New Englander in me. 

But it is equally nonsensical, (to draw an example from my own writing), to have a working-class, abrasive, alcoholic talk like Pollyanna. 

The trouble is: some people do not like this. My older sister is my first go-to editor/critic. I take her advice and suggestions about my writing very seriously. But she just cannot take "the f-bombs" as she puts it. She thinks it is ridiculous. But she mainly thinks it is ridiculous because she would never, ever drop an f-bomb. In fact, I'm pretty sure she has never uttered the word in her entire life. (Although she did try to use a much worse expletive in a particularly desperate move in Bananagrams). And I am about to join another writer's group made up of Christian writers, and I am a little worried. One is a friend of mine, and I don't think the others are judgmental or legalistic types, but still: there's no way my book (if it were to ever get published...) would ever be put in the Christian/Inspirational section at Barnes and Noble... 

I don't think this is something that can be neatly tied up and set aside. Everyone has his or her idea on how much or how little one should censor oneself. I guess it's just something that every writer has to decide to deal with in some sense. When it comes down to it, I think one should just do whatever it takes to tell the story in the best way possible. If this can't be done without a decapitation or characters making whoopie, whatever. You've got to do what you've got to do. I guess it comes down to a personal judgment call. Safe stories aren't always good stories, are they? And shocking, crazy-brutal stories don't guarantee quality either... 

Thing #2: Jonsi. 

I don't have that much to say about him. I just love him, and find his music wonderful.