Censorship
I don't like censorship. I agree with Voltaire who said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” I also defend anyone's right not to read things they disagree with, even if that leads to narrow minds.
Worse than censorship to a writer is the awful tendency to self-censor. This comes from the old thought: “What will people think?” A writer must never worry about that when putting words on a computer but trust that there will be a readership out there.
Over the years, other members of a critique group I belonged to wrote stories in which they killed dogs, not rabid or mean dogs, but nice dogs. I found that outrageous. I love dogs, so I didn't even approve of the ending to “Old Yeller”.
Wade, my partner at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com , told me that I was censoring myself and it was holding me back as a writer. He said it was my turn to murder a dog. I took the assignment. This week I went ahead and did the doggy-cide deed.
Character and Voice.
In my short stories, I like to try out characters, walking in their shoes and using their voices to tell my stories. Each of the stories I've presented in Black Coffee Fiction has been entirely different, from the little girl in the rapture to the old veteran in “A Candle in the Window”.
This week's “The Peshtigo River” is told by a small town teenage boy whose story is in his hormones. At that age, a boy wants one thing and one thing only, damn the consequences.
Am I capturing these characters? Does the story work? I never know for sure.
Our Future
At our last meeting, Wade and I discussed publishing a collection of our stories next fall, both as an e-book and a self-published paperback. Will anyone be interested in it? Again, I don't know, but we have reached a point where self-publication is not particularly expensive.
If nothing else, everyone in our families will be getting books for Christmas.
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