Jennifer, author of Writing To Survive has featured me as her February Blog of the Month–please check out the article, it is wonderful. Go visit her and read her work. She is truly a great writer with a distinctive style overflowing in heart, tears and depth–something rare in the blogosphere.
As I told her, I’ve always felt like a black sheep blogger. I don’t feel like I fit in any where–in any cliques and so on. There are many different writing based communities and little groups of writers, but I don’t feel welcome in their inner circles. Many fiction writers are snobbish and pretentious, have stilted opinions of what good is and why some work is garbage. I’m more open–meaning I read all genres and can appreciate everything from romance, erotic noir to horror to sentimental stories of personal triumph and all between. The more fearless of ridicule a writer is, the more I like them. I say write unapologetically regardless of fallout–and your readers will gather.
In high school and college, my literature professors degraded me while bathing other writers in limelight–not because they were skilled, but because of what they wrote about. It really hurt. I was taught that a descriptive sex scene, extreme profanity, first person perspective of murder or cannibalism is both immoral and automatically brands it rubbish–makes it trashy and low class. I rebelled . . . did I ever rebel.
I became an extremist writer. I will never write to be popular.
I often write things other people are afraid to write or disgusted by . . . probably because society says it’s wrong in many respects. I’m really fortunate to have friends and fans who actually read my more questionable content–that appreciate my craft and how much care I place in each sentence, each individual word–even if the story is sickening or terrifying. I only know one thing: I love to write (and read).
Thank you Jennifer from the bottom of my heart for shining a little limelight on little ol’ me. It means a lot and I will never forget it.
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