Say What You Mean
Say what you mean.
Ewwww. It has all the appeal of picking your nose in public.
Writers live in abject terror of saying what they really mean, of being clearly and absolutely understood, of having no room in which they can back and fill and say, "You aren't seeing that the way I wrote it." They will, under most circumstances, choose to waffle, to squirm, to take the easy way out.
Don't believe me? Look briefly at the most pervasive current example of writers who, when faced with saying what they meant, chickened out. Princess Diana died in a car crash recently, and no matter how hard you avoid the news and current events, and how much you detest the sort of celebrity gossip that pervades common culture, you have probably heard about this. Writers have gotten more lines out of her death than they got out of anything since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But in all those lines of print, in all those reams of notes read on-air, how many times did you hear or read that Diana "died?"
Think about this for a second. I've heard that she "passed" and that "she's left us" and that "she's gone." I've heard of "her tragedy" and "her spirit living on" and a handful of other euphemisms. But for the life of me, I can't recall a single instance, outside of comedians making jokes about the whole thing, where someone said, "She's dead."
Well, death is one of those uncomfortable subjects, because we all know we're going to die, and none of us are too crazy about looking closely at the reality of the matter. And Diana's death was unnerving. She was young and rich and pretty and famous and that didn't save her. She went into a wall in a car while not wearing her seat belt and she died, just like poor commoners do, thus proving that nobody gets out of this alive.
So you can almost (not quite, but almost) excuse the nervous tap dancing of the writers who took on her death and crapped out.
But not quite. After all, they did crap out. They didn't say what they meant.
Usually it isn't a matter of life or death, though, is it? Let's say we're talking about you. You're working on your book, and one of the characters is loosely based on your Aunt Elene, who besides being fat and obnoxious also happens to be an alcoholic lesbian, and she makes a great character in a book except that you know damn well if she ever reads what you've written, she's going to know you were writing about her, and she's going to be pissed. And what about the readers who object to your use of the word "fat?" Never mind that Aunt Elene weighs a bit over four hundred pounds and she does NOT have a glandular problem - you are going to have readers tell you that you shouldn't have called her "fat." Differently sized, maybe. And that lesbian thing - she calls herself a dyke is a word that you can't use unless you are one, isn't it?
So now you have some hard choices to make, and they aren't life or death, but what you decide is going to determine whether you have a story with meat on its bones or something that won't offend anybody, but won't tell any truths, either.
I'm sitting here right now, and my heart is pounding, because I know that what I am going to say is going to anger some of you. And I also know I'm going to say it anyway, because it's important, and you need to hear it. You especially need to hear it if you think that "differently abled" is an appropriate synonym for "crippled," or that "appearance-challenged" is a better use of the English language than "ugly." Or if you buy into the nonsense that "herstory" is a correct noun for "revisionist history where women are the heroes."
We are not all the same on this planet, folks. We are not actually black or white or red or yellow - we are in fact various shades of brown, and genetically we are closer to each other than a bunch of over-bred Cocker Spaniels at an AKC show. But we are not all the same. We are fat and thin and skinny; we are smart and stupid, geniuses and retards; we are straight and queer and everything in between; we are sick and healthy; we are tall and short; we are moral and immoral, good and evil; we are honest and we are liars. We come in two sexes, male and female, and no matter what current Women's Studies classes say, women are not inherently better or purer or more noble than men; and no matter what the old guard at the country club says, men are not inherently better or puirer or more capable than women. Some women are smarter than some men, and some men are smarter than some woman, and screwing around with the English language to censor any admission of this fact is not going to change the fact. Nor is it going to change the fact that Aunt Elene is fat and stinks of sweat even on cool days, or that she's a rude, self-centered, demanding woman who thinks the world owes her something because she's a lesbian. She is who she is - a person and an individual. She is not a member of a class, nor is she an archetype or a symbol, and you can't compare her to any other people you know. She is who she is.
And if you try to sugar-coat her to keep from offending people who are looking for the chance to be offended, you are going to end up eviscerating everything about her that makes her interesting.
Say what you mean.
~*~
Isn't Ms. Lisle something? And as I type this and get it ready to post I'm sitting here with my heart pounding and my Ramen Noodles turned to lead in my stomach knowing full well I'm probably going to get fired my first day after temporarily taking over for Wolfie.
But I'm posting anyway.