As you know, this week is all about “Hills to Die On”. My stories tend toward a younger crowd (Upper Middle Grade) which requires me to go light on saying “Lardass” and leading people around by their junk (we all know 13 and 14 year-olds actually talk like this, though their parents…who buy books for them…pretend they don’t). I spent a lot of time this week thinking about what Middle Grade Hill I would die on.

I kept coming back to a memory from a recent conference critique. I sat down with someone who I respect 113%, both as a person and as an industry professional, an agent we’ll call Sally (to protect the innocent and in case Sally ever wants to represent me).  Sally had read 15 pages of my shiny, new book. She was one of the first to taste it and I was pumped/scared-outta-my-wits to hear what she had to say.

After some compliments on my style, voice, humor, etc., came the zinger: she thought the concept was too complicated for my readership. Not the plot, not the characters, not even the rules of this fantasy world – but the very core concept would be too much for an 8-to-12 year-old to grasp. It wasn’t something I could re-tool or tweak or even throw out and start again. To change this concept was to rip apart the story’s DNA and create a different tale. Period.

If it’d been some joe-schmo agent or editor, I would’ve blown the comment off. But this was Sally. She told me as a professional. She told me as a friend. She was very, very nice about it (she always is). But the message was loud’n’clear: I was barking up the wrong tree…in the wrong forest.

I went through the usual steps of recovering from a hard critique: Shock. Denial. Numbness. Wine. Long, long talks with The Muses. Wine. But the questions nagged me for weeks: Should I leave my book to die based on Sally’s highly respected advice? Should I abandon ship and write the equivalent of Middle Grade Dancing with the “Stars”? (Back off, it’s my idea.)

All four chambers of my heart said, “NO!”

I believe that kids are smart (you’re right, MOST kids). They get deep concepts. In fact, they want to expand their horizons. In 8^th grade, I made the leap to adult books because children’s lit – at the time – didn’t challenge me. And it wasn’t about vocabulary or reading about sex (ok, one of those is a lie). I wanted to flex my brain muscle. I wanted to go to places I’d never heard of. I wanted to know people who were totally different than me. Most of all, I wanted to hear ideas that blew my mind.

Sally knew that kids weren’t the problem. She didn’t think kids were dumb. She was pointing out that I was on a hill – and I might die. Her worries were around “salability” – or that smart works aren’t sure bets. And you already grasp that Sally was right. Just look at 95% of movies.

Really, it’s not even the book-world gatekeepers – they know intelligent things can take off, because they do. But they’re a gamble. These folks are in a business and have to sell things to feed their families. In short, if my “out there” concepts are going to be read, then the burden falls on me to write the best story I can. I have to make it so good that the various gatekeepers will have to feed it to all those brain-hungry tykes.

Of course, maybe I will die on this hill…but it’ll be because I’m not smart enough to write my concept into a clear, entertaining story…not because the readers are too dumb to get it.

To me, there’s a big difference between a stupid author and a kid in the bookstore. And that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

And I bet Sally agrees.

Let me come right out and say this: I hate offending people. I really do. I’m a middle child. A peace-maker. A pacifist. A wimp. Call it what you will, I like for people to be in agreement.

When I write, it’s very tempting for me to delete anything that might rub someone the wrong way. Too racy? Cut it. Too violent? Cut it. Cut cut cut. If I let myself, I could cut the life right out of my manuscript this way. 

But I do stop myself. I don't want to take the me out of my stories. And if we only wrote stories about prudent characters who made safe choices, who never lashed out, or cursed, or crossed a line, then I think our stories would be very dull indeed. It would rob us of one of the very best parts of reading, which is to experience, in the safety of bound pages, that which we will never say, do or see in our regular lives.

How do I choose what to cut and what to keep? How do I decide if it's a hill I want to die on? I go through the same exercises as Donna, Katy and Talia. I think. I test it on others. I think some more. For me, content that is potentially controversial has to possess intrinsic and necessary story value. If I write an act of violence, I don’t do it to piss people off. (How do you feel about that phrase?) I do it because the story calls for it. Because it is the one and only consequence of a given circumstance.

I know some people will disagree with my choices. I respect their right to disagree. I don’t hope for harmony in our opinions. That will never happen. Show me two people, and I guarantee we could find a hundred things they see quite differently. What I hope for is that my right to speak is respected in turn. 

 During one of our awesome writerly retreat safaris, in between elk bugling, the Muses had an interesting discussion about self censorship that prompted this week's topic.  As luck would have it, the points we discussed were illustrated later that evening when I caught myself censoring my own work.

I'd written the first two pages of GOLD, the sequel to my paranormal, and was reading out loud during our critique session.  The scene involved a confrontation between a new character, Mallory, the mean-spirited fourteen-year-old sister of my main character's boyfriend and the main character, Brianna.


That exchange went something like this:


            Mallory:    "I know what you are.  Everyone knows.  You might be able to lead my brother around by his d*** but you’re nothing to me.  (collective ooohs from the Muses) Less than nothing."

Brianna:  "There’s no such thing as less that nothing.  Under the theory of infinite smallness things can always be halved, shaved into smaller and smaller parts.”

            Mallory:  “Whatever. Why don’t you find my brother so you can f*** him and leave?”  (Gasps accompanied by a "whoa" and one muse sits up very straight in her chair.)

Now the Muses are adults with a high threshold for edge and controversy.  A few curse words are not going to freak them out.  So when they reacted visibly (and audibly) to Mallory's lines, I knew I couldn't ignore it.  This is where knowing your audience is important.  If I had gotten the same reaction from a more conservative group, I probably would have written it off as "not for them."  But if this group was reacting so strongly, I knew it merited some additional consideration on my part.

So the next morning, as I set out to revise the scene, I contemplated whether a change might be needed.

First, I tried to figure out what was causing such a big reaction.  I think the fact that this exchange happens 200 words into the manuscript might be a problem.  The first pages set the tone for the rest of the book, and the reality is that the book will probably not be so crass.  Having such a strong exchange up front might turn off a segment of readers unnecessarily.

Second, I tried to analyze what I was trying to accomplish with the exchange, and determine if the language was really necessary to get my point across. Here, the scene with Mallory is meant to show what the last six months of Brianna's life have been like, to show that her boyfriend's family has not and will probably never accept her.  Mallory's attitude towards Brianna is important, but the words themselves might not be critical.

Third, I examined Mallory's character and tried to decide if I would be taking anything away from her if I robbed her of the words that flowed so effortlessly from her tongue.  Mallory is deliberately provocative, but could she still be a mean brat without taking people out of the scene?  I thought she could.

Finally, I considered the real possibility that the strong reaction to the language was actually taking readers out of the scene.  If the language detracted from the scene itself, then it had to go.  And that's the conclusion I ultimately came to.  Now the exchange reads like this:

             Mallory:   "I know what you are.  Everyone knows. You might be able to lead my brother around by his pants but you’re nothing to me.  Less than nothing."

Brianna:  "There’s no such thing as less that nothing.  Under the theory of infinite smallness things can always be halved, shaved into smaller and smaller parts.”

            Mallory:  “Whatever. Why don’t you find my brother so you can screw him and leave?”  

So, yeah, I censored myself.  It's not as bad as watching an R rated movie on broadcast television, with badly dubbed mixes that make no sense.  (I once saw a version of a movie where "peas and carrots" was used in place of "pissed me off"- HUH?)  In fact, I think the dialogue works fine.  It loses some of the shock value, but none of the punch.

I do think there is a place for self censorship in writing.  Isn't that what revision is for?  I think the key is that self censorship is part of the revision process.  This was a decision that I made only after I had already written the scene the way the character demanded, and the ultimate decision to bleep out the curse words was made with careful deliberation when I went back and revised.   Every word in a manuscript is important, and thinking about word choice is part of the revision process.

One caveat: there is no room for self censorship when you sit down to write. Writing a first draft requires letting your subconscious and the characters run wild.  That's when the magic happens.  Later, when you've got some distance, you can fine tune and polish and second guess yourself.

The thing about writing for publication is that the voice of censorship is always looking over your shoulder.  The pressure of knowing that other people will see your work and judge it can cause you to second guess yourself throughout the writing process.  Resist the temptation to give in until after you've written the damn thing.  Then know that in the end, the only person you really have to answer to is yourself.

So here we are, almost in the middle of Banned Books Week.  Donna provided some excellent ideas for celebrating/protesting at the beginning of her post yesterday, and I’d just like to add that jenbigheart at I Read Banned Books has organized a massive blog hop to celebrate all challenged and banned books this week.  She’s an incredible resource and very passionate about keeping books on shelves and minds open.

Our contribution this week is to talk about censorship and challenges that we face as writers.  This doesn’t have to be the efforts of external forces, relegating our books to bonfires for satanic influences or violence or sexuality.  As Donna pointed out yesterday, through the writing and editing process, we are faced with challenges that we have to choose ourselves as our hills to die on.  Or not.

I make very specific choices when I write, wanting to illustrate an authentic experience not just for the time period, but for readers today.  I want the events in my books to reflect the reality of life in the trenches of high school so my readers can relate to them.  So it’s not all courtly etiquette and Austen-esque love-making and chivalric romance.  There is cruelty.  There is sex.  And there are choices made with life-altering consequences.

Then a scene in GILT was challenged by several potential agents and critique partners (none of them Muses).  I was advised by more than one person to cut the scene entirely.  Or to write about the events obliquely.  But I really wanted to capture not only the events themselves but the emotional state and subsequent aftermath experienced by the person who witnessed them.  So I kept it.  And found an agent who supported my decision and helped me to make the intention behind it more clear and illustrative within the text itself.

However, the result of this is that now I self-censor – never a good thing when writing a first draft.  I find myself wondering, “Am I going too far with this?” as I’m deeply in the middle of a difficult scene.  One I want to keep for its emotional, social, and historical relevance. 

But the problem is that I just don’t understand the reasoning behind challenging a book. In the Night Kitchen for nudity?  The Lord of the Flies for violence?  Crank for drug use?  To Kill a Mockingbird for racial themes?  Any number of books for sex and sexuality. 

It’s enough to make me pull my hair out.  Compared to most kids, I lived an extremely sheltered teenaged life.  And I knew kids who did drugs.  Who had sex.  Who tried to commit suicide.  Who used questionable language.  My feeling is that you can’t keep young people from experiencing all of these things in their day to day life – from seeing it all on the news – so why limit their interpretation of these things by preventing them from reading books that might just show an emotional and logical path through the minefield?

So I keep writing.  Through the self-censorship and self-doubt.  And when I revise, I question my motives all over again.  By questioning myself, I am able to make a much clearer and well-defined choice.  Am I writing this to make a point?  Or to score points?  And that’s when I have to decide if it’s a hill to die on.

In honor of banned books week, the theme this week will be censorship. We encourage you to join the Virtual Read-out! The centerpiece of this year’s Banned Books Week celebration (Sept. 24-Oct. 1) is a virtual read-out. Everyone is invited to create a video of themselves reading from their favorite banned or challenged book and upload it to a special Banned Books Week channel. Videos of challenged authors and other celebrities will be posted on both YouTube and our Videos page in coming days.

Censorship is an interesting topic with so many layers. It's especially interesting for me when the book-to-be is still at a manuscript stage. At that point, there are still choices to be made by the author that could lead to a book being labeled "controversial" or even "banned." In talking about this with the Muses, it seemed to all come down to one question, "Is this the hill you're willing to die on?"

Here's an example. I'm not much of a cuss-er -- probably because of years of working as a teacher/administrator in PK-12 schools and my fairly conservative Southern Baptist upbringing. So, there are very few words that would be judged "bad" in my book, SKINNY. However, in working through editorial notes, I found one example - "lardass." My wonderful editor, Aimee, made it very clear it was my choice to change the word, however, it might appeal more to bookclubs if I selected a different word. Hummm... a choice. Did I think "lardass" was an appropriate, realistic word choice for the character? Yes. Did I want my book to be in the bookfairs? Definitely. Was "lardass" a hill I was willing to die on? No.

I changed the word (but I will say there aren't a lot of synonyms that work for lardass).

Here's another example. My book, SKINNY, is about a teenager who weighs over 300 pounds and chooses to have gastric bypass surgery. Potential publishers said it was controversial. Maybe too controversial. Couldn't she just chose to love herself and believe she's beautiful at 300 pounds? Did she have to chose surgery as the way to lose weight? Humm... a choice. But in this case it really wasn't a choice, because this was my story. I wasn't willing to change it for a potential publisher, even if it might mean my book would not sell. Was this a hill I was willing to die on? Definitely.

Luckily, I found publishers (Scholastic/EgmontUK) who also believed this was a worthy story to tell, even if it might be viewed as controversial.

Writing for publication is full of choices and decisions. The choices you make as an author could limit your chances for publication or book sales, but they are still your choices to make. You are still the boss of your story. Where will you draw the line? What hill are you willing to die on?