Remember when your mom told you: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”? (Maybe you remember you saying this, to your own children.) Well, this is good social advice, designed to keep the cocktail party chat running smoothly. But it’s awful advice if you are writing.
When you are writing your first draft, don’t worry about being appropriate. You don’t have to care if you are nice. Your first draft is the place to let it rip. Write about what you were always afraid to say. Write what is politically incorrect, if that is what you really think. Write what you never had the courage to say. You don’t have to read it aloud; you don’t even have to keep it. And you can always edit it later. Courtesy and tact are important virtues, but if you invite them to have free reign while you are writing, they can paralyze you.
Go ahead, break a taboo today. Don’t be nice.
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The mores and social graces have become so ingrained by the time we’re adults that it’s an interesting exercise for a writer to try to write as if the character was a child, without those filters and blocks and judgments. It’s not as easy as you might think.
Excellent idea, Helen. I’ve done writing exercises from my 7-year old self, and it’s true — she is not nearly as “nice” as my adult self. But sometimes she’s far more entertaining.