Accidental Self Censorship

I'm a huge advocate against censorship. I think the idea of changing classics to fit into some modern ideal of political correctness is utter bullshit. I grind my teeth when I hear the (ridiculous) various reasons books are banned. Ignorant people fear books because ideas, like viruses, are highly infectious. An idea can germinate in a child's mind, and when you are trying to force feed your narrow minded doctrine into the youth of your community, you don't need books encouraging them to see the world beyond, to see the differences between us aren't so very different after all.

Yeah it grinds my gears, which is why I find it hilarious and frustrating when I start censoring myself.

My writing often strolls on the shadowy side of the street. Though I write speculative fiction, I still deal in some pretty heavy issues, my serial blog alone has already tackled sexual exploitation, slavery, and rape in one character's story arc. It can be hard to write, especially when you are dealing with something as dark as rape. There is always the sliver of doubt in the back of your thoughts people will be put off by scenes like this, even if it advances the character's story line and development. I have whole paragraphs crossed out from my drafting notebook as I tried to convey this heavy subject, somewhat tastefully, in a bite size chapter.

The current novel in progress is a violent horror comedy. It does have zombies, there is the consumption of brains. As I work through the draft I will catch myself avoiding moments of description, where I could go very graphic. It's an internal slap up the head, I drag myself back and get down and dirty in the details because details, even the gory ones, pack the punch in a story. Game of Thrones is mainstream, the Red Wedding scene is shocking but Martin sure didn't skimp on the details. Who am I to shy away from a little brain matter? And who am I to shy away from the interactions between my characters? Whenever I catch myself in a moment of political correctness I know I need to go back and re-write the sentence.

Fiction reflects society, and humanity. This is especially true for the speculative genre, possibly more so than literary fiction. Where literary fiction offers a mirror, speculative fiction takes you into the looking glass to have to explore, to see beyond the surface. Censorship has no place here. Speculative fiction wonders what if things were different, for better or worse. Right Fucking On.

Sauce: http://dummcomics.com/2009/05/14/no-mas-censorship/