Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Quadrants of Acceptability

Quadrants of Acceptability

Today it snowed all day. It was all but impossible to get on line. Then we had a power outage…That lasted about four hours. I had to go out and feed the outside wood stove and then take the step ladder and sweep off the satellite dishes.

Then I settled into Janet Evanoviche’s latest book, “Wicked Appetite.“ Her characters are unbelievably vivid and her dialogue is witty had crisp. An amazing sense of humor underlies her novels and they are hard to set aside. I’m wondering right now why I’m writing this blog and not reading the rest of her book.

I wrote a couple of chapters of Petra. She is a lesbian character I am practicing with and she seems to be coming to life. As my readers know I experiment with sensual prose in order to find out how close I can get to the edge without forcing mainstream readers into a current they don’t want to paddle. As I’ve said before I think that the creative energies of a writer are tied to the engine of their libido. A reader is also compelled by this procreative drive even though it might be a bit more repressed by societal mores. Since I believe it is a part of all of us, a thing a reader or audience finds compelling either overtly or introvertly, it is in the interest of the writer to crowd the margin of acceptability for the right reasons as well as the wrong. The right reason is to fully develop the potential of the material…The wrong reason is worry about getting it published.

Then there is the issue of homosexuality which is even more explosive and prescribed and if sensuality doesn’t get a reader’s defense mechanisms up a gay male or lesbian certainly will. These are huge turn offs to readers at large and publishers understand this and act accordingly. On top of this is the ability of a writer to write convincingly about an orientation he/she doesn’t share. This is a challenge but no more so than writing convincingly about a serial killer in a mystery novel.

So we have the public at large turned off to a degree and then the authors themselves get turned off because they find the material threatening, see it as a publication loser and perhaps most troubling fear those they know personally will attribute to what they write some sort of Freudian connection. I.e. if he writes that good about a gay character he must have latent homosexual tendencies or worse yet his serial killer character is so frightening and authentic sounding that maybe he has some deep seated psychotic desire to kill.

As a consequence, anyone who begins to crowd the margins of sensual prose, or sexual orientation, or child abuse, incest, or that broad range of despicable behaviors is going to have to face some gaff from friends, enemies and the community at large and this is not always a pleasant experience.

How does the saying go….about the heat in the kitchen? Well there it is. For all the reasons I have stated authors write in rather narrow range. Think of these categories in four quadrants.

Quadrant 1 Morally and politically correct: Here we see the quadrant where most writers write. Examples are children’s stories that don’t offend anyone

Quadrant 2: Morally correct and politically incorrect: In this quadrant we see stories that are not immoral but might be politically offensive…Like the children’s story,, Little Black Sambo.

Quadrant 3: Immoral and politically correct: In this quadrant we see a story that crosses the line of what the public will suffer, even though the material might not be socially reprehensible. For example writing that is about straight sex but is too graphic for the tastes of most readers and audiences.

Quadrant 4: Immoral and politically incorrect: Then we have material that is way too graphic and deals with subjects prescribed by social mores. For example incest, underage sex, child abuse and single gender relationships.

So while most writers don’t think they are particularly constrained they are unless they choose to write outside quadrant 1. I could go on about invisible walls and glass ceilings but why bother.? Everybody knows they’re there and after a while they become invisible until you slam up against one…Like having a gay character, or an evil bad guy that does bad things to the innocent and helpless. Then the author finds themselves walking on egg shells and wondering if the effort is worth the bother.