Watch Your Mouth... or Your Pen...

Or even your keyboard. This is not something I ever really wanted to do. Watching what I said for the simple sake of sparing someone else from disagreeing with me has never been my style. Not that I go around looking for ways to offend people, but with the luxury of free speech, why not speak our minds?

I started thinking about this when last night, while writing my nightly poem in bed, I had a great starter line for a short story. Offensive, completely! As I scrawled it on the back of the poem so I didn't forget it to today, I thought about all of the people that one line had the potential to offend. Neighbors, old family friends, former professors, hell, just about everyone I'd ever met really. It made me want to get to work straight away on writing the story, even if it's already been hinted at or done in other places.

Why? Because watching what we say has made us soft and boring. Soft like goo, oozing through the world's fingers without thought or opinion of our own. I swear if I could go back in time and erase political correctness before it became a trend, I would, but then what?

So tell me, fellow writers, even fellow speakers or just human beings, how often do you hold back and refrain from exploring a plotline or avenue of interst out of fear for what the majority will think? While biting down on your tongue so hard you start to taste blood, does it ever occur to you that maybe the people you're afraid of are thinking the same thing? It's a fine line between being honest and just being crass, I realize that, but by not being honest with the world, we lie to ourselves.

So the next time you have a really good thought that you shy away from simply because you're afraid of what others might think of you for writing it, or speaking about it, embrace it. Maybe you're not out to start a revolution in the way people think, but your words may be powerful enough to inspire someone else to do it. Don't bite your tongue. It hurts.


On that note, this is what I want for my birthday:


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