choices

Writing is all about making choices.  I guess everything in life is.  Maybe I never cared about anything as much as writing though, and that makes the choices that much more important.

Take vernacular.  My WIP is about a twenty-eight year old girl.  She's not married.  She has no kids.  She hangs out with other people around her age, also without kids.  They drink.  Sometimes they curse.  They talk about hot guys.  They speak using language that fun twenty-eight-year-olds might use.  Is that weird?  I write about real people with real problems living in the real world.  It's not a timeless romance.

The choice is how much to include, and how much to tone down.  Do I write what I want, what feels right, without taking the audience into account?  Or do I write for a broad audience?  My mom read my WIP.  She loved it.  And she's a Danielle Steel and Nicholas Sparks kind of gal.  Then again, she's my mom.  She kind of has to like it.  But she didn't bat an eye at the alcohol use, cursing, and gay strip club scene.  And she has commented in the past when language seems out of place.

I guess if I leave it and save the integrity of my characters I risk losing some readers.  Am I okay with that?  I think I am.  Of course I want to be a bestselling writer, want to make piles and piles of money.  I'm also a realist, and I don't expect that to happen.  More than anything, I want my writing to be true to my heart, so even though it has some racy parts and a bit of foul language, and yeah, maybe the characters are immature (I mean if you're young and don't have kids being obsessed with love and men makes sense, right?), but I never want to tell my daughter that I compromised in order to make money and please a wide audience.  I want to look back and know I wrote what I wanted, what I believed, no matter how much it appeals to others.

Okay.  Rant over.  Just trying to work through some things in my head.  I've gotten some great advice from critique sites, no doubt.  And even if it's not so great, at least it makes me think.  Which is always good.  And dangerous.