Warning: Rant Ahead…
Oct
25
2007

So really, I must admit to not reading the RWR cover to cover. I usually find myself really enjoying one of the articles and I love the letters. I mean, love them with stalkerish sort of passion. This is for a few reasons – first of all, the perspective of people who so zealously keep track of what other people do, say, think, read and write fascinates me. I’m serious!

On a related note, I was having a discussion with kiddo #1 on the way to school the other day. He’s a major reader and reads at several grade levels above his. He loves the Harry Potter books. (And the Timewarp Trio and the Magic Treehouse books – essentially put history, science and magic together and he’s all over it). So he was telling me about a kid in his class who’d been saying no one should be able to check out the Harry Potter books from the school library and how they were bad, etc. Now, as you may have guessed, I’m not one of those sweet moms who rarely says a word about anything. I replied, “you know there are a brand of people who are obsessed with what other people do and say with freakish zeal. Rather than focus on what they read and do, which is sometimes uncomfortable and difficult, they like to focus on what other people do. And what you read is none of his business. We don’t play that game.” I think I might have even been a bit more harsh at the time but I was driving near the school and paying attention to not hitting a child or having some dumbass parent in a gazillion dollar SUV sideswipe me because they’re on their cellphone and eating chilidogs or whatever.

ANYHOODLE – that’s sort of my point and I know I’ve ranted on this one before but it gets me in a way few other issues do. If mrs “I hate the bad words in what passes for romance these days and those authors who write sex scenes have no decency so I went to self publishing and look my family, me and my neighbors all think my book is great so take that publishing and smut peddlers!” wants to write a book to avoid seeing bad words and any sex in her romance – more power to her. I applaud her choice, I applaud her action in creating something she’d like. That’s great!

But why, why oh why do folks with his mindset seem so obsessed with what everyone else does? In the first place, I don’t buy that so much romance is filled with filth that she had no choice but to write her own book. There are plenty of lines which publish books without profanity and sex in them.

In the second place, even if it’s true and you were driven to create your own market – why be so bitter and nasty about everything else YOU DON’T READ? Why does it seem to keep people up all night that books have bad language or sex, or kid wizards? If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Bing! Problem solved. I use this tactic every day. I don’t read things I don’t like. I don’t write genres I don’t like or can’t seem to create the voice for. It’s a NORMAL way of coping the universe.

It’s like saying, “I hate green peppers. All bottled Ragu sauce has green peppers. I make my own. BUT I think about ragu day and night. Why oh why do people eat ragu? Ragu is evil” (and I just chose ragu, I like ragu, I’m sure many people do and many don’t so they buy another brand and it never impacts their lives) Just don’t freaking eat green peppers! Don’t buy the stuff you don’t like.

Lastly, does it not seem, hmm, prideful perhaps, to boast about the fifteen five star reviews for your self published book when one is your own, another is your neice and the rest of them seem to be written by people with only one review? It’s in the same vein as “I don’t care what you say, I’m laughing all the way to the bank” or whatever.

I’m a prickly person. Many things in the world bug me. Parents speeding through the school parking lot on the phone, behind the wheel of an SUV the size of a ferry, those same parents being too damned lazy to park and walk to pick up a child so they park in the cross walk or the fire zone. The one mother who is a crossing guard who is drunk with the power. People who try to censor what I read or write. People who say, “not to sound racist” and then spout off something racist. My neighbor who told me Quakers weren’t real Christians and sends me crap from her church all the time. The list goes on and on and on, trust me. But you know, my dumbass neighbor has a right to be a dumbass and believe whatever she wants as long as she leaves me the hell out of it. And if mrs “at least people had a sense of decency” in the old days wants to write her own book because she can’t find what she wants on the shelves, more power to her. I just wish she’d stop being so nosy and worried about what I read.

8 comments to “Warning: Rant Ahead…”

  1. Megan Hart
    October 25th, 2007 at 10:52 am · Link

    Look, read and write what you like. There’s room in the world for all of us. I applaud and support the right of anyone to read and write books that PLEASE them, by god, because I do it, too. I write books that make ME happy. (And they are usually not books that close the bedroom door, but so?)

    I don’t go around saying that just because I like chocolate cake you shouldn’t eat coconut cream pie. I, in fact, loathe and despise coconut cream pie, but I would never dream of telling anyone they suck for eating it. And you know what? sometimes I like chocolate cake; sometimes I like key lime pie.

    We don’t all have to lurve the same things.

    And if you’re going to point your fingers at someone else’s work and call it trash and say it lacks imagination, perhaps it would be best if your own work wasn’t self-published with reviews made by yourself and family members…NOT because those two factors automatically mean the book is bad by any means, just that’s how it would appear to a casual observer.

    If you’re going to tell other people their shoes don’t match their belts, maybe you should really clean that taco sauce of your blouse, is what I’m saying.

    Otherwise you really just look like a whining, pouting blow hard and you lose all credibility.

    And in fact, since I lost my earlier rant, I’m reposting this.

    M



  2. Karen Erickson
    October 25th, 2007 at 11:46 am · Link

    Amen Lauren. MYOB is my theory. Who cares what other people are reading? That whole Harry Potter is the devil thing is ridiculous. Look at how that series got children to actually READ vs. play video games/watch TV all day long. So ridiculous.

    Ok I need to settle down or else I could rant on for long long paragraphs. I’m just gonna end it with well said. 🙂



  3. Christine
    October 25th, 2007 at 11:55 am · Link

    This goes under this is why I am my child’s parent and you yours. You censor what your child reads and I’ll censor what my child reads. I don’t need help. I don’t understand why some people have the need to control what the rest of us are watching, reading, thinking or believing. I think they need to go get a life. And for God’s sake leave Harry Potter alone



  4. Susan Helene Gottfried
    October 25th, 2007 at 3:05 pm · Link

    I subscribe firmly to the “Love as thou wilt” theory of life.

    I’d look those harpies dead in the eye and say, “Read as thou wilt. Now excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

    Hang in there, Lauren. If everyone was happy with what you do, you’d be dishonest somewhere along the line. Or so says a treasured friend of mine.



  5. Shelli Stevens
    October 25th, 2007 at 7:53 pm · Link

    Bleh. Those HP hater fanatics squick me out. I mean, why? Thomas the Train is written by some pastor or something. Why don’t those people go after them. Because obviously there’s no such thing as talking trains, so it must be devil worship. 🙄



  6. Shelli Stevens
    October 25th, 2007 at 7:54 pm · Link

    See you tomorrow!!! :mrgreen:



  7. Red Garnier
    October 25th, 2007 at 8:25 pm · Link

    AMEN, Lauren. And don’t get me started. I hate people who have nothing to do but be concerned about other people’s lives. Thank god I have my characters’s lives to be concerned with. ROFL!! 😀



  8. Mechele Armstrong aka Lany of Melany Logen
    October 26th, 2007 at 11:21 am · Link

    I second you and up you an Amen. I wrote about similiar to this in my rants on Banned Books Week. I may not like some things or think my kids shouldn’t read them. And I don’t have to read them or let my kids read them. But I don’t have to censor the world for my own indelicate sensibilities.