Why do writers say “fuck” all the time?
As we get older, one of the irrevocable truths we all have to face is the impact of early childhood rules on our adult lives.
In my particular case: am I losing out on work because I was brought up not to say “fuck”?
My childhood home was quite a strict place to be, which is strange when you think it consisted of just one man — my Dad — in charge of three little girls. Perhaps because he was worried about people judging his lone parenting skills, or perhaps because he used to be an English teacher, Dad was a stickler for carefully articulated speech. Swearing, he said, was something boring people did, because they didn’t have anything else to say for themselves.
In our house, punishments for swearing ranged from a swift whack around the back of the legs, to our mouths actually getting washed out with soap (this was the Eighties, before anybody thinks about getting social services involved).
Happily I didn’t need a lot of punishment anyway, what with me being the quiet and conformist sort of kid that blends beautifully into the wallpaper, and as a result I don’t swear very much to this day. Whenever I do, it sounds a bit like I’ve gone on holiday abroad, awkwardly trying to communicate in a language that doesn’t belong to me.
So it’s a bit inconvenient that now, working as a freelance writer, I’m missing what seems to be an essential component of the writer’s toolkit. Namely, the ability to pepper all my sentences with different variations of “fuck”.
Since I started my freelance writing business a couple of years ago, I’ve been religious about checking out my competition — something I’d recommend to anyone in business. Once you get past that scary feeling of “…but what if they’re much better than me?” you get to see how others approach all the things you do, you can confirm your own niche and you might even make a new friend on the odd occasion, too.
Only problem is, it seems every other writer in the world enjoys saying “fuck”. ALL the time.
“I charge a lot for my work, but that’s only because it’s gonna get you some serious fucking RESULTS” said one writer, glaring into the camera like she really fucking meant it (exactly what sort of fucking RESULTS she was intending her work to get you was not made clear). “I totally fucking care about what I do,” said another website bio, while the first blog post I read by a journalist someone encouraged me to follow online told me that a recent award nomination was “just a total fucking honour at the end of the day”.
I’ll confess now: this is not how I write. But I’ve been wondering if it’s how I need to write if I want to get more work.
If I want to really emphasise something, I’ll use italics, or I’ll set out exactly what I mean in words that wouldn’t offend Granny. Not very edgy, I grant you, but it’s just the way I’ve been brought up. Plus, none of the writers I admire ever seemed to have sworn all that much either (caveat: this could actually be because most of them lived a very long time ago and are now dead).
As I build my scribbling career, it’s becoming clear that the path ahead may not be paved with gold, but with expletives. A rather different scenario from the one I imagined when I was a child, dreaming about one day becoming a famous writer. Maybe I’ll stand firm, and maybe I won’t. It all remains to be fucking seen, really.
