Helen O'Reilly's Spunky Blog
Reading, for me, leads to writing, as day leads into night and night back into day; they are halves of a whole. I was one of those kids who cracked the code early; I've been reading since I was three, and the writing came later once I'd learned to hold a pencil, but when it came, it really burst forth. Everything a working writer does I have done-- I have written and published everything, from corporate annual reports, to radio ads, children's poetry, -fiction and -non-fiction, to memoir and now, my first novel for adults. Spunk, a Fable is a lot like me; "just dirty enough."
Eating Babies - Boundaries for Writers in Fiction
"Is there anything we really shouldn't write about? I take a look at a list of the verboten and conclude that depending on how you tackle it, nothing is taboo. Except perhaps sex between seniors (and even that features in one best seller...)" Originally posted on booklikes by TheREDBooks
Ahem.
My new novel, Spunk, a Fable, features infanticide, cannibalism, tribadism, and heterosexual intercourse between two gorgeous young people, and heterosexual oral copulation between two amazing old people, and some lesbian oral copulation that takes place largely offstage. None of it is gratuitous, all of it drives events and/or reveals character. I'm not conversant enough with the tropes of homposexual male union to attempt to write well about it, or it would have been in there, as well, if it had served the plot.
It is both the skill and intention of the author that makes the great difference. The first time I read Lolita I was half-way through the book before I realized that Humbert was a pedophile, and all the way through before I understood that Nabokov had made me sympathize with him. Now THAT'S writing.
