Tag: writers

Swimming Under Water: How Much Our Culture Sucks

Swimming Under Water: How Much Our Culture Sucks

swimmingunder:

I have been working on a novel about a young priestess in a matriarchal culture and just realized something.

There’s no word in English to describe a healthy, sexually active, unmarried young woman that isn’t derogatory.

All we have is concubine, whore, strumpet, slut, loose, tramp, fallen…

I don’t want to offend anybody. It’s an inoffensive novel. It will not offend any reader anywhere. No bad words. Now that’s another thing. It could not be published as science fiction by Doubleday because it had four letter words in it. And their science fiction list does not allow four letter words in a book. There were too many of them to remove them. If there only had been a few, like in Deus Irae, which they bought from me and Roger Zelazny. There were only a few four letter words so they inked them out and then marketed it as science fiction. And I had never known this before. I didn’t know the distinction between science fiction and mainstream was the number of four letter words.

Philip K. Dick (via swimmingunder)

swimmingunder:

Gods & Heroes of my Writing Pantheon

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. Chuck Palahniuk

3. Stephen King

4. H.P. Lovecraft

5. Edgar Allan Poe

6. Philip K. Dick

7. William Gibson

8. Neil Gaiman

9. Mary Doria Russell 

Every writer is a magician. With a word I create.

Add yours and reblog.