Rami Ungar The Writer

A classmate of mine in my creative writing class sent me (and the rest of the class) an email today. In the email, she said her mother and her aunt had wanted to see the short story she’d written, but the problem was her story dealt with subjects like drinking and random hook-ups. Guess what? Her mom and aunt don’t approve of those sorts of activities.

So my classmate–whom I’ll refer to as “Freya”, because that’s as far from her real name as you can get–whipped up a little short story that doesn’t involve any of that, and asks all her classmates to take a look and edit it if we can spare the time.

Naturally, my instinct as a writer is not to encourage this, so I write back to Freya and tell her that her mom and aunt should be proud that she’s grown into a strong, independent woman with her own thoughts and feelings, and they should be proud that she wrote a story with her own original ideas in them. If she has to be ashamed of her own work–which for romantic fiction set against the background of a wild college party, is actually a quality story–what’s the point of even writing the story in the first place? If Freya’s family doesn’t like the topics voiced in the story, then she should just tell them so, and leave it at that. If they still want to see it, then show it to them. These women might actually like it, and might also be fans of Fifty Shades of Grey, but are too proud to admit it.

I hope Freya get’s my message and doesn’t feel she needs to hide, because honestly, if a writer can’t be proud of their work, or at least admit they wrote such subjects, what’s there for the future of writing and fiction? Be proud of your work writers; it’s your brainchild, after all. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it, no matter what objectionable material within. Instead, shout it to the world, “I wrote a story and it has stuff people don’t like in it but I don’t care.”

If I didn’t do that, why would I bother writing a novel with a serial killer in it?