No One Loves Beige

Today is my birthday!  

Tomorrow, I'll celebrate at my parent's house with dinner and cake and presents and it will all be very nice -- but tonight I'm celebrating with my wife and my friends, and to be honest, it's been a long time since I've been so excited about a birthday party.  Why, you ask?  Because tonight, for my birthday, we're going to see Deadpool!

If you're unfamiliar with the movie, you can check out the trailer here.

I started thinking about the connections between Deadpool and my own story, ANOM: Awakening.  On the surface, there may not be a lot in common between the two, but I think there's an important lesson in Deadpool that I've certainly tried to emulate in my own writing.

There are people who will hate the movie Deadpool.  There are countless others who will refuse to watch the movie for fear it will offend (for the record, from everything I've read about the movie, those fears are correct.  This movie will be offensive).  And while I don't believe there's any merit in being offensive simply for the sake of offense, I admire the courage it takes for a movie like Deadpool to stay true to itself.  And there are plenty of people who will LOVE Deadpool because of that courage.

In my own writing, there's the constant temptation towards self-censorship -- making changes in the story to meet the approval of some imagined audience -- but that road NEVER works.  You always lose your story, you always lose your voice, and ultimately, you lose everything that gave the writing value in the first place.  

It's like painting in shades of beige -- no one hates beige, but no one really loves it, either.

So instead, I forced myself to write ANOM: Awakening just for me.  I wrote the kind of book that I would want to read, and when I was done . . . I loved it.  Maybe other people will love it too.  Or maybe they'll hate it.  Either way, that's gotta be better than beige.

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