novella said:
Self-censorship means something else to me. It means dumbing down what you write; toning down what you say and how you say it to avoid offending the timid masses or challenging their precious misconceptions. It can only lead to blandness, and there is far to much of that around already. I don’t want to waste my time reading that. I agree with Novella that prose should be honed and refined to make it the best it can be, but that should not be confused with censorship.
In respect to the topic under discussion, I think all writers must write for themselves, to be effective. That’s what comes first, anyway. If he or she is writing for an audience, then it must be one which likes what the writer likes, not all those others who like something else. As one writer told his publisher, who wanted to edit the life out of what he’d written: I don’t care if I have only twelve readers, so long as they’re the right twelve.” A pompous thing to say, but from a writer who believes in what he does, doesn’t just do it for the money. I can’t remember ever being much impressed by all those others. I’m not going to rush out to buy something because its author gets a big paycheck. That’s no indication of a book’s worth at all.
