A big TVWriter™ “Yess!” to iconoclasts:
by Charlotte Rains Dixon
I’m tired of people telling me what to do.
I’m tired of people telling me how to eat. (Don’t eat dairy! No grains! No eggs! And puh-leeze, no sugar!)
I’m tired of people telling me to exercise. (Walk. No, walking isn’t enough. Run. No, running is bad for your knees, interval training. No, you have to do cross-fit.)
I’m tired of people telling me how to think. (Case in point: the recent election. Or every day on the Internet.)
And so the thought occurs that you, my dear readers, may be tired of me telling you what to do, or more precisely, how to write. And that maybe it might be time to reconsider some of the tenets by which we live.
In my forthcoming novel, Emma Jean’s Bad Behavior, our heroine discusses her three sacred cows: her fans (what she calls her readers), her students, and her husband, Peter. “They were the three things in life, besides writing, that Emma Jean cared about most—the holy triumvirate, her sacred cows.”
And so, herewith, let’s consider some common sacred writing cows and decide if they should be upheld or not.