F-bombs and Writing

I agree with much of Keith Cronin's post  on when it's appropriate to use the f-bomb in writing, though I've yet to experience the privilege-slash-anxiety of reading my Amazon reviews. Maybe if I were a published novelist, I'd feel differently, but right now I'm content in the "fuck 'em" stage of writing. I do have several pieces that would probably need some retooling before bringing to a workshop. (That born-again woman who's part of my internal editor? Yeah, she's based on someone real. Actually, a couple someone reals.)

I was writing something a few months ago, and every time I wrote the words "made love," I gagged a little. I actually misspelled it twice: mad evolve; lad move. I realized that what these two characters were doing was actually fucking and it had nothing to do with making love, so I let them fuck. And the story was much better because I stayed true to the characters. Cronin quotes Stephen King's On Writing, a book every writer should read, even those who loathe King:

"As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty. And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters’ mouths, you’ll find that you’ve let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism. Not a week goes by that I don’t receive at least one pissed-off letter (most weeks there are more) accusing me of being foul-mouthed, bigoted, homophobic, murderous, frivolous, or downright psychopathic. In the majority of cases what my correspondents are hot under the collar about relates to something in the dialogue…”

I almost took his quiz at the end, tallying up the number of swear words in a different piece of fiction, but mine was surprisingly... not that offensive. The only issue I really have is that I have a couple of things that could possibly be YA if it weren't for the language. Not characters in YA lit should be perfect angels who never swear (lord, when I was fifteen, I would have found that incredibly patronizing), but it wouldn't be as marketable.