I swear it's the truth

I’ve never been a big swearer, in speech or in writing, and it’s not because I’m afraid of offending somebody. It’s just the way it is. It’s pretty easy to trace this character trait (one of my rare good ones) back to Grandma Lydia Renli.

One day when I was a kid back on the farm west of Canton, I let loose with a big “darn it!” bomb in front of Grandma. I thought “darn it” was pretty innocuous, but Grandma didn’t think so.

She explained to me that I was just replacing a swear word with a similar word, so the intent was the same. She told me it was the same as taking the Lord’s name in vain, and who was I to argue with perhaps the nicest woman I’ve ever met?

So I grew up avoiding “darn it”s and “Jesus!” and even “jeesh!” for fear of offending my Grandma. Add on to that, I don’t recall ever hearing my parents swear either. So I was raised in a relatively curse-free world where maybe the most offensive term heard on television in those days was Fonzie telling Ralph to “sit on it.”

To this day, one of the things I’m proudest of is that my kids haven’t heard me utter a swear word. Not that I haven’t on occasion; I just don’t in their presence. I figure they hear enough of that elsewhere, they don’t need to hear it from me.

But, when it comes to writing and presenting a scene in a bar room or in a roomful of bikers, it seems one might want to use the same words those people are likely to use in that setting. It’s realism and reality isn’t for the feint of heart.

With that in mind when I wrote Joshua’s Ladder four years ago, the dialogue between some characters contained some of the bigger words George Carlin made famous. Then over the years, as I would pick up the novel and do some more editing, I kept toning it down. Finally, just before publication, I took almost all of them out.

I just figured if a book was so reliant on a few swear words to be good, then it probably wasn’t so good to begin with. I thought it should be able to stand on its own with a good plot, some funny dialogue and interesting characters. I can leave reality-speak to the MTVs and HBO’s of the world.

Sure, there may be a couple that slip in, and sometimes I use that device Grandma didn’t like where I substitute a similar sounding word for the real swear word. But so be it. It won’t be so offensive to some, it contains a little reality for those who prefer that, and the book can sink or swim on its own merits.

I’m not trying to be James Patterson or Stieg Larsson here - just Mark Haugen. And as Dad use to say: There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Haugen way. Not swearing much is the Haugen way.