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If I Use ‘Fuck’ in My Title, Will You Click on It?

 

If you are a writer — particularly a mindful writer — you probably have felt this at some point.

Maybe the words come while doing something mundane, like driving in traffic or washing dishes, but they start spinning or floating around in your head. They make your skin feel prickly and your hair stand on end, and you know this is it.

These words are the words you have been trying to get down on paper, and so you desperately stop what you are doing (if you can) and jot them down on a paper towel, a receipt, or maybe even on your iPhone.

Soon the words find a home on your computer and you write and write and spill everything from your heart. When finished, you look it over, take out bits and pieces, tweak sentences and words and then… hit Submit.

The feelings are a mixture of panic, worry and euphoria. The artist knows these feelings. The need to be heard and understood, and to find a connection along with the pure joy of creating something from raw emotion, is so strong, so magnetically powerful.

Seeing your work published, seeing those words that bled from your soul and up for the world to read, leaves you staggering. There they are — my words, my thoughts — splayed out on the digital canvas and filled with such personal thoughts.

Maybe your heart pounds, maybe your hands shake a little, maybe you smile.

This feeling alone is worth it.

Except you have that inner critic in your head — the one that looks at the numbers. The one that looks at the other published pieces flanking either side of your heart-pouring writing with titles like 10 Ways to Have the Best Spiritual Sex and Hey Look! Naked Yoga, and your heart sinks.

My writing sucks, you might think. I suck. Why am I doing this? Why bother? What is the point?

But, wait! That feeling you had just a bit ago of emotion mixed with fear mixed with euphoria — that was worth it, right? Those comments you saw posted on the last piece you published from people that felt a connection, that was worth it, right? Right?

Maybe I need to lighten my writing, you think. Maybe I need to throw in a few fucks and talk about naked people.

Maybe I should write a piece on how to get enlightened in 30 days or how to be the best organic-eating, Yoga-practicing, meditation-sitting, minimalist-thinking, local-shopping mom? Will that get me clicks?

Will that get me those numbers that the other articles seem to get?

Palm slaps face, head hits desk, and you think to yourself, What am I doing? Really? This is what I have resorted to doing? (Or at least thinking of doing?)

Where does the meaning lie? Is it behind the numbers and clicks, or is it wedged somewhere between the prickly yearning to create prose and art and validation that it all means something to someone?

What kindles the passion behind this need, this overwhelming want to write? Is it a place of  inspiration? Where thoughts give rise to something deep, something that reaches farther than  the mundane, the normality of everyday?

If I use the word fuck in my title, will you click on it? If I post an alluring picture of a naked woman or a naked man, will your eyes gaze over it long enough that you see my heart broken open beneath it?

Does it matter?

When do we stop looking at numbers to prove it is worth it? When do we allow ourselves to be truly authentic? To say, this is my soul, these are my words and this is the message.

Yes, I want clicks, and yes, I want this to be a career. I want the ability to sustain myself doing something I love just like everyone else in the world wants to do. Maybe I will be lucky and find the pot at the end of the rainbow, or maybe I won’t.

Until then, I will write what I feel and not look at the click counts… or at least not too closely.

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Dana Gornall

Dana Gornall

Dana Gornall is the mom of three crazy kids and a dog. She has been writing stories since she could put words into sentences, writing books and poems from early on and is still completely in love with language of all kinds. The desire to connect with people on a deeper level has always been the catalyst for writing and still is every single time she sits down at the computer to bleed her heart onto the page. A massage therapist, sign language interpreter and lover of language, she finds bits of enlightenment in all of those connections. When not working or writing, you can find her lying outside in the dark night gazing up at the millions of stars or dancing in the kitchen with her children. She is the co-founder of The Tattooed Buddha. You can also see her writing on The Tattooed Buddha, Elephant Journal, Be You Media and Rebelle Society.
Dana Gornall

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