Poetic license, people! Heard of it?

I have been reading and reviewing books for years.

Years.

I haven’t loved all of them, but with only one (to my knowledge) notable exception*, I was not ever unkind to the author in my review. If I liked or loved a book, I said so. If I didn’t, then I moved on. Just because it wasn’t for me didn’t mean it was okay to ruin it for anybody else.

So, I was not prepared to deal with the negative feedback I got about one word that I chose to use in my book, One Brave Thing: ‘fleusy’. The first objection was to my repeating the word. Repetition is a tool that I use in my writing. I like to have my characters repeat words for emphasis. I am fairly sure that I am not the first writer in history to use this technique.

The second objection was to how I chose to spell ‘fleusy’. She wanted me to spell it ‘floozy’. I thought about spelling it that way, but I didn’t like how much it reminded me of ‘boozy’, so I decided to spell it differently. ‘Fleusy’ reminded me of ‘fleur‘ and I liked that better.

Hello? I am a wordsmith. If a word doesn’t work for me in my writing, then I change it up or make up a new word, if necessary, to get the feel that I want.

So, shut up. I can.

*The notable exception: Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. I wasn’t critical of her actual writing. I just hated how she chose to end the book. Just an artistic difference of opinion.