fleusy – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

Okay, fine; so I caved.

When I first published my book, I was cocky. I did it! I wrote it! I put it out there and let other people read it!

Guess what? Other people have opinions. Some of which I don’t like.

Especially about the F word. Does an F word by any other name smell as sweet? Apparently not. Some people didn’t like it that I used poetic license and my self-proclaimed abilities as a wordsmith to come up with a spelling that I liked best for one particular F word. One person, of note because (s)he was the only negative review I received for my book on Amazon, decided to review it without actually reading it because of this.

That was back in March.

Fast forward to now, September. Another person declined to read my book because I used another F word. After consulting with the great literary minds in my household, I made the executive decision to change the spelling of one of the F words under dispute to the one in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (full disclosure: the online one) instead of the one in the Urban Dictionary.

So, now if someone doesn’t like it, they can bitch to them.

The other F word though, that’s trickier. I don’t think there is more than one way to spell f*&k.

So f*&k 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.