Apex Book Company

Back when I started trying to write professionally, I was lucky enough to get admitted to the Viable Paradise workshop, and even luckier to get a personal critique there from James Patrick Kelly. My story was a post-cyberpunk piece about junkies selling body parts to get money for drugs. He gave me an invaluable piece of advice in that crit session: “You’re probably going to have a lot of people this week tell you that your story’s got too much puking in it, but don’t listen to them. Leave the vomit in.”

When Jim Kelly gives you permission to write ugly, it’s a wonderful thing. I took that permission, ran with it, and haven’t looked back since.

Why does ugly writing connect so strongly with readers? Because we all know in our heart of hearts that we’re ugly. We’re nothing but animated skin bags filled with meat and bones and juices. We shit, we puke, we leak fluids of varying degrees of viscosity. Some of us are oily, some are flaky, some are both. We produce odors and gasses. Our insides burble and grind. We wither, sag, bloat, discolor, and decay. We disgust ourselves, and we’re deathly afraid that we disgust others. And anything that speaks to that hits us right where it hurts. Beautiful writing speaks to our souls, but ugly writing punches us right in the gut.

Now, before I go any farther, let me specify that ugly writing doesn’t need to be horror, and it doesn’t need to have an unhappy ending. But rarely does ugly writing give you an unconditionally happy ending. Life, which we’ve already established is ugly, rarely does that, and ugly fiction is true to that.

I’ll use one of my own stories to illustrate this principle (I could use other people’s work, but if I don’t feed my ego every so often, it gets, well, ugly). My best-known story, “Captive Girl,” is the epitome of ugly writing, despite being a love story. And it’s a love story that has a happy ending, but it’s a happy ending that makes most readers squirm. Why? Because it’s a story about the sacrifices some people need to make in order to find love, and man, does the main character sacrifice. She’s just as conflicted about the sacrifice as we are, but in the end, she makes it anyway. And if I did my job right, I made many of the story’s readers question the sacrifices they’ve made for love as well.

Of course, you can write ugly without happy endings. In many ways, that’s easier. The story Jim Kelly critiqued is called “Dazz,” and things do not end well for its protagonist. She ends up quite literally diminished as a character, and has all her hope taken away. She gives up on ever improving her lot in life, but paradoxically, doesn’t give up on living it. It’s an ugly lesson that we’ve all learned to varying degrees in our own lives, and the most effective way to convey that in fiction is to go ugly.

Mind you, there is a downside to writing ugly, and that’s that most readers don’t want to read ugly. Romance sells better than horror. Sword and sorcery sells better than dystopian science fiction. It’s unfair, but like I keep saying, life is ugly. People aren’t generally fans of having mirrors held up to their flaws. It’s a little easier for them to take when they can pretend the stories are about other people’s flaws, but readers with an ounce of self-consciousness (in other words, anyone who hasn’t been on a reality show) are going to find themselves circling the ugly right back along to themselves. And that can be too scary for some.

But for those of us who are willing to go to those dark places, ugly writing can bring us to them faster than any other writing style out there. So to any writers out there who are afraid to write the ugly truths that keep popping into their heads, I say hang onto that fear, because fear is where truth lies, but write ugly anyway. Dig deep into those ugly places inside of you and spread them out in a disgusting mess in your work. Be prepared for the rejections to hurt more than they do for your lovely stories — after all, those stories aren’t putting your personal ugliness out there on display. But keep at it. It’s important work, it’s honest work, and paradoxically, it’s beautiful.

Jennifer Pelland lives just outside Boston with an Andy and three cats. Her debut short story collection Unwelcome Bodies was released by Apex Publications in 2008, and she has a story in the newly-released Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3. A Nebula loser last year, Jennifer hopes to become a Hugo loser real soon now as part of her quest to lose new and more prestigious awards. Visit her online at www.jenniferpelland.com.