Hello all,

I hear the call, the trumpet's call, to a rebellion.......


I'm joining in solidarity with Gray Marie Cox and other young writers that wish to see the end of impurity, swearing, and general vileness in literature.

Those who have read my blog post 10 Things That Make Me Banish a Book, already know that I don't have a tolerance for that kind of stuff anyway. But it goes a little more deeper than just "I don't like that stuff".

In that post, Thing #5 outlined how some books had evil intentions or bad subliminal messages, which is a turnoff for me. Believe me, I've had enough college English and History courses to be able to pick them out. In those same courses, we often used novels and other works that help jump-start movements and revolutions.

Whether we like it or not, reading plants ideas into readers. Why do you think that plantation owners forbade teaching slaves to read?

Reading also is a product and a changer of culture. Reading popular books of a time period will give you an idea of the ideals that were held at that time period. What will people of the future think when they see our "popular" books of today? The dark, depressing, and evil-filled ones? The ones full of sex scenes, and bad language? I don't think that they'll judge our society very favorably, do you?

On the other hand, the classics of old, such as the Chronicles of Narnia, Chronicles of Avonlea, Little Women, and Lord of the Rings gave society higher, better ideals to reach for - the end of a goal, correcting a fault, strong family relationships, friendships, chaste romances.

That, in a tiny nutshell, is what I try to promote in my works. Quoting from my Sunshine Blogger Award post, "In all of my works, I try to present a Catholic/Christian worldview and present hidden Catholic themes, similar to great Catholic writers such as J.R.R. Tolkein, G.K. Chesterton and Flannery O'Connor. Writing for my own pleasure is good, but writing for the greater glory of God is better." 

In a sense, this is why I rebel in general from the world. As a Catholic, I'm called to be a living, breathing member of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, and a Temple of the Holy Ghost. Inside, outside, backwards and forwards. 

Therefore, I should use my talents and influence to promote what God wants in a society, not what the world, the flesh and Satan wants. 

But, you ask, shouldn't I be writing for an audience? To be popular? 

You know what I say?

FORGET THAT. 

Christians play by different rules. 

God wants clean language. Satan wants foul. God wants a chaste relationship, saving the sweet physically intimate behaviors for spouses. Satan wants the opposite - he likes to see people destroy their lives and their souls because that's one less soul belonging to God. 

The bottom line is....

YOU WRITE TO PLEASE GOD FIRST. 

Not the editor. Not the audience. Not even society. 

GOD - FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST. 

Period. 

Exclamation Mark. 

While other people may not agree with me, I think that the author's religious/personal beliefs have a lot of influence when they are presenting ideas in their writing, or just writing in general. This, I believe, is because our code of ethics influences how we interact with society.

Thus, as writers, we should not write what we would not tolerate in society unless we portray it in a negative light - show that it's bad.

Now, you see the power game?

We have the potential to change society's thinking!

And it is our duty to reorient it towards God!

But, we need to be careful of how we use this medium to present our ideas. If we overdo it, we could do more harm than good.

A lot of people tend to complain about the preachiness of a lot of Protestant Christian writing. Too often "Christian" or "clean" writing is bashed because of "Bible-thumping". Not that the Bible can't be quoted in a book at all (far from it!), but there is a time and place for it.  

Catholics on the other hand, tend to be really really sneaky. They veil their Christian messages into heavy metaphors. Flannery O'Connor, J.R.R. Tolkein, and William Shakespeare were masters at this. Theirs were so deep that unless you analyzed them deeper, you would miss a lot of them. Or worse, their true intent could be mistaken for something else - most of the time, something that wasn't good to start with *cough cough Romeo and Juliet cough cough*

As you can see, there are two different extremes here. What we need, is a balance. Use God's rubrics (10 Commandments, Holy Scriptures, Sacred Tradition, etc.) as your yardstick for your character's actions and thoughts. This will provide the best level of embedding subliminal idea advocation.

But that's getting really technical. We have better things to do than listen to me talk strategy.

What we need to do is start making our voices heard.

We've put up with the crappy literature long enough.

Let's get some fresh air to dispel the stench that we call Young Adult literature.

First things first: check out our fearless leader's post here.

Secondly, place the #RebelliousWriting image on your blog and link it to Gray's post (via an image gadget, it's really straightforward). Show your true colors with pride and stand with your brothers and sisters in Christ!

Thirdly, share the #RebelliousWriting image (and memes) on all of your social media. Pinterest, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr. Anything that can support an image. Keep track of the reactions that you get, if you can.

Fourthly, start recommending clean books to your friends and ask your friends to do the same, if they haven't done so already.

Fiftly...writers start writing. Let's swamp the market with good literature and show these kids what they've been missing.

Sixthly, feel free to create and share memes for #RebelliousWriting! I've made some here: