Something that I notice when writing my morning pages is that if I get animated about something, I’ll swear a lot more than usual. I should clarify before going on: I’m English; I already swear a lot—so when I say “more than usual,” I’m starting from a pretty healthy baseline.
I’ll clarify something else: it’s almost always positive. I’m not cursing anyone out or complaining or getting angry. Usually, I’m getting excited, or giving myself a pep talk. Less “I fucking hate this” and more “you’ve fucking got this,” if an example helps. It lights a little fire under me. It make me feel like I have fucking got this; like, I’ve really got it.
As I write this post—like, right this second, as in just now—my eyes find a book propped on my desk that I’d forgotten was there: Do the F*cking Work by Jason Bacher, Brian Buirge and Jason Richburg. As you can imagine, my chosen word features pretty regularly. They make a popular poster, too—one that hung in the office of Jony Ive at Apple, and the first few lines of which read as follows:
Believe in your fucking self. Stay up all fucking night. Work outside of your fucking habits. Know when to fucking speak up. Fucking collaborate. Don’t fucking procrastinate. Get over your fucking self. Keep fucking learning. Form follows fucking function. A computer is a Lite-Brite for bad fucking ideas.
I could say that this book influenced my tendency to swear quite so much in my morning pages, but I was doing it long before I knew of it. Reading that poster gives me the same feeling as writing those curse-heavy pages, though: my heart rate goes just a little faster than if I take the word out. Try reading the above without the cursing—it’s positively anemic.
For me, that’s the power of cursing, especially in writing. It adds something that you might normally express with a louder voice, a higher pitch, or by using body language (that is, jumping excitedly up and down). There are many ways in which cursing isn’t helpful, but there are a few ways in which it’s great—where it’s really fucking great, actually.
I love that a simple word written or read can add so much. That it can turn the volume up, get your blood pumping, and inspire in you a feeling that only comes from writing it more often than you’d ever speak it. If you haven’t tried it, I invite you to flagrantly curse in your journal entries right alongside me—because you, too, have fucking got this.