What the Actual - ?
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2026 by Walter Reimer


Prompt: speech


A few years ago, after the COVID-19 pandemic was, if not over, at least under some control, I decided I needed to get out of the house and interact with people. After looking around I settled on joining a local writer’s group that met on alternate Thursdays at the public library.

Perfect.

The usual procedure in this group is that the writers submit stories or chapters or poetry or whatever (we had one fellow submit a draft of a TV script once) to the facilitator, who then disseminates them to the entire group. A few days to read and mull over the content, and we meet to give our critiques. I must stress that the critiques are supposed to be constructive and oriented toward the content; as one facilitator said, “We’re here to help make each other better writers; we’re not here to tear down, but to build up.”

Which, dear readers, you must admit is a laudable goal.

When I introduced myself (and every subsequent time; we’re always getting new faces showing up) and let people know that I write for the furry fandom, there’s always a certain fixed expression as the words sink in. I generally spell ‘furry’ so I don’t have Southerners misinterpret what I say as ‘fairy.’ Yeah, that’s happened.

It’s sort of a mental Chinese Fire Drill as you can plainly see synapses going off like firecrackers as they process this, and finally someone will ask, “What’s that?” I will usually counter with “Ever seen a Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny cartoon, or the movie Zootopia?” That usually settles the matter until they read whatever I might be submitting that week. I’ve taken to editing my submissions to make them easier to comprehend, like taking out ‘mel’ and substituting ‘man,’ or editing further to, as I put it, “shave the fur off” and make all the characters human.

I have considered, just for laughs, bringing in a piece of The Eye of Argon just to watch their collective eyes cross and their brains leak out their ears. I might do it next month as a poisson d’avril.

No, I have not exposed them to the word ‘yiff.’ That’d be too long of an explanation, but it neatly segues into the subject of my story today.

We have a guy in the group who I’ll call Jay for the purposes of this narrative. He’s written before and he’s completed a book that is essentially a memoir of his varied romances and he’s absolutely no good at them. Over the past couple years he’s been presenting draft chapters and the group has helped him refine things. It helps that one member of the group is a professional book editor, and he’s expressed his gratitude in the Acknowledgements section of the finished work.

Anyway, in the runup to our last meeting he submitted a chapter wherein he recounts a story told by a friend of his, in which a recipe for tomato sauce features as a vehicle. The person recounting the story to the narrator is an Italian-American man in his seventies from New York City, so you can expect the language might descend into what I call “earthy and colorful;” i.e., the word fuck shows up in it a total of five times.

By the way, I showed the passage to a friend who lives in New York, and his opinion was that five instances were likely well below average.

Our usual number of submissions per meeting is four, based on each one being about 2,000 words in length. We’ve had fewer, and we’ve had more. There are only two hours to get everything done.

A day after Jay’s chapter was sent out, he sent an email requesting that it be withdrawn. It seemed that, in a previous meeting, one member of the group took such a dislike to the language being used that he left midway through the meeting and didn’t return. Jay was displeased that the person couldn’t see past the few uses of certain words to read and critique the chapter constructively.

Interestingly, the chapter he had asked to be withdrawn included a warning, which I shall quote in part: If profanity offends you, you should know that research published in Language Sciences (2015) found that taboo word fluency actually correlates with larger overall vocabulary and verbal intelligence—so your genteel clutching of pearls may say more about your limitations than mine. Like the language in his book, it is trenchant, a little rude, and he is speaking in his own voice.

Great Blistering Barnacles, to quote a great literary figure, I can respect someone who does his research.

At any rate, I delivered a critique of his submission anyway, for which he thanked me. I was truthful and focused on the content (and the recipe looked quite good, as well).

I’ve been roped into being the facilitator for this afternoon’s meeting, and Jay has submitted all the little fiddly bits that go into his book at front and back – the Acknowledgements, ‘About the Author,’ etc. Throughout the entire eleven pages of content, there are two shits and one asshole to be found.

We shall see how the group contends with this.



End . . . ?