"Teachers are now expected to police their students' imaginations. My creative writing students. . . .are sorrowful about the killings, heartsore & distressed at the violence in the killer's soul. . . One of my students sighed bleakly, "I guess we're going to have to watch what we write," she said."

Are there any other options besides violence and censorship? Perhaps we could use more attention, not less, to the content of our character(s)--not in order to censor each other, but to reflect with one another on what we really do value in our dreams, and to encourage one another in overcoming - with uncensored honesty - the darkness and violence that lives between our stories and our souls.

In that sense, is the prospect of "watching what we write" really so bleak?