I have an overwhelming compulsion to hate and destroy things, and
hopefully that’s just the fact that I’m insane and not a universal emotion, but as
writers, I believe we should all take a sadistic enjoyment in smashing those
things called “rules and conventions” to pieces and sending their remains back
to the abominations that created them.
I hate rules. And I hate
conventions. But that can be brought down to a more encompassing fact:
Familiarity breeds contempt.
Inspirations and influences are all well and good,
but being swayed by anything but our instincts often leads us to creating
something that, to put it bluntly, has been done before. And sadly it can get
pigeonholed.
I for one hate the idea of that. Never be afraid to build four
walls around yourself and lose your mind inside them. This is your mind. Your world.
Your story.
And the thing about radically
individualised and unconventional stories, and to a further extent, things, is this: they stay with the reader
after they finish them.
When I began my contribution to the anthology I had no clue what I was doing. I sat down with pen and paper (I’m
not being metaphorical by the way, I live in the past) and started scribbling.
Pages and pages of crazy philosophies and weird poems went by and still I had
no clue where I was going with it. I finished the first draft and knew I’d come
to a solid conslusion when I said to myself: This is some sort of drama, or something.
And that’s the closest I’ve come.
I guess I’ll leave that conclusion to whoever ends up reading it. But one thing
I hadn’t done (or at least I fucking hope I haven’t!) is write a conventional
story. There were no heroes or villains, justice wasn’t served to those who
deserved it, and it was completely cockeyed.
That’s one thing at least that I’m
pleased with. The fact that I broke a few rules and expectations. Maybe you’ll
disagree and call me a pretentious twat, and fair play, but that’s still an
achievement in my eyes. In fact if I’d done anything predictable my self-loathe
would have dropped to an all time low.
Uniqueness. That’s something we
should all strive for, and something that every writer involved in this
anthology has achieved, as you will soon see!
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