Occasionally, I need some strangeness

Stylistically speaking that is…Doing things the same way everyday is prep for a non-surgical lobotomy, so occasionally I experiment. Some readers get it. Others do not and are not shy in expressing this, which I totally get. You spent that hard-earned dollar expecting a story written in third person, past tense and you hate anyone messing with your literary equivalent of mac and cheese. I humbly ask you, however, to consider this obscure author’s need to blink during the creative process, if only to challenge myself as a writer and attempt a form of story that I do not feel as comfortable telling, thus allowing new inspiration to emerge as it unfolds.

Crafting a tale in present tense is not as easy as you think it’s going to be when you begin, and some readers feel uncomfortable with it right away and will read only as far as they need to determine ‘this is different, I don’t like it.’ Others trash everything about it because it wasn’t what they were expecting from the writer who gave them this story or that story, and why said author would bother putting something this terrible in print is beyond them. (Yes, reviewers can be this scathing, leaving me feeling like below ↓ Insert elongated sigh and a Why oh why do I bother? plus some cold rain, a lost and miserable dog, and now you’ve got the picture.)

That’s okay. Like I said, I get it. But it’s fun for me to write because it is different.

I’ve written before about my experiment with Betsy Klausmeyer’s Cellar, how I wondered if I could write an entire story, a scary one, without giving any of the characters a name. I decided to use other descriptors instead, and to make it as seamless as possible, so the reader might get through a good part of the story before realizing none of the characters had names, and the reason they didn’t realize is because they were caught up in what was happening. It is different, yes. Many of you seem to like it, and enough badgered about the non-ending that I wrote the second part, so yes, reader’s get that one and I’m grateful for the encouragement. (A shout out to those Nook readers, god love ’em.) It’s good to know that all my forays into strangeness are not destined for the one star review treatment by a reader pushed out of his or her comfort zone.

I’m hoping an upcoming tale (untitled as yet, but I can tell you it includes a large reptile) will be given a fair shot by those who are new to my particular brand of strangeness, because sharing story is what it’s all about for me.

Sharing story is everything.