Mike Solender is running a series of guest essays and micro-fiction on the theme of not fitting in or being an outsider over on his blog, http://notfromhereareyou.blogspot.com/
Today you can see my part, "A Moment for the Duck-Billed Platypus," a brief Bathroom Monologue that some may recognize from way back when these things started. You can read it here: http://notfromhereareyou.blogspot.com/2009/06/not-from-here-project-write-3-john.html
all writers are outcasts..we're not from here..always scribbling..ink stains on our hands...keyboard blindness..yet people read our stuff..go figure..
ReplyDeleteBut think about it this way: most schools have writing programs, and all you need to be to become a writer is to write. So from first grade (or Grade One) on, all literate children are writers, and thus all literate children are outcasts. With that kind of population, it's no wonder us writers who write a lot would find readers. Billions of outcasts, discovering they aren't alone through somebody else's words.
ReplyDeleteI've got to admit that this assignment made me chuckle cynically about how magazines like the New Yorker are notoriously controlled by cliques. They fit quite nicely together, these entrenched incasts, though perhaps their sales dwindle.