The Last Mermaid

~ 13 ~

You spent time on every paragraph and every word, thinking of editing and what people will think

You want a system for creativity, as sturdy as wood, firmly planted into the Earth

Writing is thinking

They don't teach you in school to think about thinking

Like artists, we are imagining new communication

Transmuting water into metal

Making language more efficient, and information more free

I'm your English teacher

I give you a few novels written by white men during the 40's and 50's

Instead of asking you, "What do you think of the story's rhetoric? Is there a missing perspective that we aren't seeing? Does the Hegelian dialectic apply to the modern world today?"

I will just give you multiple choice answers

Now, let's say I am asking you to write a novel

You go through the checklist of things you want to know - genre, character backstory, tone, the rules of the world

You set down to write the opening scene, and it turns out the story isn't about your character even a little, there's some apocalypse that's going to happen, and the male protagonist is a real dickhead

You have to keep going - even if you're a shitty writer, you don't make sense, and nobody reads your work

Every idea is connected, and in our society, a model never makes big changes

Sometimes, you have to step outside the rules just to see how far you can go

The rivers flood, and I'm again elsewhere