This being my first post, I decided to start with something bold. I wrote this a month (or so) ago late at night when I was hit with some "inspiration". I wrote it in about half an hour with very little editing. I'm not really sure what to call it, or what it is. I am pasting it on the internets in hopes of getting some kind of feedback. This particular piece of writing has been bothering me, and I don't know why. - - - - - He never quite understood the other people. He grew up with them, played with them, went to school with them, and graduated with them, but didn’t feel like he was a part of them. He belonged to a different people. In adolescent years he became acquainted with the idea of trying to gain acceptance into social groups. It became an obsession. His university years were wasted studying the psychology of social interaction in humans, instead of experimenting with the psychological effects of various chemicals and substances. The early 2000s saw the resurfacing of the hippy culture of the 1960s. The internet was widely used to spread their message. Under the guise of open source, pro-file sharing, Wikipedia, nerdcore and BitTorrent, they recruited more and more disciples. The wave began to grow. And like the paranoid hippies of the 60s, they began to blame "The Man" for all their troubles. Current establishment officials spewed legal (but ethically dubious) dictatorial directives at the neo-pacifists. They were met with peaceful and non-damaging petitions from their targets. As the Other gained the support of the mainstream press, the Official silently watched. Ripples of propaganda would occasionally reach the Other’s headquarters and be quickly moderated. Censoring the censurers. The wave began to crash. Us and Them, a popular philosophical concept in the western hemisphere at the time, garnered widespread approval. Buddha, conspicuously absent, was unable to offer his wisdom. Suddenly, the small man had a revelation: it became clear to him that televised drama shows and mini malls were inadequate as raw material for North America’s moral values. He stood on a bench and hailed the crowd. Someone looked at him. The bench man hailed the mass again. He showed up on screens and displays and monitors and on hard drives and flash drives and memory sticks and floppy disks. The global Network showed no bias about what information it spread. It was like a huge industrial machine that would cut off the arm of anyone that tried to slow it down. It breathed fire and made loud noises. Sometimes it even did something. But its purpose was not something one wondered about; only what it was capable of. It was an artifact, not a deity. But it also was the giver and the receiver. "Hail the Network!" the small tall bench man shouted. The mass stopped and regarded him for a moment. "Hail the Network!" Silence. "Hail the Network!" "Shut the hell up!" The mass began to flow again and the crushed small bench man was swept away. The wave went back out to sea.
I think it's great. Don't know exactly what this is all about, but I like your writing style. Especially the last line.
mcnbns, Bet I know what's bothering you about your work. You said it yourself in the third sentence of your introduction. When I write quickly about anything meaningful to me it doesn't always seem 'finished' if I don't look it over under the light of day. I always think about editing a piece a day or two later, just to see if my perspective has changed due to my mood. I keep the original intact and work on a copy in case I don't like the changes, especially if they are sweeping, then I don't get frustrated piecing it all back together. If I lose the bet, then mebbe it's some of the vagueness of the bench man and what he represents and what he wants to actually say. mebbe inot. I like the imagery and flow though. Keep writing, you are ahead of the wave. 8I
8eyedspy' that's my exact same process. write quickly, shake the thoughts out, come back in a day or two and edit.
Yeah when you have flow there's nothing like it, so stopping to fix something is counterproductive. Freebasing thoughts into words is a rush. 8I
