Being opinionated is useful.

People say that I should always
concentrate on writing, that I should sit down for hours and write,
that it would make me rich, it would get me girls, or it would cure
the diseased.

Of course I grin and cough out a shallow laugh, vaguely
aware of my own meagre talent and much too embarrassed to take any of
the rabble's praise too seriously, otherwise I might just do
something rather productive. Heaven forbid.

People say 'to write you need to
write', which sounds paradoxical, but is actually intuitive and
fairly obvious to anyone who hasn't actually written. I really
shouldn't ramble and drivel about the much hated and often
encountered 'blank page', but there it is, the opponent of a writer,
the Minotaur in its Cretan labyrinth to the writer's Theseus. But,
like Theseus, writers very often overcome this opponent, evident
when anyone steps past the threshold of most any store.

Now this is where I, as a writer
determined to better himself and his craft, determined to honour
those who inspired and clothed him in mystery and excitement and this
feeling that he never could explain and yet he shared with every
being of a similar disposition, must sigh.

It is far too easy to write.

It is far too difficult to write well.

I suppose in a way it's like riding a
bike, no, more like rowing, everyone can do it, but the Oxford and
Cambridge lot dominate the whole genre. Now I’d hate to sound
cynical here, the Oxbridge lot do a great deal for the art-form
(penguin publishing, whose motto seems to be 'we'll print anything
with a title' is an exception of course) but in general the whole
idea seems to have 'lost' itself, due to this monopolising on
something that, usually, the poor are best at; just look at Dickens.
Too long have we wandered in winter, far from the fathering gaze of
an artist considered 'Truly great', one that would inspire others
with a story of how he found that pen on a rubbish heap and was given
one piece of clean paper for Christmas, and went on to slay the
Minotaur.

We need a messiah.

We need a word-smith brilliant enough
to lead a writers rebellion.

Either that or we need more
restrictions on literary propaganda, whored out (and in the the case
of EL James, I mean that quite literally) because the population
wants books that would make good films, not books that are rare,
heterodox and sublime.

You see, while I and others of my
mindset refrain from writing in order to perfect (as best we can),
publishers and the public make mockeries of prose, throwing quality
onto the fire with Shakespeare, Golding, Austen and Dickens and all
the spare money they now have.

Now I can't very well storm into
Waterstones in order to buy and burn everything I don't approve of
-I don't have that kind of money- and doing the same thing in a
charity shop feels somewhat cruel, so here I am, lamenting
fruitlessly in the bed I named 'Diablo' after my favourite pet, and
slamming various limbs against my expensive-and-still-useless
computer's keyboard.

People say sometimes that I get 'quite
angry', that I should 'accept things', commit to the change. I can't
help but laugh, in a terribly hollow way, at their ideas, at the
half-baked notions that fall in fetid gelatinous clumps analogous to
faeces from a male cow. People say sometimes that I get 'quite
angry'. People say that I have strong opinions and beliefs, that I
fight incorruptible for whatever cause my internal moral compass
points toward. That I should 'calm down' on occasion, and remember
'punching that guy who asked who Shakespeare was wasn’t the best
idea'. Are they wrong? Am I wrong?

I suppose in the end all we can do is
keep going, through the storms, the tsunamis and tears, through the
endless, incomparable pain in order to find and enjoy the glimmers of
hope and life and joy and freedom that lurk in corners afraid of
being swallowed up by the black mass of life swirling endlessly on a
blue and green planet falling swiftly down an unfathomable depth,
flanked by an unfathomable distance of void.

This is what I think when people say
things to me, so I have some advice. If you have something to say to
me, make it interesting, make it productive, make it... artistic,
turn yourself into the great artist we need to lead us, or expect my
blank, disinterested face and flashes of hostility in my hazel eyes.

So, I bid you farewell kind reader, and
I hope in the future you will, as I intend to, become rich, and buy
and burn any contents of Waterstone's you don't approve of.

P.s. don't worry too much about WHSmith
though, it's not even worth the hassle of cleaning your fireplace.