The Iconoclast

#2 Flowers and happy stuff

Man, I wish someone would rate "Cold Day in Spring." I need validation, dammit. Hmm, maybe people don't like the whole rapist thing. That's too bad, I guess.

Sometimes it's hard for me to write about the darker side of human nature because I think that people will be disgusted by it, or worse, that they just won't get what I'm trying to say. But then I always remind myself that Kenzaburo Oe's stories aren't all beer and skittles, and H.P.Lovecraft certainly never, ever wrote about flowers and happy stuff. I'm not trying to whine, I'm really not, but it's hard to write dark, dirty stuff because you never know how the readers will react.

Thinking about this always reminds me of an introduction I once read by Stephen King that really helped me understand why I focus on certain subject matter. In the introduction to "Night Shift," a collection of his short stories, King talks about how certain things get caught in his mind and he feels compelled to write about them. After I read this, I didn't feel bad about focusing on adult subject matter. To be perfectly honest, to some extent, I don't give a shit what people think of my work. Don't get me wrong, I want it to be good and I want people to enjoy reading it, but I'm not going to write in a happy ending just because dark and dirty subject matter isn't popular. Fuck popularity and fuck happy endings.

In fact, now that I think about it, I don't think I could ever write a happy ending. I've tried before, but it always feels weird and inappropriate. I can't explain it any better than that. It just feels really out of place. Then again, a lot of times my fiction itself just seems out of place. That being said, though, I'd still rather write what I feel instead of what someone else wants.