I started out in life wanting to be a writer, after having been charmed from a young age by the discipline's potent capacities for narrative, pathos, introspection and intellectualism. But I gradually became aware of its limitations as a form of self-expression; inherently bound to the inordinate laws of written language, authorship forever hosts two perpetually irreconcilable conditions: its ability to express with eloquence and nonlinearity thoughts, events and circumstances, and the exactitude and fidelity the work loses in having to undergo a ruthless process of compartmentalising realisation. All art forms have their limitations, hence why alternative art forms exist in the first place, but few art forms are - by default - so suffocated by their own rigid conventions. I know of no other discipline where you have to grant equal time to both the expression in mind, and how it can be adequately expressed in reality. And as these linguistic conventions are empirically tested and genuinely necessary to preserve the writing’s comprehensibility, concision and professionalism, disregarding them makes the writer’s work amateurish, not subversive or avant-garde.

Thus, I chose painting. I still have a fondness for writing, however, and occasionally write a new short story from time to time. The stories listed below (which download as PDFs) were written by me between the ages of eighteen and twenty, and collectively eschew established concepts such as character development, balanced pacing and natural dialogue. Indeed, I would hesitate to call them short stories at all; they are more like structured musings and reflections, or lengthy summaries of novellas yet unwritten.

Earthsongs

Ella’s Story

Victor the Apothecary

Vomiting Last Night’s Dream

Mixed Media

Confrontation with the First Man

Sanity’s Rejects

The Divide

In His Own Image

Leap of Faith

Marco’s Abacus

City of Paranoia

The Oubliette

The Creative Catharsis