Man Bites Dog

Predictability is the silent assassin of persuasion.

When static electricity saturates the sky, lift the lightning rod of the new, the surprising, and the different and let the concert begin. The booming of the big bass drum will make the draperies tremble as the lasers light up the night.

Give that anxious electricity something to focus on. Win the attention of the storm. Don’t tell us, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Light it up.

When your jagged blade rips a gash in the sky and makes the darkness cry, we will lift our faces into the wet and laugh until the grass is green again.

Light it up.

We rarely raise our faces from these glittering screens because you rarely have anything new to say. We stare at the electricity behind this glass because it is always new, always surprising, always different.

Look into our eyes and you will see the static electricity of our boredom is always there, always anxious, always looking for an outlet. Lift your lightning rod into that darkness. Set our world ablaze with the unexpected. We will reward you with our attention.

Pixies, faeries, sprites and elves run naked through the darkness, laughing at everything, giggling with glee, eyes twinkling, feet flying, they run with abandon, afraid of nothing.

What are you afraid of?

Do you read boring, fact-filled fluff? Or do you read fluff made of different stuff?

As you read, so will you write.

When colorful, unexpected words fill your sight, you have raised your ink pen into the night and filled it with ink of electric light.

Now write.

When you have nothing to say, don’t let anyone convince you to say it.

But when you have something to say, don’t say it regular and tidy with tucked-in corners. Say it with the rhythm of faeries running naked through the night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Where you begin is unimportant. How you proceed is all that matters.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even the faerie hiding behind the curtains with a match in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.

This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning.

So tell me, what happens next?

Roy H. Williams