some are better than others

i read a short story, and then another, and then decided i didn't much like quotation marks anymore.
why? someone said.
i like the way it looks.
really?
i think it flows better, too.
i suppose.
you don't think?
makes it kind of hard to tell.
tell what?
who's talking.
seriously?
yeah.
you really believe that?
yeah, sure.
that's a load of bullshit. i'll tell you right now any thinking person, any person with a sense of perception can tell the difference between two people talking. besides, i told them, why should i be creatively confined by some stupid rule, if it really is a rule, when one could argue that operating "outside the rules" (notice the quotation marks. what a goddamn hypocrite!) is definition of writing creatively?

for the record, that sort of thinking is a load of shit spewed by some would-be writer who's nothing more than some hack who read a few good stories by a few good contemporary writers suggested to him by a few not-so-good writers subscribing to the same hack writer's philosophy and decided that he'd do right by the rest of them to best replicate whatever goddamn story some pretentious asshole in borders said he saw in the latest issue of the new yorker because that'd be the best place to start. honestly though, i've no fucking clue what i'm talking about.

the beginning though is all true. i can, and prefer to, function without quotation marks. i do like the way the words look, out in the open, floating in the white space of unused paper or, in this case, word document? those single words forming ideas, the beginnings of thought unrefined, free flowing, unedited. the things we truly mean to say before we rethink and reload and tiptoe around the unspoken barriers that too often prevent any one from truly communicating with another. the things we want to say and the things we never speak. just words. thoughts. emotions. secrets. desires. admissions. reflections. the truth spilling out into the open.