Experimental writing, by its very nature is only really experimental for a little while. After the experiment, it either becomes writing … or trash.

This form of writing, historically, has been associated with times of great social upheaval across the world, such as at the beginning of the twentieth century and the swinging sixties. Times of conservatism, such as Europe during the Cold War, saw writers, in large part, take off the lab coat and put on tweed jackets instead.

If in your writing you do the opposite to what you were taught at school or what any editor could call ‘acceptable’, then you’re engaging in experimental writing.

For example the great writer James Joyce would often just throw down any old rubbish that was circulating in his mind or indeed the mind of his characters with absolute neglect to the niceties of the English language. Joyce often ignored  grammar, as well as what could be seen as acceptable at the time, all in just one great plop called a “flow-of-consciousness.”

He did this to get how he felt and how his characters felt onto the page, as though you were sitting in front of a screen onto which their thoughts, hopes, dreams and emotions were projected in real-time. Like that.

If your writing dances all over the oxford dictionary, goes against accepted structure for the piece you’re writing or simply pushes boundaries then it can most certainly be called experimental writing.

Above all else, experimental writing should be fun! Charles Bukowski got a laugh from leaving every column he wrote in ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’ devoid of proper grammar and punctuation as a kind of physical metaphor for anti-socialism. So why shouldn’t you experiment a little in your writing too?

So what will it be then, tweed jacket or lab coat?

*****

Dean has 6 post(s) at Free Writing Center