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Nothing is more inhibiting than the blank page, thankfully I only have 300 words. Educated at art college, I was encouraged to try any medium any process, any subject matter and yet and yet I could do nothing. My own writing practice has come from a turning aside from freedom, this came about after learning of a group of writers and mathematicians called the OULIPO. For them the strict application of rules, usually ludic usually mathematical is at the heart of literary and artistic practice. This I found to be the case. By inventing strict rules my own writing is forced to reach for new resources. For me self imposed censorship has been a liberation. Consider the dream of the perfect work of art, each part contributing to the whole each part essential. How is this to be achieved? All those synonyms, parallel phrasings and grammatical circumlocutions. Answer the lipogram, the avoidance of particular letters, the novelist Perec wrote a book with no E I am working on a search engine with no A. If that doesn’t inspire try: “In the blaze of their wa_ing sun, the useful te_t became no more than a ta_ shelter to the surreptitious benefit of si_.” Harry Mathews The blanks can be filled with either N or X. If the writer wishes to be write something where every word every letter counts what other strategy is possible. Perhaps you are thinking that the serious writer shouldn’t be playing games! Literature is about character and and gender and class and emotions and so forth. I agree but aren’t those things games as well. 30 words left, and I intend to fill them, 20th century artistic practice has worshiped chaos against censorship, the 21st might discover games and censorship are equally creative. Three hun dred exactly. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/