The ideas will come to you when they are ready. The form they take is insignificant. Language, it is often thought, should dazzle — you are supposed to be astounded by the form sentences take, the shapes they assemble. But the sophistication of words strung together is never as important as the meaning conveyed (with the notable exceptions of Nabokov and his unrequited heir apparent, Pynchon).

Everyone is a writer, very few have anything to say. And the writers who have something interesting to say, well, they’re usually heretics. You have to be deranged, ugly, the human embodiment of an -ism or an -ist to conceptualize something purely original. Being nice is a reliable strategy for going about your life. But literature that adheres to whatever is currently considered moral or, more accurately, trending in the zeitgeist? What could be more boring? If you’re reading for the delicacy of expression or to reaffirm your worldview, you’re not reading literature — you’re reading ad copy.

Readers of previous columns will recognize the apparent departure in my style and tone. It seems I know better than to force what isn’t already there. Instead, I ask that you consider these offerings an invitation to experience the sublime and always revelatory verboten fruits.—Eleanor Sheehan