Undoing my "creative" writing class.
Jan. 11th, 2007 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusDear f-list,
I need your advice.
A month ago I finished a creative writing class. The class went very, very badly, and I don't think I need to go into details now since I've spent many posts describing it.
What I need your help on is the after-effects of the class and limiting the damage on my writing. The symptoms are as follows:
From the antagonistic and undermining comments of the teacher (such as the classic, *snort* "and you wanted to NaNoWriMo...") I'm struggling with a separation between myself and the story, killing it with over-criticism before it can be written. How do I get rid of that?
From the heavy-handed "rules" orientation of the class, rules that I had to follow in order to survive the class with my grade intact, I'm now hyper-aware of "adverbs," and to a lesser extent, "summary," and "visual detail" in such a way that it's distracting and hard for me to finish a first draft without killing it. How do I remove those three months of training?
From the personal animosity he directed at me and at science fiction, I feel defensive and on the spot, focused on whether a story is "good" instead of just enjoying it as I have in the past. How do I counteract that oversensitivity to audience reaction? I've always written for the reader -- my first stories were oral, told to my friends as I made them up.
He did a lot of damage, more than I realized, and I'm not sure how to shake off the negativity.
Frankly, based on how he treated us, I have to assume that he's really not that good of a writer. How can he be, if this is any indication of how he squeezes out a story? If this is what he does to himself... *shudders* When I talked to him he had no writing projects going except for a creative writing thesis that he hadn't begun.
That's not a writer. That's someone who's "learned to write" and has found they "are good at it."
A writer needs to write. A writer can't stop the stories nibbling at their toes, or else they're bemoaning about writer's block and wanting to write. Or else they're stalled in that monolithic story.
I feel like I have had some sealant poured over my skin and I can't breathe.
There are several stories starving for lack of oxygen at the moment:
They're scratching and clawing to get out, they have complete outlines and they're started, but I can't seem to give them air.
I need your advice.
A month ago I finished a creative writing class. The class went very, very badly, and I don't think I need to go into details now since I've spent many posts describing it.
What I need your help on is the after-effects of the class and limiting the damage on my writing. The symptoms are as follows:
From the antagonistic and undermining comments of the teacher (such as the classic, *snort* "and you wanted to NaNoWriMo...") I'm struggling with a separation between myself and the story, killing it with over-criticism before it can be written. How do I get rid of that?
From the heavy-handed "rules" orientation of the class, rules that I had to follow in order to survive the class with my grade intact, I'm now hyper-aware of "adverbs," and to a lesser extent, "summary," and "visual detail" in such a way that it's distracting and hard for me to finish a first draft without killing it. How do I remove those three months of training?
From the personal animosity he directed at me and at science fiction, I feel defensive and on the spot, focused on whether a story is "good" instead of just enjoying it as I have in the past. How do I counteract that oversensitivity to audience reaction? I've always written for the reader -- my first stories were oral, told to my friends as I made them up.
He did a lot of damage, more than I realized, and I'm not sure how to shake off the negativity.
Frankly, based on how he treated us, I have to assume that he's really not that good of a writer. How can he be, if this is any indication of how he squeezes out a story? If this is what he does to himself... *shudders* When I talked to him he had no writing projects going except for a creative writing thesis that he hadn't begun.
That's not a writer. That's someone who's "learned to write" and has found they "are good at it."
A writer needs to write. A writer can't stop the stories nibbling at their toes, or else they're bemoaning about writer's block and wanting to write. Or else they're stalled in that monolithic story.
I feel like I have had some sealant poured over my skin and I can't breathe.
There are several stories starving for lack of oxygen at the moment:
- A Christmas fic called "Silent Night" where John plays guitar for his team under the stars on an alien world
- The latter half of a story where John sleeps his way through half the Pegasus galaxy and the dire consequences come home to roost
- The next scene of Out Of Bounds, where John and Rodney make dinner and play
They're scratching and clawing to get out, they have complete outlines and they're started, but I can't seem to give them air.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 03:09 am (UTC)I've always done this to myself and if you do find out how to get rid of it, please share. I have so many stories I want to write but I just can't. Not without a lot mental hair pulling or a mix of a challenge deadline and sleep deprivation (I'm not so critical when I can barely think). *sigh*
Good luck!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 03:27 am (UTC)I started writing out of frustration with feminized guys, and I never aimed to be a great writer, I just wanted to do better than some of what I'd read.
And then I just got into the fun of the story. Even when people haven't liked a story I've always felt there was an audience somewhere for it. If I like it, probably someone else does, too. So far that's been true.
But there was this constant subtle message in that writing class that it mattered somehow if you were good or bad at it. That in and of itself is a story-killer. It's poisonous.
Defining a "good" story is problematic to start with.
It's like defining "beauty" -- you can't, really, not without creating a neurosis. If you create an abstract measure of beauty ("thin is in!") then no one can meet it, all the gorgeous round girls think they've failed at being gorgeous when in fact it's the standard that's the problem.
Then along comes some opera singer with her full confidence and full figure and you go, wow, "she's gorgeous!" nevermind what the Miss American pageant says. It's because she hasn't been defeated or seduced into believing that narrow, impossible to meet standard of beauty can be met by anyone. And the slippery bugger keeps changing, too.
Stories are like that. Everyone has a different shape and a different voice, and there is no universal measure of "good"-ness.
There's just effective, and ineffective, and then underneath there's this fire that's the essence of the story that's going to shine through if you let it, even if your technique isn't ideal.
That fire is more important than anything else and that's what captivates the audience. So don't douse it with worrying if it's good or not. Just catch that wave and go with it.
Icarus *records this to play back to myself later*