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 05:38 am (UTC)The other advice I have is different from what I see up there (although I didn't read every comment thoroughly), and that is: READ. Go read a bunch of scifi! Read genre fic! Read fantasy and romance and whatever you want. Hopefully that will remind you that it's okay to write those things, that genre fic is nothing to be sneered at, that science fiction can be fantastic and intelligent and character-driven and thought-provoking in all the same ways as more mainstream fiction novels.
Or, uh, whatever. :-)
I'm sorry you had such an asshat for an instructor. Writing isn't mathematics, and people who treat it like a series of formulas make it rough on everyone else. It's fine for THEM, but they shouldn't be allowed to TEACH, for Chrissakes.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 07:16 pm (UTC)Ooo. Discipline. Good idea. I've, uh, washed dishes to avoid writing, yep.
I just found this great rec-list of SGA stories I haven't read, too. :)
Icarus