As pointless as I think those "currently listening" things in Livejournal are, I still think you should download "New York City Serenade" by Bruce Springsteen. I'd heard the album it came from before, but never heard the song. It's outstanding. Try it even if you don't like Springsteen. It doesn't sound a thing like Born to Run or Dancing in the Dark or any of the songs that people generally think of with him.
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That kid I wrote about in the last entry is now babbling about wanting to be a vampire. God, I love people.
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I've decided my short story writing class is fairly useless. The professor is interested solely in boiling stories down to their emotions and such and explaining what they are "actually about," which has fairly mixed results. I can see where he's coming from; stories actually are about certain emotions and the like...but....
Okay, I can't think of a better way to explain it. The other day we were going over this one story about a kid who has an argument with his mom and then goes and hangs out at school and his friends show up much later because he went to school early because he wakes up really early and leaves the house so he doesn't have to be around his mother as much because they always argue, and his friends had gotten smoothies without him and why didn't they think to include him and then school is normal and then he goes home and I don't remember what and then the story ends. My objection to the story was that I'd read it a hundred times and I'm tired of the trials of adolescent protagonists. Yeah, I liked Catcher in the Rye, but I did not need to read it about 1000 times. I get it how life can be tough for all of us and even the smallest, seemingly trivial difficulties can be enormous burdens when you feel trapped. I get it. Seriously. Write about other things, or, more specifically, come up with a different way of writing about it.
The teacher of course liked it, thus resulting in me bitching. He had quibbles with the writing style which he mainly did not mention other than to establish that they existed, but he analyzed the story and then, in reference to what I said, explained the distinction between this character and Holden Caulfield. But my objection wasn't really that Catcher in the Rye said everything that this story had to say; it was that a story of some adolescent wandering around doing nothing wasn't particularly interesting at all when I'd read infinitely superior versions about a million times and stories I considered about on the same level to worse than it about twice as often. It was, in other words, a beef with the story. Not what the story was about. If you're indistinguishable in tone and plot (such as it was) from a zillion other stories, it's pretty hard to even concern yourself with what the story is about.
I think that's pretty much the point of a writing class. You find ways of making a story interesting enough for people to give a fuck about what you're saying. You can't really teach any of it, but you can tell a person things like, "This part here confused me" and "your similes are mostly awkward, although I liked this one here." Being consistent with your larger point should, I think, be the thing you concern yourself with once you've gotten to the point where at least a small group of people enjoy reading what you write. (Or even just you enjoy reading it, although if you aren't concerned with what others think, there's no real point in taking a class.) I think that by skipping the little technical stuff or bothering with which things are cliched, the teacher isn't really helping us, or at the very least is not helping me in the way I'm concerned about.
By the way, the story I posted here was never critiqued. I was absent on the day it was supposed to be, and then the teacher forgot that we hadn't done it, I guess, because he never went back to it. I couldn't think of a way to let him know that without giving myself away as the author (it's anonymous, those of you who for some unknown reason read the updates I write will recall) because he has no e-mail or phone number, so we can't really contact him outside of class. Maybe in his office, but I don't care enough to find that and then find out when he'll be in and make an appointment. I'm apathetic; gimme a fucking e-mail. And my only level of interest in having my story critiqued in the new packet is because it's a giant mess and I made none of the points I meant to make and it would've been weird and disliked by a number of people if I HAD written the story I wanted to write, so it'll be interesting to see how the hell people react. (I should explain that I don't think everyone would dislike it, I just think it's for people with a specific taste.)
Anyway. That is why my short story writing class may not be of a horrible amount of use to me. I can't say I haven't learned some from it, but I don't think I'm going to learn what I had wanted to, and I don't think it will improve me as a writer much. Could be wrong.
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That kid I wrote about in the last entry is now babbling about wanting to be a vampire. God, I love people.
---
I've decided my short story writing class is fairly useless. The professor is interested solely in boiling stories down to their emotions and such and explaining what they are "actually about," which has fairly mixed results. I can see where he's coming from; stories actually are about certain emotions and the like...but....
Okay, I can't think of a better way to explain it. The other day we were going over this one story about a kid who has an argument with his mom and then goes and hangs out at school and his friends show up much later because he went to school early because he wakes up really early and leaves the house so he doesn't have to be around his mother as much because they always argue, and his friends had gotten smoothies without him and why didn't they think to include him and then school is normal and then he goes home and I don't remember what and then the story ends. My objection to the story was that I'd read it a hundred times and I'm tired of the trials of adolescent protagonists. Yeah, I liked Catcher in the Rye, but I did not need to read it about 1000 times. I get it how life can be tough for all of us and even the smallest, seemingly trivial difficulties can be enormous burdens when you feel trapped. I get it. Seriously. Write about other things, or, more specifically, come up with a different way of writing about it.
The teacher of course liked it, thus resulting in me bitching. He had quibbles with the writing style which he mainly did not mention other than to establish that they existed, but he analyzed the story and then, in reference to what I said, explained the distinction between this character and Holden Caulfield. But my objection wasn't really that Catcher in the Rye said everything that this story had to say; it was that a story of some adolescent wandering around doing nothing wasn't particularly interesting at all when I'd read infinitely superior versions about a million times and stories I considered about on the same level to worse than it about twice as often. It was, in other words, a beef with the story. Not what the story was about. If you're indistinguishable in tone and plot (such as it was) from a zillion other stories, it's pretty hard to even concern yourself with what the story is about.
I think that's pretty much the point of a writing class. You find ways of making a story interesting enough for people to give a fuck about what you're saying. You can't really teach any of it, but you can tell a person things like, "This part here confused me" and "your similes are mostly awkward, although I liked this one here." Being consistent with your larger point should, I think, be the thing you concern yourself with once you've gotten to the point where at least a small group of people enjoy reading what you write. (Or even just you enjoy reading it, although if you aren't concerned with what others think, there's no real point in taking a class.) I think that by skipping the little technical stuff or bothering with which things are cliched, the teacher isn't really helping us, or at the very least is not helping me in the way I'm concerned about.
By the way, the story I posted here was never critiqued. I was absent on the day it was supposed to be, and then the teacher forgot that we hadn't done it, I guess, because he never went back to it. I couldn't think of a way to let him know that without giving myself away as the author (it's anonymous, those of you who for some unknown reason read the updates I write will recall) because he has no e-mail or phone number, so we can't really contact him outside of class. Maybe in his office, but I don't care enough to find that and then find out when he'll be in and make an appointment. I'm apathetic; gimme a fucking e-mail. And my only level of interest in having my story critiqued in the new packet is because it's a giant mess and I made none of the points I meant to make and it would've been weird and disliked by a number of people if I HAD written the story I wanted to write, so it'll be interesting to see how the hell people react. (I should explain that I don't think everyone would dislike it, I just think it's for people with a specific taste.)
Anyway. That is why my short story writing class may not be of a horrible amount of use to me. I can't say I haven't learned some from it, but I don't think I'm going to learn what I had wanted to, and I don't think it will improve me as a writer much. Could be wrong.
VIEW 27 of 27 COMMENTS
bastardo:
Sure, a light squeeze, but stopping at an actual "caress". That's when things get..... iffy.
bastardo:
Yes, our hands only lightly, and accidently brushing each other as we walk.