So I have a friend who seems to be very condescending of my dropping Writer's Craft... and rambles on about experiencing learning and getting more knowledge by taking a multitude of classes (she has no spares at all). You know, I suppose she wanted to make me feel guilty, or at least regretful of dropping the course... and maybe even a little ashamed of my supposed laziness.
Okay, I won't deny that I am quite lazy... I procrastinate profusely (but in the end I always accomplish what I intended to accomplish, and the quality of work is always quite good - maybe even BECAUSE of procrastination - she's not denying that of course... we have way too many of the same experiences together on that note). I guess I got stressed by the writer's craft course and its huge amount of writing needed...
but then I think back to Politics class... there was a lot of writing in that class too and most of it took me a very, very, very long time - perhaps more so than I would have done if I didn't care about it - the same with Writer's Craft (well not so much, I just kinda wanted to be proud of what I write when it comes to creative writing and such). The feeling while doing the work, however, is vey different. When I do Politics I feel an intense amount of suffering, like how the heck was I going to finish this, type of thing (every time, even after many times of successful completion). But at the same time, quite masochistically I suppose, I enjoyed doing the work. I enjoyed what I did in class, what I did at home, and everything we learned. I enjoed the pain, even. This is because I loved the material - it was diverse material that reflected the current events around me today, of things I always wondered about, and most importantly, it was something interesting... the perspectives new and refreshing. I also love the way the teacher presented the material, his cynical yet strangely hopeful perception of everything, even of us, the students.
Writer's Craft, on the other hand, was extremely boring. Okay, so I might have laughed some bits when the teacher told some personal funny joke... but the material itself has no gift or wit of humour... mostly dry humours about cliches and stuff of every day life... even the humour lacks interest... that's gotta be a new low... o wait, nvm. The teacher's way of teaching and gesturing irked me, but that I can deal with. His seriousness however, I can't. Not only is he serious about his teaching, about how students perceive his teaching - of course the gifties love him (I mean, he even asked US for advice before he did a lecture at the University of Ottawa a few weeks ago), but also he hides it behind a mask of zenness, of optimism, of eccentricities, of energy (he tried to "scare" us by screaming a bit during the first class... yawr, I know - of course everyone ate it up). Also the material. Now, I like writing as much as the next person, but I also experience writer's block surely more so than the next person. This was basically my goal for taking this class - staunch writer's block. But I find that this course merely increased the ferocity of my writer's block... if i write essays and analytical writing... well, there's bound to be a period of silence in my mind when I would wait for the ideas to come, they do - at the last moment, and I would write like a crazy person... seriously, it's quite funny... if it is witnessed in an objective point of view.
But creative writing is just a blank, whiter than paper, absolutely and totally nothing. If there IS something, it's crap. Like, it's not just "usually" crap, it IS crap, not ifs, ands, ors, buts, none of that. Usually I feel pain of the untouchable kind whenever that happens. And this just magnified during writer's craft assginments... and I don't even like it. I don't even know what I want to write; I feel no attachment, no emotion to my writing as I write... it's merely a dull robotic attempt at outputting a perferred style, percise diction, use of imagery, all that kind of stuff that should just flow and come out as they feel like, not forced. I cannot command my words like that.
Perhaps that is my problem, but I will deal with it. I certainly don't need a seriously prejudiced mind - to which he admits - to condition my writing into something like everyone else - regurgitated feelings, commonly unique phrases strung together to form a comfortable, acceptable, tasteful work.
Maybe I'm just bitter. Well, in that case, I'll have to write something.
-L
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