So I'm Rethinking the Creative Writing Emphasis.
(Vladimir Nabokov: author of Lolita, etc.)
(Kurt Vonnegut: author of Slaughterhouse Five, etc.)
Okay. So I'm a little flaky. So I change my mind a lot. But it's because I try a lot of things, find that I'm not as interested (or good) as I initially thought I was, and move on to the next thing that I think I'm interested in (or good at).
I wonder if it all boils down to the fact that I'm never happy with the final product. I wasn't ever completely satisfied with the photographs I took when I was a Fine Arts major. I've never been completely satisfied with a poem or short story that I've written (except that time in third grade when I got an award). And maybe I'm rethinking the Creative Writing emphasis of my degree because, deep down, I'm really afraid of failure.
But I think I'm also afraid of critique -- be it good or bad. I don't want these pseudo-intellectual academia types to dissect something of mine. (Not that I think I would ever be that revered.)
I just really am not a fan of the kids that are in my Creative Writing class. They spout out lines from Vonnegut (and I kind of like ol' Kurt) or these obscure (mostly highly sexual) authors that they know no one else has probably ever heard of. And (excuse this but I'm going with the sexual theme here) basically, they're trying to decide who has the biggest penis or the most notches on their bedpost. I'm not buying into it. I guess I'm self confident enough to know that the number of obscure authors that I know does not equal the content of my brain or my worth. If my stories would ever be read by kids (and I'm calling them kids because they're all about 19 or 20) like this, I would burn every word I'd ever written. I'm not exaggerating.
Compostion and Rhetoric emphasis coming up?
(Tangent: It all reminds me of this friend of mine. The first time we met, we were talking music. You know, it was the typical conversation,
"Do you like ____(insert obscure band name here)______?"
"Oh, I've never heard of them. Do you like _______?"
"Huh. I've never heard of them. Do they sound like _______?"
You get the point. After a couple of rounds, he said, "You know what? I don't want to play that game." Meaning he didn't want to see who knew the "coolest", "newest", "weirdest" bands. That quickly sealed the friendship. I really liked that he said that.)
posted by Lauren | 8:25 PM
1 Comments:
I know where you're coming from. My eyes are sore from rolling at comments made by my classmates, and I felt as you do when I was a Creative Writing major. Keep in mind that you aren't ACTUALLY dealing with writers; you're just dealing with a bunch of people who WANT TO BE writers.
I recommend focusing on what YOU like to read and on what YOU like to write. Ignore all the tripe with which your pseudo-intellectual classmates have glutted themselves. The great writers weren't, for the most part, TRYING to become great. Their work has emerged from the winnowing process because of its quality, not because of the authors' pretentiousness. All you have to worry about is becoming good at what you do.
Heh. I'm reminded of all the authors who have, over the years, lamented that their books weren't meant to be interpreted--that they were simply written to be interesting reads. Naturally, the literary critics and scholars could care less what the author REALLY meant. Anything you do, from painting your house to raising children, can be interpreted in a million (incorrect) ways by people with too much time on their hands.
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