Thursday, March 26, 2009

She's so Wonderful

I kind of feel like I've been hitting a wall lately, or a lot of walls, and a lot of mud on those walls.

I've got to thinking about my little flirtation with Creative Writing and the classes that UMass offers and realized my enchantment may be over. After a poetry reading tonight I began ruminating and I don't think I'm cut out for that world. I love words and I love writing for myself, but I don't think I'm near brave or talented enough to ever take on a public writing agenda seriously. I can't even decide whether I'm made out for fiction or poetry. Last semester I was in a poetry class and this semester I switched to fiction, and I feel like I hated both. I'm feeling like all this talk of diagloue, narrative grip, plot outlines, and exposition make me want to tear my hair out and write a poem. Writing poems makes me want to drown myself in syrup, begging for some kind of structure outside of airy word fluff. So there we have it. A part of me says, "Just finish your certificate, you only have one class left". Another says, "It doesn't really matter at all." An even greater part says, "You're no good and you're not even good enough to be caught up in other people's good, Drop it and move on to classes with more structure and less creative demand." I don't like writing stories or poems; I just like huge hunks of text that convey...something. I am going to drink up some MFA students work tomorrow and try to give some serious thought to all of this stuff. I don't think my thesis will be taking as daring a route as I once thought. There it is I guess. Then we came to the end.

2 comments:

Neil Everett said...

I am getting a minor in comp lit because I am at the same kind of "I'm so close but it really doesn't matter" position. The career you have might not have anything at all to do with what you are studying now.

Yesterday before class I overheard some kind complaining about all of the pretentiousness in the english department. He said he wants to write what he wants to and not just critique other authors. It made me happy because he actually was speaking very candidly without a lick of pretention.

There are people who study to write and then never do. There are other people who do not study writing and then spend their entire lives engulfed in the throes of literature.

sarah j. said...

as someone who reads other people's would-be novels all day long, i say unto you thus:

- classes only go so far to make you a better writer
- 90% of people who try to write, write extremely badly
- another random large percent only wamt to write to impress other people

you are not an annoying writer, you are a delightful gem. you are even vastly more awesome than certain writers of renown i could name who come into my office and speak in monotones but who have google alerts and shall remain unnamed.

take some time away from classes, breathe. i over-classed and haven't written anything in a LONG time and have given up dreams of careering it, mostly, but will still do a daring thesis i think. stretch them creative legs, even if i don't break any records for style or land speed. don't let the college kids get you down.