Tag: creative writing major problems

OMG see, I almost convinced myself to major in history, just out of love of the subject matter, but I thought CW would be a more “practical” degree… this was after I tried and failed to pursue German Studies as a major. (art wasn’t an option at my college. unless you really, really liked pottery.) 

…Ah, “how much did I improve”. The million dollar question. 

NOT THAT MUCH and LOTS, simultaneously, is the unfortunate answer. 

There was exactly -one- class that I took that actually put me through the ringers and made me improve my prose, and it was only a month long. It was my script writing class, and it was the first and only time a teacher looked me in the eye and was like “this is shit”. And I was like “>:OOOOO !!!!” and then I learned what it’s like to actually write and edit like you’re trying to sell something. The teacher (Miguel Tejada-Flores, for the record) was a hardened, salty sailor of the Summer Movie Blockbuster seas. He had no fucks to give about flowery prose or high concepts.  It was absolutely good medicine.

Many of my classes were very supportive and cuddly and made you feel ~*special*~ and ~*unique*~, which is all fine and good, but when it came time to crank out a 200 page thesis? None of us had shit to work with because literally NONE of the classes we took were about actually -producing work on a deadline- or -FINISHING ANYTHING-. But what they did give me was a wealth of one-on-one time with professors who actually cared about me, recommended the right books for me to read, and gave me a much needed hand up when I was drowning in self-doubt and navel gazing (I owe Prof Anna Keesey my life, and my confidence in my own weirdness.). And any class that has you reading, writing consistently, sharing your work, and editing, will do a body good. 

The other thing that genuinely helped my writing was taking some 301 level classes on Romantic and Victorian poetry (with the most excellent Prof Katherine Kernberger). It was…not flowery. We got to analyze meter and historical contexts and etymology. (*sweet sigh* my jam…)

…My thesis was a hot pile of steaming garbage, btw. The fact that they let me graduate is testament to how few shits the college actually gave about english majors. (fun fact: it wasn’t until graduation day when I watched the endless stream of nursing and business students get their diplomas that I realized my college wasn’t the liberal artsy haven they had advertised themselves as).

So, my answer here, if you’re pursuing taking classes for CW, is forget majoring in it, and just find yourself the –right– class/es. 

Deliberately pick something that will challenge you, not the thing that sounds like what you’re doing already. Skip all the “fantasy writing workshops” and go for something that will make you grit your teeth and swear, like screenwriting or technical writing or something you have to actually produce to a deadline, hear read aloud by others, that has word limits, that has to convince someone to give you money. It’s like an full-body cleanse for the creatively constipated soul. It makes you WAY less precious about your writing, and it will help with laboring over a single sentence for five hours, because you stop looking at each sentence like a ~*special beautiful snowflake from your inner soul*~, and start thinking about them as tools to communicate, to further a narrative. 

And I have to say, you’re already a MUCH better writer than I was in college. You communicate ideas with precision, where I tended to waft around in the nebulous aether of my own vocabulary. I still waft, on occasion. You may have noticed.