"Miriam, mother of Sara, I release you from my fiction. Go now and exist in what realm seems best to you."
So I got my rough draft back today. I am not going to say what grade I got, both because it probably violates some sort of confidentiality rules and because it makes me mad. I spent literally hours trying to come up with a plot that wasn't 'genre' or too unrealistic; I wasn't expecting a great grade, but I wish all the time I spent on it could be taken into account.
As it is, I don't feel the professor is getting a realistic picture of my writing skills. Let me turn in Beloved, or even the most recent chapter of my fanfiction, because I care about those characters and want them to suceed. I try to express those character's feelings and emotions because I care about them. In fact, I'd rather wrestle my main villian, because at least my hatred of him is mixed with abiding concern for his fate. These guys, they can just wander off into the blue and never be seen again, as far as I care.
Witness the below exchange on my Facebook:
I don't care about my main characters. The last two times I didn't care about an MC, they died--one froze and one sleepwalked off a cliff. This could be a problem.
Bryan Davis And you call me cruel? :-)
Me: Clefy, they died and were not tortured, maimed, or awoken into a cruel afterlife. Your characters have parents die, parents transform, die/transform themselves, visit other dimensions, are forced to make hard chocies, and (most recently) treated as lab rats for 15+ years. Cruel? I beg to differ.
Plus, these are not naturally occuring characters. They are forced visitors via a class.
Friend: Is this the class you told LoriAnn about? If it is, then you're absolved of all cruelty. In fact, I don't blame you a bit.
Bryan Davis Right. Isn't it great?
Me: If you get emotion out of it. I don't even enjoy tormenting these guys.
Why do you make me fear college? Face, this is palm. I believe you've met before.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that bad, really. It just happens that every semister there's one class that is a beast, and this semister it's writing of fiction. Last fall it was intro to layout. Freshmen year it was OT overview and American lit.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it's even worth taking college creative courses then, especially if it has to be normal.
ReplyDeleteVaron, I learned a lot in my writing of poetry class, and I'm learning things in writing of fiction too; just happens that the cost/benefit ratio of the latter is rather steep.
ReplyDeleteRight.
ReplyDeleteIt just looks to me like writing groups or mentorships like Team PYP might work better.