write things worth reading or do things worth writing

I took one creative writing class, one time.

I was a sophomore in high school, and technically, I shouldn’t have taken it.  It was for seniors, but I wanted to and the deciders of these things gave me the o.k.

It was a bad idea really.  I had no idea what I was doing.  I think creative writing calls for a degree of self-awareness, or conversely the awareness that you have no idea who this “self” is supposed to be, that I just didn’t have as a sixteen year old.  I was the worst kind – the sixteen year old who thinks she’s self aware, but actually has no idea what’s going on just yet.    It wasn’t working for me.  This, tied with the fact that it was a class of seniors who I didn’t know, made me very self conscious.  I wasn’t comfortable with other people reading my work, therefore my work was no bueno.

I wish I had taken some creative writing classes in college.   I think I would have had alot of fun with it.

I feel like if I were to sit down and write something that isn’t something i’ve been trained in writing, I’d do it “wrong.”  Which doesn’t make any sense really.  That’s what eighteen years of formal education will do to someone I guess.    Also the fact that my best friend is currently working on her MFA in Creative Writing from one of the most highly regarded schools in the country makes me think there’s at least a little formal training needed.  Just a little.

I just called my mother and told her this.

“I wish I had taken a creative writing class in college.”

“Min, you did alot.  Almost everything you’re interested in you’ve studied.  Just give it a rest already.”

touche, salesman.