Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Write or don't write

On the way to the classroom this morning, Guitar and I (Guitar being one of the guys I share an apartment with) discussed whether it might be a good idea to have a pre-meltdown meltdown.

We're both fairly certain we will have some sort of episode over the next six weeks, when we're suffering from sleep deprivation, writer's block and struggling with feelings of inadequacy. So we figured we could do a preemptive strike and just have a meltdown today, before anyone has even seen our texts. Just stand up in the middle of class, scream "I hate you all for the things you will say about my stories! You're all horrible, horrible people, and you don't understand me as an artist!" and then storm out.

We chickened out though.

Today was the first round of response. Two texts. The level of response was about the same as in CWA, the creative writing class in English I took in Sweden, which felt good. The difference was that we got printouts of the texts last night and got to go through them thoroughly before the response session. We give the manuscripts back with written notes and corrections, and also hand over a few pages of written response on each text. A single text, depending on length, will take two hours and up to give response on properly. Most days we have two texts. On Thursdays we'll have three. I doubt I will be a happy, well-rested camper on Friday.

And we learned the Odyssey certainty principle: At any one moment, you're either writing or you're not writing. Words to live by.

I also learned that subs from Nadeau's will be good friends. Yes, good, satisfying friends. Today my friend was stuffed with pastrami and sautéed mushrooms *insert appropriate Homer drooling sounds here*

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