On A Low Note
I was very conscienciously doing my daily writing work for my class this past week and, as I feared, had nothing left for ASVL.
I had not thought to fear that this more disciplined kind of writing would yield such crap! We were supposed to work on projects we already had going, so I tried to flesh out Home Sweet Hole, one of my favorite posts. At first I just stared at the screen. It had seemed so complete, how could I keep going with it? But eventually I got started, and came back to it for a couple of days. I was proud of myself for doing what was assigned, a practice I wasn't too into in college. After I thought I had improved it, I dabbled with a couple of other story ideas I'd had, but nothing came out feeling terribly finished.
So, last night at class a) I was late because I thought it was smart to drive and I couldn't find a parking spot. I had to walk 6 blocks anyway, when I probably only live ten blocks away, in the stinky, sticky Philly heat. I was tired and cranky and just wanted to be elsewhere, but I was going to class because I paid for it, godammit! And b) the first half of the class was spent reading samples of what we'd worked on which turned out to be largely around the themes of September 11 (2001, people!) and cruel childhoods. I have for the most part recovered from 9/11, largely due to the amount of other possibly more terrible things that have happened in the world since then. I did not by any stretch of the imagination have a cruel childhood. I had an ugly carpet in my apartment, that was my big conflict. When my turn came, I read the reworked post and it was excruciating! Between the reading and saying the words I knew them to be wrong. I wanted to stop reading and make up an excuse about bodysnatchers or something, but I hoped against hope that, once having been able to write pretty well, it would eventually resurface. It didn't. Crickets. The room was painfully unresponsive. The teacher suggested I might want to have something actually happen in the piece.
I'm a little discouraged, the city reeks, and my apartment is the temperature of one of the more serious levels of hell.
I had not thought to fear that this more disciplined kind of writing would yield such crap! We were supposed to work on projects we already had going, so I tried to flesh out Home Sweet Hole, one of my favorite posts. At first I just stared at the screen. It had seemed so complete, how could I keep going with it? But eventually I got started, and came back to it for a couple of days. I was proud of myself for doing what was assigned, a practice I wasn't too into in college. After I thought I had improved it, I dabbled with a couple of other story ideas I'd had, but nothing came out feeling terribly finished.
So, last night at class a) I was late because I thought it was smart to drive and I couldn't find a parking spot. I had to walk 6 blocks anyway, when I probably only live ten blocks away, in the stinky, sticky Philly heat. I was tired and cranky and just wanted to be elsewhere, but I was going to class because I paid for it, godammit! And b) the first half of the class was spent reading samples of what we'd worked on which turned out to be largely around the themes of September 11 (2001, people!) and cruel childhoods. I have for the most part recovered from 9/11, largely due to the amount of other possibly more terrible things that have happened in the world since then. I did not by any stretch of the imagination have a cruel childhood. I had an ugly carpet in my apartment, that was my big conflict. When my turn came, I read the reworked post and it was excruciating! Between the reading and saying the words I knew them to be wrong. I wanted to stop reading and make up an excuse about bodysnatchers or something, but I hoped against hope that, once having been able to write pretty well, it would eventually resurface. It didn't. Crickets. The room was painfully unresponsive. The teacher suggested I might want to have something actually happen in the piece.
I'm a little discouraged, the city reeks, and my apartment is the temperature of one of the more serious levels of hell.
posted by Eiren at 12:59 PM
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