September 17, 2005
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Hello beautiful readers. My posting may be erratic the next few weeks due to my recent enrollment in a writing class that has me pretty busy as I try to incorporate it into my crazy work schedule ‘o’ many jobs, voulenteering, running, and spending time with Shaun-san and friends. Also, please know that I’m reading your blogs, but in the interest of eliminating as many procrastinating habits as possible as I enter this phase of what is supposed to be productivity, I’m not allowing myself to comment. Sorry, folks, but thats the way its got to be. You are all writing brilliantly, as usual though. Keep up the good work & thanks for understanding. Anyhow, here’s something for your reading enjoyment (I hope).
A Quiet Plummet From an Unnecessarily High Horse
©: The Author, 2005I started my writing class this past Tuesday and I must say that it made me feel like utter shite. Even though I’ve been writing my entire life, the other ladies (plus one dude) in the class are a good ten to twenty years my elder, making me the least experienced in the class. I had grown so used to being the star of academia that it didn’t occur to me at first that my significant age difference would matter much, but as soon as we began to read our work aloud I felt entirely diminished and elementary. My classmate’s work was clean and detailed and pulsing with life. Mine was…not.
I spent the night prior to the first class osculating between ranting about the course for making me read my work aloud on the first day of class to
complete strangers (aka my classmates) and revising the life out of a scene from a personal narrative I’d been working on. I’d never read my work aloud in a situation where I didn’t know and trust the group I would be working with, and I was so nervous about it that I over-revised. I took out all the glimmers and moments and gory details that define my voice and make my work my own. I guess that subliminally I wasn’t ready for them to see the real me—I didn’t know them! I know you might find this strange coming form a blogger who probably blabs more than she should in a public forum, but writing little blog-y things and reading your serious work aloud to strangers are two entirely different things. I have nothing invested in my blog entries—a leisurely hour or two per week spent trying to deconstruct certain aspects of our politics, culture, and society or celebrating what makes my life so beautiful with my fellow bloggers is nothing compared to the way a short story worms itself inside me and twists around in my guts 24/7. Writing blogs is fun. Writing fiction and narratives is painful. Why do I like it again? Oh yeah. I’m a masochist.
When I had “finished” my revisions on the fragment I was to bring in, everything was too clean and tidy. I tested it out on my partner and immediately after reading it I blurted out, “Man—this is boring.” He told me not to worry, that reading it during class would give me more than enough feedback to work with. Plus it was late and I’m sure he’d had enough of my fretting, so I called it quits and I resigned to bringing in what I had.
The next night in class, my counterparts assured me that indeed my work was boring—only they used the more productive and writerly phrase, “the writing lacks tension. It’s beautiful, but it is too pristine. Nothing is pulling us forward.” They were, of course, completely right. Oh well, you live you learn. Although I’m sure this isn’t the first time that I’ve learned the lesson that it’s best to just be yourself. Why do I keep reliving that one? Yikes.
The walk home from class at 9:30 pm was a long one. I had been up since 5 am and I had endured a hard workout, an unmemorable but long day at the office, and a class that had rightfully, thankfully knocked me off my high horse. The night wrapped around me comfortingly and I was happy to finally be alone. Taking the short cut through the ally, I was stopped in my tracks at the surreal sight of a perfectly good green apple positioned smack dab in the center of a circle of crisp light cast from a nearby street lamp. The whole scene begged to be photographed or written about and I felt so hopeless and ridiculous all of a sudden when I realized that at this stage in the game, I’d never be able to do either adequately. A combination of cranky, bloat-y girl hormones, exhaustion, and a raw feeling of inadequacy made me start to cry stupidly as I walked away from the lonely apple and across the ally to our apartment. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and took a few deep breaths before walking up the stairs.
Shaun was waiting for me in the kitchen, dishing up a warm, Indian curried chicken and tomato dinner that he’d been so nice to as cook. My mouth watered like crazy—I hadn’t realized how ravenously hungry I was. We ate in silence before I began to tell him how hard the class was.
In my telling of the story to him, I realized that being the worst in the class is actually a good thing. Not only will I be learning from the teacher, but I’ll also be learning from everyone around me; I’m definitely getting more bang for my buck than the best person in the class. Besides that, being the best in class never really adds up to much—I know from experience. Setting the curve is fulfilling and all, but what really seems to make a difference in a person’s success outside the classroom is the analytical thinking, discipline, problem solving, creativity, maturity, and leadership required to handle tough assignments. And if you are giving an assignment your all, you will acquire those qualities regardless of weather you receive a perfect score or not. This is not to diminish in any way the awesomeness that is knowing a topic or craft so well that you are able to generate an absolutely perfect end result. But it is to say that I plan on giving my all to these assignments, and even if I never get it right in these eight weeks of class (or in a lifetime of classes), I will have learned enough about myself through my wholehearted attempts at the craft of writing to dust myself off and try again.
________________________________________________________________________What did you learn the last time you were knocked off a high horse?
Comments (14)
That a good looking Korean guy is an oxymoron.
Being blessed (?) with chronically low self-esteem, I ride a short horse.
Look it this way: It’s just one class, and you can now bounce back. When (not if; when) you pour your heart and soul into your next assignment and render something as beautiful and compelling as any of your blogs, they will know you had it in you all along. Ultimately that counts most.
Thanks Timshead.
Etude: ???
It was a half joke aimed at answering your question on being knocked off of a high horse. I was just trying to say that I was thought I was a good looking Korean guy until someone told me that it was an oxymoron. I’m am neither bitter nor hostile. I merely thought it was a funny assertion. My mistake.
Self depreciating jokes are my specialty.
:X
A picture of stacked ciggerettes really gives an internet reader no context as to what your ethnicity is. A self depricating joke only works if the audince is aware of who the teller is. Sorry to come down on you, but I would really hate to make anyone feel weird or uncomfortable about that sort of thing.
Chicagoartgirl:
I went through exactly what you went through when I decided to quit daily journalism and dedicate myself to fiction. All of a sudden I went from being one of the best writers at the newspaper to a dumb-ass in fiction writing. Talk about being knocked down. However, you’re on the right track. Fiction writing is HARD. It’s probably the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Remember that everyone’s opinion is going to be different and try to take each comment with a grain of salt. Look at where your criticism is coming from.
I still remember when I went out to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival for my second time. I thought I had really made improvement since the year before. And some schmuck just chewed up and spit out the chapter I turned in for class reading. He was absolutely savage. But I am sure I had his number. The scene was about an alcoholic going through the D.T.s and making a commitment to be sober. This guy was a serious alcoholic–I saw that in action in post-class meetings. So, he was feeling personally assailed and wasn’t really reacting to my writing at all.
Anyway, just hang in there. You are not the worst in the class, I’m sure. I can recommend all kinds of books that will help you. Tension and conflict are key, One of the best bits of advice I received was “tension on every page.” The more danger (physical or psychological) you put your protagonist in, the more compelling the story is to the reader. And finally, punchy verbs. Do a search for “is” verbs and try to come up with verbs that do more. I guarantee it will help your writing.
Good luck. And I hope you don’t abandon us! I know xanga can get distracting, but I have found that it helped me to communicate with other writers. It’s such a lonely job otherwise.
Lynn
That is definitely a good point, that my fort of cigarettes doesn’t indicate my ethnicity. My ‘stacked cigarettes’ was a creative outlet for me in a restuarant one day when I was extremely bored, and I prefer to have people judge me by my creative and literary writing ability than some abitrary photograph of myself. The cigarettes are therefore more representative of me than (in my opinion) a photograph of some strange asian guy.
However, why is it that I would have fallen off my high horse to begin with if someone told me that a good looking Korean guy was an oxymoron? I think that logically one must assume that I am a good looking Korean guy (hahaha, if that even exists) otherwise the answer to you question would not make much sense.
In any which way, it is my belief that people are too much too hung up on race and ethnicity. I work in a restuarant with a large number of mexicans who, at first, called me the ‘chino’. While literally it may mean chinaman, it is in there social custom to identify people by race. White people are ‘wherros’ and black people are ‘negros’. But, having worked with them for a while and after having built a repoire, I told them to address me as ‘el guapo’ or The Handsome. Instead however, they call me the guapo chino, or the handsome chinaman.
I think the key is to downplay the race card and turn it into a big fricking joke. People feeling weird or uncomfortable about it means that the ability for someone to hurt you through derogatory racial comments still exists. Take away people’s ability to judge you by making it all a big friggin joke.
Anyway, that’s just my opinion. I definitely could be wrong.
Lots of typos, revised it on my site…
Everytime I am up on that high horse–the one that tells me that I will never see another thing that surprises me about the kids at my school–one of them does something totally new. All at once I am humbled, and impressed with my ability to keep a straight face no matter what.
I am quite sure that this experience will help you to write something to knock their fogey socks off for the next class.
i just went thru a similar experience… and i learned (relearned) that respect is earned by the effort you put in now… that the past rarely matters in a new group. tough lesson, but worth the pain. you can’t be the worst writer in the group, and age doesn’t affect talent. maybe you brought a piece that was more raw than they did. it happens.
“Writing blogs is fun. Writing fiction and narratives is painful”…this statement made me think of something my brother, who is ridiculously intelligent and multi-talented, once said about writing (which he does very well). He said, “Writing is like vomiting. You feel the need to do it, but you know it’s going to hurt… and when you finally make yourself do it, you feel so much better.” It’s a weird analogy, but it works for me.
I think you came around to some very unique real-time wisdom by realizing that you will benefit most by being the “worst in the class” and learning from others. Usually we don’t have our eyes opened to those kinds of realizations until much after the experience is over.
About two years after I graduated from college, I took a writing class that sounds similar to yours just for fun. Fiction writing, I think. I wasn’t the youngest, but I was definitely intimidated by the talent around me. And it made me realize that having the talent to write isn’t enough… being driven write and learn and develop your talent is also needed. At this point in my life, I lack that drive… which doesn’t mean I won’t one day pick it up again. But don’t underestimate your own drive. I predict you will discover new depths to your own talent and surprise even yourself with what you can do. Or perhaps only yourself, since it seems we all think you can do it already.
I remember feeling the same way at this poetry seminar I took. In my class in high school, I was always the best in English class with our poetry assignments and creative writing. And then I started this seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library and there were all these really serious poets and I felt horrible because for the first time I realized how undeveloped my writing was. Thankfully (or maybe not) we weren’t required to read our writing out loud, although it was strongly encouraged. It took me a few weeks of classes before I worked up the nerve to. But I think you’re totally right, being surrounded by people more advanced than me forced me to take stock of my own work and really push myself harder than I would have if I’d been one of the best in the class…