I gotta get thru this… I gotta make, gotta make, gotta make it through

I had an enormous amount of motivation for school last week. I was stoked to be doing something productive, resume moving towards a future goal and really excited that I was going to take a fiction writing class. I may have made an enormous mistake. Seriously colossal.

I have never written fiction before. It honestly has made me a bit nervous… but I thought that an intro course would be just what I would need to dip my toes in the water and decide if it was something I truly wanted to dive head first into. How hard could it be, right? I mean my life can, at times, be better than fiction… so how hard could a fiction writing course be?

I entered into the class last week sat in the back of the room and watched the students trickle in. They ranged in age from probably nineteen or twenty to a couple of gentlemen in their sixties. I was the only girl not wearing clever little glasses, less one girl who had three different shades of hair, fading from orange to rusty in her short bob.

One really cute blond with sassy little spectacles (seriously on my to do list over the next couple of weeks is to get some very smart looking glasses) walked in and energetically shook hands with the older gentleman at the table in front of me and began discussing the array of literary classes that she had taken as an undergrad. When she shared with him that the genre she had mostly worked with was memoir writing, I identified… I mean this ::waving hand towards blog:: is memoir… right?

We had to rearrange the tables, while doing so I looked at the students in the course. With the exception of Cute Blond… and I mean this in as much disclaimered niceness as possible… the class almost looked like a cast of misfits. We pulled our tables together and I happened to end up seated next to Cute Blond… she leaned over to me and said, “I swear we could just do a story on the people in this class.”

I laughed in relief, “I was just thinking the same thing.”

Our instructor came in and took role. Upon completion she asked, “How many students is that?” I looked at her perplexed… were we supposed to be counting? One of the older gentlemen chimed in “24”.

Our instructor smiled, “I always know in my creative writing course that I am going to have a counter.” I couldn’t help it, I started laughing as Cute Blond looked at me, her eyes wide in as much bewilderment at this as I was… I felt like I should drop a box of toothpicks on the floor and let Rainman have a go at it.

The majority of the students have taken her course multiple times over the last fourteen years that she has taught it (read: lots of practice). One girl just returned to the class after ten years away and just finishing her novel…many of the students are published… basically what I am getting to is this class that I thought would teach some fundamentals of the craft of writing, is filled with people who know what the fuck they are doing.

The first night of class we went around and each shared a real-life story. Our assignment was to take one of these real stories and mold it and reshape however we like into whatever fiction we want to create, as short or as long as we choose.

“Not difficult at all”, I thought as I left the class.

I just stared at a page for an hour and a half and came up with two shitty paragraphs. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I feel like the boy in ‘A Christmas Story’ when he gets his “What I want for Christmas” writing assignment and pictures the teacher rejoicing over such talent… only to find out that he got a ‘D’ on it.

So I shall now return to my paper… taking all study tips from Lizzie, such as dancing around to loud music, stripped down to my bra, panties and fluffy pink slippers, glass of wine in hand singing “If you aint no punk holla We Want Prenup” .

God, I hope I don’t shoot my eye out.