It keeps coming back to this
So I am done with the advanced fiction class at UCB. I always suffer from a class hang-over (I don't quite know if this is the best way of describing it), maybe not, but I miss the class setting and believe it or not, the people I hardly know. I have come to the decision that I will not take any more writing classes. This last class has led me to this and I hope I will stand by it. The are several reasons, but the main ones are:
1) I don't think a class setting actually helps my writing. There is only so much a teacher can teach you in theory about writing. I think so much of it, is just jumping in and learning to swim. Two, there is nothing that can teach me better than a good book or a good piece of writing. It is a way cheaper and much more efficient alternative. Three, I actually get derailed from what I am working on by other writers in these classes. Four, I get jealous too easily of others. Five, I am too easily swayed. It took me a while to come to decide to write the way I do, and somehow it is just easier to be influenced by the work of others than to stand firm and keep faith in my own.
2) These classes are a terrible drain on my financial situation. I just can't fork out $500 every semester for these classes. It is a total luxury, and as I have already mentioned, the payoff diminishes the more I take these classes.
3) I have a weak spot for guys in my writing classes. I have traced it down to this common denominator. English classes. That is where I met Lee, and in all the subsequent writing classes, there always happens to be someone whose writing is admirable whom I find attractive because I just have this horrible weakness. It makes Lee uneasy and it makes me insensitive to keep going about head in the clouds about some literary dream boat. No more of that.
On a related note:
Chanced upon work of a writer my age who has been to the esteemed Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her writing is all pomp and no circumstance. Can't describe it, it just rings false to me. Pretentiousness is one of the things I can't quite tolerate as a reader. It just confirms my conviction that I do not, at this point, want to be in a MFA program or even in a class setting. I am going to look to you books to teach me how to write better.
On another related note:
Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and already, I am learning a few tricks. Who says one has to write in scene. He write almost exclusively in summary.
Two things I have learnt so far from him:
1) You don't always need to withhold information to create suspense. You can also create suspense effectively by giving readers information beforehand. It teases them to read on, and does great in creating suspense. He has done this several times. Sometimes, the payoff comes quickly within the next couple of paragraphs. Sometimes, it is pages even chapters after the set-up that readers get payoffs. The very premise of the book is set up this way. I like that. Will have to try it out some times.
2) Amazing amazing use of time. He can travel space of a generation in one paragraph. Extremely admirable literary tool.
Listen to this: pg 184
"When the German founders built it, they painted the tin roof red and the wooden walls a brilliant white, so that they building itself bore some resemblance to a riverboat. Later it was painted blue, and at the time that Florentino Ariza began to work for the company it was a dusty shed of no definite color, and on the rotting roof there were patches of new tim plates over the original ones."
All that span of time in one paragraph. Amazing Feat.
