A Course in Creative Writing

Yesterday, I ended up using the time I dedicate to this journal to edit a writing assignment. It's true. I recently signed up for a creative writing class through my town's community center. It's an eight-session course that meets two hours a week. We had our second session last night.

Our first assignment was to write three double-spaced pages of dialogue involving a conflict between two people. Because I was in a baseball state of mind, I decided to write a conversation between two guys, a Dodgers fan and a Giants fan, watching a game at the local bar. Fascinating, I know.

The writing and editing portion of the exercise was the easy part. Reading what I wrote to the group for critique was the difficult part. It was a small group, but I was still nervous. I rushed and stammered through the sentences, missing inflections and tripping over punch lines. Somehow I survived and received some pretty constructive comments.

Going in, I had these one-dimensional characters, voices with names, but no physical descriptions or personal histories. Nothing. Now I have some insight into how I can go beyond a simple baseball sketch and flesh out these two guys.

Our next assignment is to take the same characters, if possible, and write them into an action scene (think a fight or pursuit). I'll probably use two completely different characters and avoid baseball this time around. Maybe I'll go with a high-speed pedal boat chase. Who knows?

Part of my motivation for taking the class is to get myself psyched and better equipped for NaNoWriMo. Last year, I blissfully flew through the whole thing by the seat of my pants. The plot and characters shifted with the wind, which was acceptable for a freshman effort, but this time, I want something more focused and consistent.

Another part of my motivation is to work on my writing. This isn't to say that anybody reading this journal will see a marked improvement in my grammar, vocabulary or overall brilliance creativity. Quite the contrary. Readers should expect the quality of writing to suffer. The skeptical side of me believes the classes will be more detrimental than helpful, but we'll see how it goes.