Why Creative Writing Is the Best

     When I signed up for creative writing, I was a little apprehensive of how it would go. I'm totally fine with putting anonymous, non-fiction blog posts out for total strangers to see, but when it comes to writing fictional pieces with my name on it and letting people I know read it? That's some scary ish right there. Because in all honesty, fiction tells just as much about who you are as a person as nonfiction does. For years, DL was the only person I would let read anything fictional/creative I wrote, but this class has definitely been helping me to realize it's seriously no big deal to let other people read what you write. Everyone in that class has the exact same fears. We're all a bunch of introverts sitting around in a circle typing on laptops. We're all afraid of judgement; all afraid that what we write is stupid and childish and not worth the time to write or to read. But then there is a part of all of us that just loves to write and feels a deep sense of pride in our writing. We wouldn't care so much what people thought about our writing if we weren't proud of it. If you just slap some words down on a page and turn it in, you couldn't care less if you got an F because you didn't try. But when you do try and you feel proud of something, that's when it's hardest to let someone give you their honest opinion, because there's so much at stake.
     This class has been a great balance of structure and freedom, criticism and praise. We get prompts for our writing, but we get to choose which one to do and from there we can do anything with the prompt. We don't have to spend x amount of time prewriting, or drafting, or editing. We just get to write however we write best. Then after we've written to the point that we find it presentable, we share. So far we've just done two sharing sessions and we haven't done any critiquing yet but I trust that we'll be eased into it and not just thrown to the wolves. It's nice that the class is taught by someone who likes to write because she gets it more than a lot of other teachers would.

     Most of all, the class is just a huge stress reliever. I get to sit in a mostly empty classroom and either work in silence or talk with AB and ARB about what they're working on (or sometimes talk about The 100 and other off-topic conversations...) and I'm not really graded on anything except for doing my work and trying my best. I know that it might sound a bit elementary-ish or like one of those easy A classes and yeah, it totally is an easy A (all you have to do is show up and turn in your assignments) but I don't know, school doesn't always have to be about taking the hardest classes and doing the most amount of homework. I feel like creative writing is doing so much more for my brain than calculus ever did. Calculus just made me miserable and stress-ridden, whereas creative writing makes me all zen and happy. Obviously, creative writing isn't a cure-all for everybody. Some people despise writing and the idea of writing about fake people and fake scenarios seems like an egregious waste of time. For them, creative writing would be one hell of a class. But as a future English major, it's write up my alley (pun intended).

Day 816 Song Recommendation: "Budapest" by George Ezra.

-SE Wagner