John Hattaway

It’s been a week, maybe two… heading on three or four… since I last updated.

Things are good. The kids are, well, I don’t have any kids but I do live with a couple that has two little girls and for two days in a row (admittedly I was not here on the first day of this) they have had little friends, of an age, come over to play for hours on end. This affected my getting up and getting ready for stuff yesterday as having another adult in the house (e.g. child’s parent) really put me out for jumping in the shower and bathing. So, I pretty much threw on my old Abercrombie and Fitch hat (love that hat) and some clothes before taking off for school.

School is now in full swing. Well, it’s really more of a half swing, but that’s relative. I had an orientation on Monday and have been to classes every day this week. That’s been an interesting experience. You just don’t realize how many 18 year olds there are in the world until you start to sit through class with them on a day to day basis, and then, like rabbits, they seem to multiply exponentially. Maybe there’s something to this rabbit idea.

Anyway, I have five classes all in the afternoons that affect my work. In other words, I am not working enough to pay the bills but keep the job because a job is better than no job. Yes, I am still trying to convince myself of that and I believe it while not really believing it. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense, but then, that’s okay as well.

Of the classes I have there are two English (one is a playwriting workshop) the second Intro to Humanities class (we have a pending field trip) the second half to American History (Civil War to modern times) and finally a Math class (this is going to prove to be the royal educational butt kicking I didn’t see coming). I am, at the same time, excited by and afraid of these classes. There is a lot of writing, a bit of research, and *GASP* they tell me I have to work in groups.

Did I mention the inordinate number (growing exponentially) of 18 years olds on campus?

Along with these kids I went to (canceled for the first day) the Playwriting Workshop and got to listen to a threesome discuss the finer points of writing. Admittedly, I do not spend a lot of time thinking about, or editing, what goes onto this page as I have several pulls on my time, but as I listened to them, and they noticed that I was paying attention to what they said. After introducing themselves as writers one of the members of the group said to me, “Writers are crazy.” Their female companion (who walked into the classroom speaking in a bad faux British accent) declared, “Writers are not crazy. They are eccentric,” and then followed it with, “at least when they become famous.”

I learned that all three of these kids are Creative Writing majors. To be defined by your major. Oh what a wonderful world we all live in. And to think that defining my life by my goals, stated objections, hard work, and personal ethos was what I thought a defining characteristic should be. Foolish me.

Anyway, Debbie, whom I spoke to later on after she finished teaching her class, summed up my feelings about that threesome this way, “They need to come back and talk to you in ten years when the world has kicked them to the curb a couple of times and they have finally learned what it means to be a writer.”

Yeah. That’s about right. I’ve, increasingly, run into people who are going to school to learn to write creatively. Writing, in my estimation, is a learned process and I believe that anyone motivated properly should be able to write a book. They may not write a good book, or even be able to sell it, but anyone can write a book. This does not mean that everyone, or just anyone, should be published or should be taken seriously.

Colleges and Universities, possibly because of the demand, have begun to institute a creative writing syllabus to their degree structures. This, in my mind, is counter productive. The art of learning to write, to an extent, can be taught, but has to be practiced day in and day out, through the good times but most especially through the bad times, regardless of whether or not the person thinks they will ever succeed. There are hundreds of thousands of words of CRAP that have to be written before the good stuff will begin to flow – and then you still have hundreds of thousands bordering on millions or words that you will write before you start to create the really, REALLY, good writing you are capable of.

The process is one that takes a lifetime to achieve and someone, in college, who thinks they can shortchange that process by receiving a degree in Creative Writing is just shortchanging them. Learn first. Suffer. Get kicked to the curb and rejected, A LOT, and only then will you find that success is real. Knowing the mechanics isn’t enough – you gotta work at it.

With that said, I look forward to the coming semester. So far, I haven’t been disappointed. And this has just been the first week. Next week we’ll see how things get even more interesting.

Real Heroes Fly