Letter to my creative writing teachers

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This was something I wrote in my blog today. It's been edited a little bit:


Find some second meanings in this and call it brilliant. I dare you, Motherf***er.

You want me to like this s**t? Ok. You want me to emulate it? Ok. Maybe I should be as vague as possible, writing five pages of nothing save for two decently-phrased sentences, and then I'd become a best-selling award winning author. Maybe I should intentionally misspell zhit and xpect u guyz to figurrr out why it's MISPELLED OR IN RANDOM CPITALS, and suddenly it is brilliant artwork. Maybe I should say that my stories have substance when really they have nothing but style, nothing but interesting ways of phrasing things, nothing but tiny little details. After all, the big picture doesn't matter when you have nice little details, right? Having a plot doesn't matter. And maybe I should never write about anything to do with saving the world, anything to do with magic, or monsters, or anything I ever considered "cool," because it'll never be studied by potential writers in English classes, as anything that's the least bit cool is automatically frowned upon by good writers, and no great writer would ever write about anything that doesn't take place in the real world.

HUZZA HUZZA JONNY GETS IT

HUZZA HUZZA HE IZ BRILLIAT WRITORRR NOWZ, HE WINZ AWARDZZ

Would you like it if I had positive things to say about what we read? Would you like it if I loved these stories like you did? Do you not like it that week after week, I always am oh-so-negative about every thing we read? Piling on the hate, and being blatant about it? Forgive me for being honest. Forgive me for being a deviant. Forgive me for not taking BS. I'm tired of reading literary equivalence of "Lost in Translation." All that's missing in this stories is close ups of a bored Bill Murray. Maybe you guys are right and it's less important for a story to work as a story and more important for it to not tell the reader anything about what it's actually about. Maybe I should be glad that you're talking about building characters and then using stories as examples where I don't see the characters clearly, nor do I care about what happens to them. Maybe I've wrong about what makes great characters all along. Maybe going to this school and taking it's "great creative writing program" is good after all and I just haven't realized it yet because I'm not deep enough to look past the surface level. Maybe you're right and I should write pretentious stories for pretentious writers who hang out in coffee shops, rather than anything that a non-writer would read.

You know, it's funny that this is the school that Anne Rice went. Wouldn't have known it. I would have thought that the program that the author worshipped by goth girls everywhere went to would have had more goth girls. Apparently I was wrong.

You wanna talk to me again? Hmm? You want to tell me that I'm out of line and have to stop with my constant negativity? Well maybe you need to look at things from my perspective. I love writing, and I hate everything I read in my writing classes. I'm supposed to learn from things I hate: my grade depends on it. How would you feel if all those stories you love, you hate, and yet you still have to read and analyse them? How would you feel if day after day, your greatest passion was ruined? How would you feel if day after day you'd watch as everyone else loved everything that you hated, making you feel so f*****g isolated that you could barely contain it? You'd be angry. You'd be sad. You'd be negative and you'd want to f*****g express that.

I don't wanna f*****g read these boring-ass stories about Wyoming. Why do we have to read these boring-ass stories about Wyoming? Why do we have to read 300 pages of them in a week? I have to finish this in a motherf****ng week, even when I have so much other reading to do for my other classes? I have to spend my entire weak tearing my eyes out trying to not hate this s**t?

You wanna know brilliant fiction? Read some f*****g Neil Gaiman already. Read Alan Moore's "Watchmen." Forget the fact that it's graphic novel, it's brilliant fiction. Period. It works on the surface level and under the surface, and that's way better than any of this s**t, which works under the surface but not on the surface level. I guess according to the creative writing department it's somehow brilliant if you have to read it 5 times to get even an inkling of what it's really about. You guys must love David Lynch movies--oh wait, except they don't take place in the real world and contain violence, oooo, so never mind, you guys must hate them after all.

I wanna know how to write a good motherf****ng fight scene--one that's exciting and cool and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat while simultaneously dropping their jaw. I wanna know how to write a sex scene so succulent, it could make a prudish granny wet and give an asexual man an erection. I wanna know how to combine six subplots into one cohesive narrative. I wanna know how to describe images in my head that are so strange and so ornate, words cannot describe them. I wanna know how to make my reader have internet debates with other fans of my series, arguing over what's going to happen in the next book in my series.

When the hell am I gonna learn any of that? Huh?

Oh, I guess I'm arguing now, and I can't argue, I can't debate, can I? I can't say anything bad about any of it. I can't be negative at all. Is that it? I'm just supposed to keep my mouth shut and not say a f*****g word if it's not nice, if it's not what does work in the story? I'm supposed to contribute to a positive class atmosphere or not say anything at all? f**k that. f**k these sh***y writing classes and f**k the sh***y short stories we read in them. f**k the group feedback that never helps because it never tells me how my writing could improve. f**k the assignments that are just like the assignments I did in Creative Writing 301, f**k the tedious notecards, f**k the "New Standards: Fourteen Hills" textbook that seems like it lowers standards on creativity, f**k Burroway's insistance that all dialogue must be significant in multiple ways (I LIKE unnecessary dialogue), f**k this school and f**k it's sun-loving student body, f**k "Close Range," I never liked Wyoming anyway, f**k the a**holes on the train who have their music on so loud that I can't focus on the crap I'm reading, which is hard enough to focus on in the first place since so much of it is so boring, f**k the stories that have endings that are even shittier than the one in "War of the Worlds," (an otherwise great movie) f**k the preachy stories with their religious overtones, f**k the vague stories that never say what they mean, f**k this shitty-ass world and f**k all the stories that take place in it. f**k it all.

I'll be positive when everything stops being so sh***y. I won't emulate writing I hate.