I was once in college. Twice, actually.
To get any degree you need a certain number of credits.
Some are in your major.
Some are in specified fields.
Some are whatever you feel like.
Some might be in your declared minor, if your degree requires that.
Yeah, I had to take X credit hours in the English department.
Creative Writing courses sounded interesting.
And they were... provided you take one of the "sane" English professors.
(there were some strange units with tenure in that department)
For brevity, I guess I have to pick one main thing here, and I'll choose... "essays".
Essays are held out to be some kind of mythical writing goal.
And we had to read a bunch of them, trust me on that.
We read essays in class. We discussed essays in class.
We read essays for homework, we read many essays over holiday break.
Sometimes we all read one then discussed it.
Sometimes the teacher read one aloud, then lectured on it.
Sometimes one of us had to read one aloud.
Sometimes we had to read our own work aloud, sometimes each others.
But trust me here, there were more essays read than you can shake a stick at.
And here's the thing about almost all of these essays... they're B-O-R-I-N-G !!
I mean, maybe a couple were okay? And just okay.
As in, I enjoyed how the writer wrote the thing, the way they did descriptions or the metaphors.
Only O-N-E out of all those essays? Stayed with me, and pops into my head, unbidden.
Its been a number of years, and to be honest more than I prefer to count.
That ONE essay, had incredible staying power. That's it.
we had a school newspaper in college, which is normal.
we also had I suppose you call it a literary rag... we all called it any number of things.
"the other weird school newspaper"
"the short story newspaper"
etc
Know what was in that thing? There was usually a number of creative weird little stories taken by submission.
They could be humorous, zany, serious, anything.
Some, I still remember, it must have been the zany novelty aspect.
But UNFORTUNATELY, the English Professors would take turns getting "published" in this rag.
fourteen pages of yet another? You guessed it... "Essay on BoringThing".
or, my personal favorite... "Essay on NothingAtAll"
and that's my giant complaint, with the whole "Creative Writing" department, and the whole science of it all.
still though... that *one* essay that I will never forget?
Yeah, I took a couple things from it.
The more I might sit and ponder on that one, once in a while I might derive some small thing more.
As I sit here and write this, I idly wonder.
What would
@Eldoria have to say about THAT essay.
To me, it was right up her alley.
Family, sweetness, Hallmark greeting card feelings.
Single mommy, single young daughter.
I need more than sappy emotion, though. There was some tension and plot.
In a sort of micro-Crichton way, I "accidentally" learned a lot about the science of wild and tame turkeys and ornithology.
Ripe with metaphor and I suppose other things. Very descriptive.
And all in a very short little story.
