She's getting a little ranty today! So as some of you may know, I am taking creative writing in school and basically I just have one creative writing course that is required for me to take. Oddly enough, despite being the only course that is directly related to my program, it has easily become my least favourite course. The professor is lazy, and just has the most twisted opinions about creative writing that I need to share. So here is my rant:
First things first, when talking about the publishing industry, this man completely tore apart self-publishing. In his own words, he said: "I honestly don't know why anybody would waste their time with self-publishing. Go out, get an agent, and get yourself properly published. Self-publishing is not real publishing." Like news flash dude, not everybody has the time, money, and especially resources to call up HarperCollins and tell them to publish their book. Self-publishing is a great outlet for people who want to get started but who are not already famous with book deals lined up. For you to say that it's not real publishing, is just an insult to aspiring writers.
Secondly, this man is so protective over what he calls "great literature." Basically, we are all expected to become Ernest Hemingway's and James Joyce's in our writing and all of our writing has to serve this grand purpose and be serious and important. He has absolutely no time for YA, and when I wrote a YA piece for my first assignment, he sent it back saying it was too "Hallmark." Now I'm assuming what he meant by this was that it was like the infamous Hallmark movies, meaning light-hearted and without sustenance, but just the way he said it was so unbelievably condescending.
I'd like to put a disclaimer out here and say that I'm not demanding I got a better mark. I have absolutely no problem with people criticising my writing, and if my assignment was shit, he obviously needed to tell me. However by describing it as "Hallmark," which is not even an academic term, is basically an insult to all writing that leans itself to be light-hearted and not as serious as say, James Joyce. I would also like to point out that after saying this, he literally told me, "you should be adopting a tone similar to the great writers of history, like James Joyce and Hemingway."
Writing is very much subjective, just like all media is, and I think that it is so stupid for somebody to judge a piece of writing just because of the genre and subject matter, and not because of the technicality behind it. I don't expect him to love YA, but if he forces us into one category of writing that basically just says that all our writing has to be serious and live up to Hemingway, then where is the freedom in writing? He has not even gone through any lessons with us on how to craft our writing, all he has done is have us read old famous writers and told us: "this is how you should write."
The class is overall very pretentious, and does nothing to help people find what they love to write, rather tells us what we should be writing. And I think this is stupid, because at the end of the day, sometimes people want a light-hearted, funny story, and we should not be judging others for their preferences.
Like I said before, if my writing isn't great, I'd like to be told that. However when grading becomes less of "this is what you did wrong and this is how you can do better," and more of "your writing does not live up to the standards of the classics," then I think we have a huge problem on our hands. At the end of the day, writing is evolving, and people just need to accept that.
