Whut be da haps.
I was going to take a class at UNLV. In my profile (which now that I mention it I should probably update a bit) I mention certain insecurities which would perhaps a class would help. Let's discuss.
I have a moderately psychic friend who once told me that she had a premonition once that might be of interest to me. She was walking out of the barnes and Noble when something caught her eye on the way out. It was a book that I wrote so she picked it up and thought 'Now when did this happen?'
She told me about it later and then proceeded to nag me about not writing it yet. Her nagging continues to this day despite my lax efforts.
Last summer I was in a writing contest and ran out of momentum, but not before acheiving a modest amount of satisfactory work, though it could definitely be made better. I find out that with a little encouragement, a reasonable deadline, an inspiring theme and the aid of several gallons of legal addictive stimulants, I actually like burning the midnight oil in a frenzy of inspiration. I won't say it comes natural, but it's just under the skin. Most of my ideas incubate and one such idea actually turned out alright.
Since then I've had ideas incubating, but i've done little writing. More importantly I've been reading a lot more. I just finished 'A clockwork orange' and 'The Electric kool aid acid test' and I'm reeling.
I was tidying up my room a bit with the aid of a remote control bulldozer and amongst the knick-knacks forming the landscape was the literary issue of a local weekly publication. I read the first place winner of their literary contest. The theme was so overused it had stretch-marks, the dialogue brought to mind day old bagghettes, the characters seemed haphazardly fashioned out of cardboard, and then there was the 'surprise ending'. You could tell the guy wanted to put a smart twist in there, but he only succeeded in giving it scoliosis.
That sealed it. I'm throwing my hat into the ring. I'm still not confident in my abilities, but we'll see where I can go with this.
To bring this all full circle, I said that I ALMOST took a class at UNLV. My 800 verbal SAT allowed me to not only clear their admissions, but let me skip two of the required english courses. The more I thought about it though, the more I had to learn my lesson from the writing contest. I was up against some talented people who were ever so casually producing work much better than mine. Were this to happen again I might get discouraged and give it up. Then having a teacher pouring over my work and assigning it's worth in such a perfunctory manner is another blow I'm not sure I could handle. Plus, with only a few notable exceptions I hate college kids. But not half as much as I hate college professors.
Finally, I was having an early morning dinner with a friend of mine and discussing where I go from here. The conversation went something like this:
"Sooooo, why do you need to go to college to write?"
'Well, I want to learn how to write.'
"Can't you just do that by writing?"
'But by going through class I can develop my style.'
"Don't you do that by just writing?"
'But I want to get better.'
"Yeah. You do that by writing."
So anyway, I have a goal to be published inside of three months. Wish me luck.