Second Class

Something tremendously cool about this educational journey is that I have the opportunity to learn from instructors who are established in the field of writing. In my summer class, Advanced Fiction Writing – Writing Suspense Fiction, I learned from David Freed, who is an author, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and just an all-around great person. He also brought his agent in to speak to us and field questions. The parting takeaway, aside from the array of information she provided, was that if we have a book to pitch, reference his class and her eyes will be on our proposal or work.

This semester, I am in the required Creative Writing Proseminar course. The course sets out to teach writers how to read like a writer, essentially. My instructor is Bryan Delaney, who is an established playwright and screenwriter, tremendously well-read and a kind soul with a great sense of humour (he’s originally from Dublin, I think humor must be spelled that way in this case). I was a bit disheartened to hear many of my fellow students say that “I’m in this class because it’s required for admission.” I can only imagine that response must be demoralizing to the instructor. Maybe not, maybe he hears it most of the time since it is a required class. While yes, this is a required course, going into it I was/am excited about learning how to read a piece of prose closely to detect the elements the writer used in order to bring stories to life. As writers, we learn from reading other writers and by closely reading their work to find the craft elements they used, we can begin applying those to our own work to develop our own voice. It’s a super cool class. Writing is a craft, and like any craft there are basic elements that one must learn before becoming an artisan in that craft. (think: alphabet, spelling, punctuation, grammar) In order to become an artist, we have to learn to make the lop-sided ashtray in pottery class, and to paint the shaky lines in the paint-by-numbers kit.

If you enjoy independent films like I do, check out The Sounding. My writing instructor this semester, along with his fellow Harvard instructor, Catherine Eaton, wrote and produced this beautiful film about a woman who suffers(?) selective mutism and only speaks using passages from Shakespeare’s works. It’s a beautiful, compelling film. Check out the trailer (and the film!)

More later…