Thursday, June 28, 2012

Literary Circles: Speaking of Self-Indulgence...

For a brief time in college, I was a triple major: English lit, education and creative writing. While I'd like to think it's because I was incredibly ambitious, I think I was more just young/naive to think that being a triple major was a good idea. Either way, it didn't last. I dropped creative writing after taking my one and only creative writing class.

Mr. Full-of-Himself, who was a "published" author, taught the class. His credentials included an instructional text used by our university and a few magazine articles. Mr. Full-of-Himself loved to work in the phrase "as a published author" before offering his opinion in class discussions. When we shared our writing, he would rip us apart. He never complimented us - and we had some really talented writers in that class. As a result, self-indulgence and competition dominated our class environment. We ripped each other apart during critique sessions. We rolled our eyes when others spoke. Admittedly, I couldn't take it, I dropped the major, and I stopped writing.

When I eventually started writing again, I did it for me. I hesitated to enter the literary world - blogging, contests, conferences, even querying. However, in the last few months, I've been floored by the encouragement and loveliness from other writers, bloggers, agents, and authors. I never expected such a supportive community. I didn't anticipate rejection and critiquing to push me to do better, instead of make me want to quit. Maybe it's because I'm older or tougher - I really was quite wimpy in my early years. Hell, while I'm speaking of self-indulgence at it, let's add wiser in their too. Either way, I grossly underestimated the literary community.

Thank you to the bloggers, authors, writers, agents, editors, and interns for the encouragement and support I didn't see coming. You are all a wonderful group of people I feel lucky to have come across!

Is it just me? Anyone else have any horrible or wonderful writing community experiences? Please say it isn't just me.

8 comments:

  1. I agree with you - I love the small part of the writer community in which I've participated so far! Everyone is so supportive here. That class sounds like the perfect environment to convince someone to GIVE UP on writing, not to strive to improve... LOL. Too bad. I wonder if people like your professor are the kinds of people who never truly make it because they're already so full of their own self-importance?

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    1. It worked on me - I totally quit after that! Then again, 10 or so years ago, I was kind of the quitting type... Still, I'm really taken aback sometimes at how many lovely (and really talented) people I've met lately through this journey!

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  2. Certainly, it's not just you. The writing community I've discovered is so super supportive. I think it's because there is nothing quite *like* writing, and other writers get that and want to help each other along the journey.

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    1. I agree! And not to sound completely cheesy, *warning I'm about to* but I love hearing the success stories along the way when another writer who has been at it for a while receives their call, or contract, or whatever.

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  3. I've had professors who literally crossed out adjectives in student papers and replaced them with their own. And then I've had experiences like I just did on QQQE, where a bunch of talented writers and thinkers come together to support each other for no other reason than they know what it's like. Just wanted to stop by and say say THANK YOU.

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    1. Jericha! I recognized your name immediately from your recent query! Don't even get me started on QQQE - talk about a supportive community....

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  4. Love this post. I was really lucky and was (weird....lol just graduated) a creative writing major. I had a great critique group/friends in the major and we still swap writing with each other! I did though have a professor who was very smart (not published) and we disagreed on everything writingwise. I always say I learned a lot from his classes but our reading/writing style was very different from one another. I love YA, he thought it was stupid. I did read a ton of great literature from him though so plus? lol :o)

    (What is QQQE? I need a query butt kicking LOL)

    I do want to say....the writing community is blessed with great support. And I'm so glad I "met" you through it :-)

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    1. Me too Rachel! I also love to hear that you had such great experiences as a creative writing major. I took writing classes for my education major and loved those. You can find QQQE here: http://theqqqe.blogspot.com/ I highly recommend putting any query through here first. (I wish I would have done that from the start - I had a few rounds of lousy queries) Matt MacNish is bright, helpful and still encouraging!

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