School started last month and this semester I am taking a writing workshop. I just couldn’t handle the idea of taking another lit class (I only need one more lit requirement and then I have completed the credit requirements for my Masters) after the disaster of last semester’s Scifi class and also, my creative thesis needs some plumping. I just don’t feel as though I have a strong enough 100 pages of fiction, thus the workshop. Already, it’s been extremely productive, as I’ve workshopped one story so far and I think it might be the best one I’ve ever written.
Also, my professor is ever so dreamy. And quite honestly, the picture doesn’t do him justice. When he walked into the first class, I just thought to myself “Oh COME ON you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” The deck is stacked! It’s like John Irving and a Pretty In Pink era Andrew McCarthy had a child and gave him beautiful piercing blue eyes and a propensity to Hugh Laurie-esque sarcasm. Not FAIR. Writers are supposed to look like trolls (see please Frank McCourt, Seamus Heaney, almost every dead alcoholic white guy except for Poppa, who was an ass but kind of hot in an asshole kind of way) and he looks like a soap opera actor. It’s impossible to disagree with him!
Especially when he says nice things about my story. Yes, flattery does get you everywhere with me.
I feel like maybe I’m a little part of the program now, which is very cool, but weird, considering that I’m almost finished with my Masters. Although I do always find it funny, the social dynamics among writers. Writers are people, first and foremost, in that they judge you on your looks first, and I tend to be a little shy in groups and withdraw because I’m so freaking nervous. So I assume that they just put me into the slot with other non-traditional fat women who want to become romance novelists. And then my story gets workshopped and there’s a palpable social shift. Suddenly, people listen to and laugh at my jokes. Suddenly, there is chatting before and after class. Suddenly, I’m in the In Crowd. I’m not saying that it’s because I’m good (although let’s face it, I have an ego the size of Mount Rushmore sometimes) but rather that it’s so freaking bizarre. Writers really are a pack of dogs sometimes. I wonder if it’s that way in other professions or arts? It must be.