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« on: June 26, 2013, 06:54:56 PM »
I've been thinking about enrolling in one. Fiction, probably. Did some research (minimal) and found one in Manhattan that looked promising. There's an open house tonight. I decide to go.
The campus is on a stretch of 8th Avenue just north of Penn Station: chain restaurants and newsstands snoozing under impassive fabric warehouses and anonymous offices. Times Square sprawl. Tourist overshoot territory. The panhandlers know it. I'm half an hour early: first to arrive. I'm greeted enthusiastically by the proprietor, who introduces himself as Alex and gives me a handshake with his eyes. Close-cropped silver hair thinning gracefully on top, wide entrepreneurial smile, peepers tiny behind wire-framed glasses perfectly proportioned to the broad, friendly face swaddled in a few days' tough salt-n-pep stubble. He gestures to a small office where I'm to sign in. A pair of blond, rumpled students jump to attention behind a folding table crammed with an array of promotional materials: brochures, class schedules, promo pens, little stock-paper scrolls neatly tied with green ribbons. The scrolls are uniform in circumference and bear no trace of the mechanical process that created them. I imagine someone taking a box of neatly-rolled little paper scrolls from a closet and placing them on the table, one by one, in a carefully calculated jumble meant to evoke the passion and unbridled joy of the creative mind. I am already sure I shouldn't have come.
The girl hands me a brochure and class schedule, and asks if I've brought pen and paper. "Yes," I say, even though I don't know. "Take a pen," says the boy; it seems to be the punchline to some vocational joke. They beam in unison. I find myself wondering whether Children of the Corn could've been a Broadway musical. Alex re-appears and instructs them to instruct me to wait in a classroom at the end of the hall. "Coldest room in the house!" he says heartily, with real warmth. He overdirects me to the room, ten feet away and empty. I let myself in. Upper-floor detailing and blank gray sky greet me from the window. I know this event is little more than a sales pitch. I watch the other suckers file in: all but one flashes a broad grin at the seated parties before choosing a chair near the front, each vectoring differently to place themselves in the instructor's ostensible line of sight. The room fills and tentative conversations begin. My resolve is weakening.
Alex charges in, brimming with excitement and gratitude, and welcomes us to his institution. He does not try to ply us with history, humble origins, notable graduates (if any), or the variety of lucrative and rewarding careers his graduates have gone on to. I take this as a good sign. He introduces us to our de facto instructor, Susan. She's got a cloud of frizzy red hair and the kind of sweet face that could sell venereal disease to Howard Hughes. She seems to dislike her sweetness, which makes her that much sweeter. She'll be giving us a preview of the fiction workshop. She explains the centrality of character to narrative in a few well-chosen words, then invites us to help her "create a character" from scratch.
I'm suddenly very uncomfortable, and it has a lot to do with the words "help" and "create". I realize this anxiety is part of what brought me here. But it's too much, right here/now: the menial task isn't worth the discomfort. I start timing my exit. Susan starts asking questions. I decide I can handle this round without any lasting damage to my ego. Shine time: What's our character's favorite movie? "Field of Dreams," I blurt. Thoughtful expressions and head-nodding all around. Susan expertly integrates it with the extant character profile, and we move on.
Writing exercise time. I don't hear the prompt. We're to read what we've written to the rest of the class, be imaginative, and consider consistency and plausibility to be secondary qualities. Five minutes. I wait three, fake a reaction to an urgent text message, and hustle apologetically out of the room. I feel a moment's smugness at somehow having answered the question more ingeniously than anyone else there, but then realize I'd never actually heard the question. So much for that.
I'm definitely not ready for this kinda thing, even though I'm sure the "exercise" was just a preliminary attempt to promote engagement/collaboration among a group of strangers, and not what I should expect from the course. It was obviously designed with the intent of condensing the stimulation/immersion quotient of a whole class into one 15-minute endorphin-packed burst of collaborative creativity -- but, shit, it was too much for me. I hope to find a class that's a little more introvert-friendly, and it should be challenging, too. Uncomfortable, that way. I'll keep looking.
Have you ever taken a (non-college) writing class or workshop? As a non-student, I mean. Where, and what was it like? Helpful? Challenging? Worth it? A rip-off? Full of idiots? Cool?
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