What the fuck, people?

[jackshoegazer]

My creative writing teacher is at a conference in New York and this week we are supposed to post our new stories on the class discussion board and everyone is supposed to read them and comment.

No one is commenting but me.  It's like everyone forgot about the second part of the assignment.  A bunch of people have posted their stories but no one is commenting.  Except me.  Rotten fuckers.

Plus, while some of the stories are pretty entertaining, like the unrequited love letter from a scientist working to terraform Mars, or the bleak paranoia of a The Roadish post-apocalyptic world, or the story of the breakup of an abusive relationship told by the Brain in relation to the other parts, like the Heart who only speaks in poetry and loves the abusive bastard.  These have been good.

However, some of these are just terrible.  The Twilight-wannabe vampire story.  The lovely tale of the kid who loves the woods who grows up to marry his high-school sweetheart who later has a bunch of kids and owns a cabin and realizes how awesome it is when your dreams come true.  Half of these stories have no conflict whatsoever.  No challenges, nothing compelling or interesting and I'm supposed to find four to six nice things to say about them?  ACK!

I feel so sorry for my teacher who has to read ALL of these ALL the time.

Comments

[pretzelcoatl.livejournal.com]

That's one of the problems with creative writing classes; if you get feedback, they're awesome. Otherwise, it just makes you frustrated and it feels like you are shouting at a wall. I took a poetry class which consisted of 1) people who thought poetry was forced rhyme and bad hip-hop, 2) people who wrote excessively pretentious poems which had no meaning, and 3) everyone else. Group 1 and Group 2 hated each other, and the rest of us were just frustrated and being caught up in that.

Best of luck with your piece, though!

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

The rest of the semester is poetry and I am not excited.

At least I got one comment on my story when I posted it to LJ. :P

[kiwikat.livejournal.com]

I hope they lose a letter grade or something, that's screwed up.

Some of those sound okay, but the cabin one sounds really bad. MY CHARACTER GETS EVERYTHING THEY WANT EASILY, ISN'T LIKE PERFECT AND AWESOME? Yawn. They probably wrote that about themselves hoping it would be true and that no one would catch on.

Did they punctuate well? You could focus on that. Or their spelling, if that's well done. Or their choice of font! Times New Roman is very professional!

[sophiawestern.livejournal.com]

I am not in a creative writing field, but you have summed up exactly why I no longer assign a required paper in my lower-level classes. :D

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Remember these things when/if you are a teacher yourself someday. I'm sorry the class is going poorly - things will get better the further along in education you are.

[the-wondering-1.livejournal.com]

I took a creative writing class online over the summer, and I sort of know how you feel.

On our last week we were supposed to submit our rewritten stories for everyone to read and comment, but most people didn't take the time to comment each other. I'm not going to lie and say I commented everyone's, becuase I didn't, but I tried.

[divvums.livejournal.com]

I couldn't imagine writing something that has absolutely zero conflict. I would bore myself to death just getting it down.