Today was a day I've been dreading since my first day of Poetry & Fiction- the day that I had to compare a piece of my writing to an author that had influenced me. Though Libba Bray is my #1 favorite writer, I just couldn't compare my writing to hers, so I went to another of my favorite authors- Maureen Johnson.
Actually, MJ and I do have sort of similar styles, or at least the way we implement our comparable senses of humor into our work is similar. So even though I can only wish I was as good as her, I decided to do my project on that comparison.
When I got up in front of the class, I was shaking, I was so nervous. I always speed-talk, but when I get nervous, it's gets worse by about a thousand percent. So I sped through her history and why she ifluenced me and then read a short excerpt from Devilish, one of my favorites of her novels. And then I read my excerpt.
The snippet I read was one I showed you guys a long time ago, from Q when Eliza and Jonah first meet. But something you guys probably already know is that sharing your work over the internet, to live yet invisible people, is completly different from standing in front of a bunch of people and reading your own words to them. I was terrified and shook a lot and kept my eyes on the paper only like you're not supposed to do. Finally, I reached the end of the page, looked up at the class and was astonished.
Because guess what? They all looked interested, some even impressed. And during the question and answer session, one girl asked me if I was still working on the novel and how far I'd gotten, and the girl after her said she really wanted to read it when I was finished.
Now I know. This praise from my fellow college kids is not the road to publication, necessarily. But I was on such a high afterwards that it almost felt like it. People liked what I'd written. They liked my little WIP baby!
This makes me a little (though not completely) less scared for next week, when I have to turn in ten pages of my fiction for a class-wide critique.
Tonight, another writing class! I've been working on the assignment (a five-page script) and am stuck on page three due to my determination to choose a really hard style of writing for my first piece. Someone save me from myself :P
Showing posts with label class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label class. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
I'm Writing Because I'm Nervous
...And sometimes writing is the only thing that distracts me enough to calm me down (though sometimes the nerves are too much and I can't write anything of substance.)
I'm nervous because tomorrow, I start my junior year of college. Well, classes don't start tomorrow- they begin on Wednesday- but I move in tomorrow. I also have a big audition that I want to nail but am afraid I won't.
How does this relate to writing? Because this is a year of writing challenges, which is both scary and exciting.
CHALLENGE #1: Declaring my writing minor, which I haven't yet officially done (as in, the paper hasn't been signed. Everyone knows, though.) This is a big step for me... bigger than I realised at the moment that was sitting down with my advisor saying, "I want to declare a minor in writing." Bigger than I realised when I spent hours over a few weeks telling my mom all the reasons I wanted to pursue this minor while she said on the other end of the phone, "And what are you going to do with that?" (She asks this of an acting major- ha!) At those points, I was completely confident. It was the Right Choice and I knew it. Now, though I still think it's a good idea, I'm nervous that I've over estimated my writing ability and people will scoff at me.
CHALLENGE #2: Taking a play and screenwriting class. Doesn't seem like a huge deal when you consider how many plays and screenplays I've written, but again, it's the question of quality. And the fact that I'm going to be forced to have people perform my writing after very few revisions. I've only had this done a few times and they were cringe-worthy affairs.
CHALLENGE #3: Taking a Writing in Poetry & Fiction class. I'm less nervous for this because, unlike Play & Screenwriting (which is required for my major) the class won't necessarily contain people I actually know, which will make it easier for me to share. But then there's the poetry part. I strongly, strongly dislike poetry. I can count on one hand the poems I sort of know and like. Other than that, I just don't enjoy it- reading it or writing it. And because it's in the title, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be like middle school honors English (the last time I was forced to write poetry over an extended period of time), where it was just a unit. I think it's gonna be like... a big part of the class. Someone save me from my own poetry...
CHALLENGE #4: Writing a suspense novel in a month. That's this year's NaNo, as you probably know, and it's a genre I haven't tackled before. But it will be made 1000x easier by the fact that it's CONTEMPORARY! Let's hear it for much less research (despite the fact that an e-mail just arrived from a friend containing a thirteen page paper on the mathematics of light as possible source material... oy...)
And add into that that I'm living with four other people this year (though only rooming with one), none of whom I've lived with before, so you never know how that's going to go, and my plethora of auditions this week... I'm freaking out, guys.
I'm nervous because tomorrow, I start my junior year of college. Well, classes don't start tomorrow- they begin on Wednesday- but I move in tomorrow. I also have a big audition that I want to nail but am afraid I won't.
How does this relate to writing? Because this is a year of writing challenges, which is both scary and exciting.
CHALLENGE #1: Declaring my writing minor, which I haven't yet officially done (as in, the paper hasn't been signed. Everyone knows, though.) This is a big step for me... bigger than I realised at the moment that was sitting down with my advisor saying, "I want to declare a minor in writing." Bigger than I realised when I spent hours over a few weeks telling my mom all the reasons I wanted to pursue this minor while she said on the other end of the phone, "And what are you going to do with that?" (She asks this of an acting major- ha!) At those points, I was completely confident. It was the Right Choice and I knew it. Now, though I still think it's a good idea, I'm nervous that I've over estimated my writing ability and people will scoff at me.
CHALLENGE #2: Taking a play and screenwriting class. Doesn't seem like a huge deal when you consider how many plays and screenplays I've written, but again, it's the question of quality. And the fact that I'm going to be forced to have people perform my writing after very few revisions. I've only had this done a few times and they were cringe-worthy affairs.
CHALLENGE #3: Taking a Writing in Poetry & Fiction class. I'm less nervous for this because, unlike Play & Screenwriting (which is required for my major) the class won't necessarily contain people I actually know, which will make it easier for me to share. But then there's the poetry part. I strongly, strongly dislike poetry. I can count on one hand the poems I sort of know and like. Other than that, I just don't enjoy it- reading it or writing it. And because it's in the title, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be like middle school honors English (the last time I was forced to write poetry over an extended period of time), where it was just a unit. I think it's gonna be like... a big part of the class. Someone save me from my own poetry...
CHALLENGE #4: Writing a suspense novel in a month. That's this year's NaNo, as you probably know, and it's a genre I haven't tackled before. But it will be made 1000x easier by the fact that it's CONTEMPORARY! Let's hear it for much less research (despite the fact that an e-mail just arrived from a friend containing a thirteen page paper on the mathematics of light as possible source material... oy...)
And add into that that I'm living with four other people this year (though only rooming with one), none of whom I've lived with before, so you never know how that's going to go, and my plethora of auditions this week... I'm freaking out, guys.
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