At Wits End

Seriously. When I came home from my second class in Fiction Writing 1 last night, I really didn't know what to say to Rob. I was basically listless.

For three hours we presented our character outlines to the rest of the class. So far there is a former millionaire homeless man who lost his money to gambling (when his wife left him), and now every penny he makes (when he "stoops to begging") he donates (except when he buys deodorant). And he has dementia which he sometimes "sleeps off". Okaay...

Then there is the "hot" native drop out teenage street kid who left her perfectly fine foster parents to go in search of her drug addicted homeless mother, Nadia. Alright... Add to that another character who has "bi-polar psychosis 1", takes anti-psychotic drugs (or is that another character?), but has remarkably never lost a job due to this mental illness as her employers have always been "understanding". She also currently attends a university which she sometimes has to leave for months at a time because of these "episodes". MmmHmm.

Many of the characters parents were killed in car crashes (including mine), and none of them are married, but many are "amicably" divorced. Much of the incidental details were created on the fly by the writer(during a question and answer period), and I can't wait to see how many discrepancies arise as a result of one of us pointing out an inconsistency from when we were first introduced to said character. Currently there is only one character I would consider writing about because she's almost a dead ringer for what I was like as a teenager (no I'm not going to expound on that).

Over all, I'm not sure I would have signed up for this had I known what to expect. And once again, my expectations are getting me down. This is a senior, University level writing class--I expected the level of talent to match accordingly. Yet, I feel as though I'm faced with the same people who I took a writing class with at Red Deer College a few years ago (which required no portfolio or pre-requisites, and for goodness sake that was in College). : )

Sigh.

So, if this bunch is the cream of the crop out of 40 portfolios, what the hell were the other portfolios like? I'm not saying I'm a superstar, stellar writer by any means. Some of my character's flaws were obvious last night, and I'll endeavor to eliminate some of the cliches I perpetrated, but still.

Today I looked around at other classes online, but none really can compare to spending your time writing about imaginary people and events (with no final exam), not to mention no studying.

Fine, fiction writing it is.