It's 3 a.m. and you have a piece due later that day for workshop. You sit at your computer and you're getting next to no inspiration. But you need to get this story turned in at least. So you make something up, feel less-then-proud of anything you wrote, and go to sleep. The next day during workshop, right before the class critiques your piece, you suddenly have the urge and inspiration to write -- but it's too late, because it's your turn and you're instructed to be quiet while the class talks about that mess of a 3 a.m. story you wrote. If any of this sounds familiar and brings back memories of workshop classes (maybe this happened to you even last week), then you are in good company.
1. Your building is almost exclusively for writing classes and yet there is no iPrint to be seen.
Hunting for that iPrint like it's going to magically appear one day.
2. You're on a first name basis with your teachers.
Aaayyy, teach! What's happenin', Bill? Good morning, Nina. Hey, Tim, come here.
3. Fifteen pages for a story seems like too much.
4. Fifteen pages for a story also seems like too little.
5. You are frienemies with the Freytag Triangle.
Such a love-hate relationship with Freytag.
6. You feel both extreme pride and extreme jealousy when one of your peers gets published.
Like I'm
happy for you, but I also want to be you right now, so I also hate you.
7. Everyone in your major has an extra week off of classes during Writer's Week.
8. You write a piece four days before class and everyone thinks you didn't spend enough time on it.
9. You write a piece the morning of and everyone thinks it's a brilliantly thought-out work of genius.
Yeah, sure, I'm a genius. Yup. Such thought. Much brilliance.
10. If you have a piece of literature to read without suicide/death or sex in it, you aren't in a real creative writing class.
Seriously, it's like the only way to attract readers is through either sex or death.
11. You make a grammatical mistake, but you're so embarrassed and stubborn about it that you classify it as an "artistic choice."
12. Your Google history might resemble that of a serial killer.
13. People ask you what you're going to do with a major in creative writing all the time.
14. But at the end of the day, you remember those famous words about the importance of art.