6/11/1998: Expectations

I took a Creative Writing class when I was in college, and I recent conversation reminded me of the enjoyment and frustration I took out of that class. Thankfully they were in unequal measure (far more enjoyment than frustration, at least in the end.)

One of our first assignments was to write a one page scene. I had a lot of trouble with this. My nature is to see the big picture, and I kept seeing my stories as "the big picture" and had trouble breaking out a scene, or even just creating one. My teacher's advice was simply to focus on the scene, on the moment, and finish it. The next scene will be their waiting when you're done. And you can always change it later if you aren't happy with it. I've tried to carry that bit of advice into other areas of my life (though I'm fully aware that in the real world you can't always change things later on) and I've had a good measure of success.

In fact sometimes my focus is so intense that I forget what's going on around me. Rachel pesters me about this when I'm watching a sports team I really like. She doesn't like the fact that she has to shout at me to break my concentration on what I'm watching. I've already told her to give up this battle. It's a Donovan family trait, maybe even genetically embedded. If we're watching the Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots, or Celtics, the outside world ceases to exist. Except during timeouts, period, or inning breaks of course.

(and aside, do any other men out there have this problem with their significant others? Rachel claims it's only me but I think most men are like this. I'd be curious to know.)

Anyway, back to the tale. Eventually I learned how to focus in and create the best scenes I could before moving my attention to the next one. Our final project involved writing two short stories which would be graded by the class and by the teacher. I had discarded several
attempts and finally whittled it down to two stories I thought were the best; one about a bank robbery, one about a drunk driving accident where a couple is blindsided and the husband decides to pull the plug on the machines that are the only thing keeping her alive.

In my mind, the drunk driving story was stronger, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to do with it, and I thought if was far more complete than the robbery story.

So of course, when I go to get my grades, the robbery story got an A and the DD story a B. I was amazed. Then I started reading through everyone's comments, mad at first because my expectations were not met at all.

Once I got the reasons for their reactions, I began to see my own writing in a much different light. It was one of my first experiences in perspective, of making myself step away and seeing how others saw what I was doing. It allowed me to more easily project myself into situations and characters and say "how would THEY do this" instead of "how would I do this."

One of the few classes I took in college where I learned something useful.

I'll talk about Intermediate Financial Management another time....