Back and Forth

Yesterday was a real humid day in Sackville, the first one since I moved. It started out okay, was really nice when I went for a walk in the morning, but by evening the air was that thickness where you just sit still and sweat as you try to breathe normally. Yucky stuff! Really sucks the life out of you. After midnight the temperature changed a bit and a breeze picked up. I slept on the futon with the skylight and window open. I thought it would be better than the bedroom and I was right, had to get a blanket by 6 a.m. because it was quite chilly.

Got an email from Mount A telling me I've missed some sort of deadline, which totally contradicts everything they told me when I was over there registering . . . but anyway, I've been thinking about that course and I don't know anymore whether I should take it or not. It's expensive, like $1600 or something crazy like that. I'm going to have to put it on my credit card, throwing world travel plans a bit farther into the future, and really limiting my ability to freely move about the province, attend events, go to the movies, buy dvds . . . hell, even eat. It's a serious financial committment for me to make at this stage.

One of the reasons I wanted to take the course in the first place was because it would force me to write . . . but my situation has changed and I'm writing all the time now, everyday, producing some stuff, actually submitting work. Still I think it would be worth it if I was going to learn something new . . . but I keep ending up in these workshops and courses that I don't seem to belong. Although luckily so far this hasn't been a huge drain on my pocketbook because they were inexpensive or I got funding.

I don't want to go into this class and spend a hellish year where I'm told how to eliminate the passive voice, stick to one point of view, put everything in chronological order, properly introduce characters and scenes, that sort of thing. I'm pretty sure I already know how to do that. Believe it or not, I've written chronological stories with long expositions about what the character looks like or where the scene is set, with elaborate plotlines . . . and they bore the crap out of me. I want to be encouraged to experiment, given instruction on how to effectively throw things into disarray yet keep the reader along for the ride. Am I going to get any of that out of this class? Or is this something I'm better off doing on my own by reading more stuff and just getting myself to the desk everyday?

It took me a good ten years at least to escape the battering that journalism training did to my writing, to get my creativity back and be able to merge the styles . . . I don't want to go through anything like that again. And to pay that much money to allow them to put me through that, just seems absurd. I seriously need to rethink this course.

Mood: lethargic
Drinking: coffee
Listening To: Peaches (featuring Iggy Pop), Kick It
Hair: dreaming of becoming a flaming red pixie