When Caroline was in high school, she took a Creative Writing class her senior year. She was annoyed with almost everyone for their Peter Pan complexes. She knew she could write, and she hated receiving critiques from these people. She thought they couldn't understand anything larger than what was blatantly on the page, because for the most part, it was true. She hated their pretentious attitudes, but was it really them who were pretentious? Or were they hostile towards her writing? Or perhaps they were too scared to realize that writing is sharing a part of themselves, and that the constructive criticism given to them was seen as a personal attack?
There were three other people who felt the same way about that class; it wasn't their lack of talent that couldn't help their writing, but they had a lack of purpose. Caroline doesn't like it when writing doesn't have anything under the surface. Writing isn't meant to be shallow, but that's what everything seemed to be. Their writing was the epitome of high school - all about impressions and nothing about reflection. And that's why she hated high school; everything was based on the best facade. She's a cynic. And she had no faith in most people.
I think I've accomplished more reflection during the course of this semester. Very different from my high school creative writing class...did we have to all take that senior year? Back then I wanted to be a journalist but by graduation time I had changed my mind since my Dad thought a business degree would get me more traction. Well thanks Dad but here I am some decades later pursuing the degree you wanted for me, I often wonder what would have happened had I not switched gears? Would/could I be a famous writer now?
ReplyDeleteCindy Davis
I enjoyed this piece Caroline, I think part of that may come from the ability of the reader to relate to it. While some may relate to small bits of it such as the setting I ran into a similar situation in the creative writing class I took senior year of high school! However, my piece was online so all I could judge others on was writing.
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job of framing the writing and going into this character trait. If you were to write a piece using this character trait as a principle one, I would recommend showing the multifaceted reasoning of it. Either through integration in a fictional piece or third person usage in a nonfiction piece this 'character' could work well as strong yet reflective.
~Nitesh Arora