Day 20

My mind’s in a muddle.

But I will try my best to give you an update worth reading.

Good news. Classes will be enjoyable this semester. I walked into my “Writing for Screen” class with no idea what to expect. Yes, I’m a creative writer, but I stick primarily to short stories. Actually, I stick to short stories that aren’t short. So, long short stories. Or short stories that fail to be short.

Length is relative, really.

Regardless, I have never written a script before. I was pleased when our first activity was to discuss what movies we had seen recently and why we liked or disliked them. We then proceeded to watch three short Australian films, the first of which was hilarious. It reminded me of my squirrel video: (http://vimeo.com/40831482 --for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about.) except for much more professional. The film was so simplistic, it was funny. An admirable feat, indeed.

Since our class was under 20 people, our professor was on a very friendly basis and his tone was casual. We then went through another film scene by scene and tried to replicate the screenplay on our own. I’m telling you, it’s harder than you think. I gained a lot of respect for screenwriters today. Not only do they get little to no credit, but they have to proffer up their work to be butchered. I know that’s a rather negative way to look at it, but I can’t imagine handing my short story to someone and saying, “Go for it!”, allowing them to mold my characters and plot with no abandon.

I guess it would be akin to throwing your baby over your head like a bouquet and hoping it’s caught by the right person. Bit of a risk I’d say. But maybe it’s only a risk because of pride. Two sides to everything, I suppose.

After being thoroughly delighted with this class I hung around until 5:15 p.m. when my Short Fiction tutorial started. Now you have to realize, my lecture for this class had around 200 people in it, so when I arrived at the room to find no one in it, I was worried.

Finally, I was joined by a girl from Germany and a guy from Victoria. I was relieved that they were also there for short fiction. Our teacher came in, and I was disappointed to see it was the creative writing director, the “big wig” so to speak. This guy had introduced the lecture earlier, and I can find no better way to describe him but a strict, grey haired man with a continual smirk that serves to accompany his dry wit.

That’s when I began to sweat the class.

 

But as seconds turned to minutes, and we writers were left in the awkward position of waiting for our fellow counterparts to remember to show up to class, I couldn’t help but notice the man was constantly making jokes. He was obviously trying to lighten the situation. I soon learned that his character was one of duality. Yes, he wanted to be taken seriously and be seen as a figure of authority, yet, he obviously found enough humor in life to share.

I soon found I liked the guy and automatically took up a position of curiosity to the professor when he learned I’d already read the material that was not due until next week. I swear I’m not a brownnoser.

Reading fiction is just my thang. (That it’s homework is simply a bonus.)

Now, daring to refute the teacher on a finer detail of the story I had read was probably a gutsy move. But I was right. So there.

After class, I found myself surrounded by three guys from class and the realization that the class let out late enough to miss the beginnings of about three other parties I could have frequented. But let’s face it; beer and pizza aren’t exactly my forte.

Instead, I found myself having coffee with two fellow writers, a guy with family in Italy and a guy from the Brunswick area. It was nice, really. Just to talk to people from different walks of life. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

And yes, they also thought I was European.

So, I think that about covers the highlights.

Toodles.