Horror Novels Will Tear Us Apart

[dotinthesky]

I'm working on my horror novel. I'm listening to Joy Division and it seems like the perfect soundtrack for all kinds of writing: fiction, letters, emails, Livejournal. You name it. If I had known this yesterday, I would have listened to them while working on my CV. I dispatched it this morning to my temp agency -- they are close to getting me a job. I won`t mention what exactly until I have it - curses and all that. The job seems like a dream come true. I still don't know the catch and, frankly, I don't care. All I want is money at the moment. I'm willing to go back to monkey work.

We've been watching episodes of Twin Peaks' 1st season. We'll watch episode 4 tonight. David Lynch is love. I can deal with his form of kitsch because there's something rotten behind it. I also love his soundtracks and his juggling of the sinister and the quirky. When Kevin visited Corrego do Bom Jesus, he said it was the Brasilian equivalent of Twin Peaks. We were using a pay phone right on a dirt road somewhere between my farmhouse and the town. The pay phone had been built in front of a house and we could see a silhouette pressed against the front window's stained glass, trying to hear our conversation. Then, from down the dirt road, I saw my grand-uncle Pepe shuffling towards us. Pepe has a moustache, is about 4 and a half feet high, Spanish, bald, and hardly speaks comprehensible Portuguese eventhough he's been living in Brasil for decades. Kevin stared at Pepe in wonder as he stopped to talk to us then continued on his merry way.

I'm going to brew a cup of echinacea & raspeberry tea, pour some honey in it, then return to my homework; I need to have a section of my novel ready to present for my creative writing class on a future Saturday. I have a feeling I`m the only one writing genre fiction. Nobody understand us, paperback writers.

Comments

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I`ll have to ask people to give constructive criticism. I think your LJ friends are more literary-minded than mine and that`s why you`ve been getting such good comments. The stories I`ve posted here before only got "Wow!" "Luved It!", etc. :-P

So how is your class going? I`m curious to know how different/similar it is to my own.

[naturalbornkaos.livejournal.com]

Ehh, it's to be honest, not as good as the last ones I did... But I have only been to the first three classes, so it may become better as it goes on.

The last two courses I did at Worcester College had the benefit of a wicked-cool teacher who was a very strange old man who would randomly quote poetry and things. I respected his opinion on literature a lot and I think that helped. Plus, it was a beginner's class and everyone got set the same assignment each week, which made it more interesting when everyone came back with COMPLETELY different treatments of a topic. Then we'd all read out our work in class and feed back as a group.

The course now is SIMILAR but it's intermediate and people are at different levels. There are a few total beginners on the course, a couple of people who are midway through their first novels and people in between... So the teacher's kind of setting people different assignments in accordance with where they're at, but that results in quite a disjointed class. Plus, his feedback is a bit hohum. He's very positive with everyone (a good thing, of course) but doesn't offer much (at least not so far) in the way of good advice. My last story just got a "very good, I didn't expect that, very good" which, considering I thought the story was really crap myself, wasn't really quite what I was after (although obviously positive response and flattery isn't necessarily a bad thing!!). I think I got MUCH better feedback from it on my LJ where people actually pointed out some of the things that could be improved...

I dunno. It's been ok so far, but I don't really feel as motivated or inspired to write as I did on the last course...

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Well, like you said, maybe things will pick up later on. Do other students get to give you feedback?

The people in my course seem to be doing all kinds of different stuff, though everyone is somewhat on the same level. The teacher is good because she dishes out criticism as much as praise (perhaps even more criticism!) She`ll say something nice after the person reads their story, then she`ll jump in with things that could be fixed, or what can be discussed by the rest of the class. And there are some great students too, who have been giving very sophisticated comments (and making me all tongue-tied with shyness). I think that`s another aspect of the creative writing course which is necessary.

My course is with this adult education centre belonging to the Westminster council. The course was quite cheap and there should be a new one beginning after July. Maybe you could think about joining it too? ;-)