Live Your Life Be Free!

The sun on the fruits and vegetables in Chinatown. The oranges stand out like the highlighted portions of a university student’s English notes.

Standing there, looking at the giant mobile of geese. Someone was taking a picture. A person from a smaller town from what I could tell from his hair-cut.

These are a couple of my homework assignments from the writing course I am taking at U of T. We are supposed to go around with home made journals. Some people make them out of bank books, other people just staple a bunch of paper together. It is cute to see the journals come out – they look like the broken toys in Toy Story. We are all recording different things that we see in day-to-day life. What we see, what we say, what we overhear others saying. The theory is that those things can later become great pieces of writing. Every class we read two pages of double-spaced writing to the class – taking the journal exerpts, and also taking inspiration from great authors that we study.

My teacher is an amazing writer named Michael Winter. Never having taken a creative writing course in my life, I was very intimidated by the idea of reading my stuff in public (I guess my decade + of web writing is public, but not the same). Winter, a Newfoundlander  without any sort of ego ax to grind and a very, very creative imagination takes all of the intimidation out of it. There are always feedback sessions, and things that we can improve on, but somehow the feedback is given in such a kind way that it is welcomed. Every week I am seeing my classmates all become better and better writers in their own way. It is actually quite amazing.

It has been a tough winter for me, but my little writing class has been the bright spot.  I have thought a lot about how we learn things. I spent so much time in classes where I was trying to figure out systems and procedures to get good grades with the least effort – but this is different. I don’t want to use the least amount of effort in this class – it is fun to work on the assignments and plan for the next one. It is fun to connect with the other students and hear their inventions. It has awakened something in me – something alive and interesting. Something I lost somewhere among those Accounting courses and working my way through my undergrad Quality Controlling reports at a large multinational consulting firm.

I was afraid that the course would be all about structure and rules and would make me write like a robot, but it wasn’t at all – although I understand from students that do this a lot that that this is an unusually creative creative writing course . I get the feeling that I had beginners luck and found the best possible course on the first try. If you are thinking of taking a course like this… go for it!