I finally got around my general lack of self-discipline, laziness, depression – all reasons most people say for not doing what they say they want to do and sometimes really want to do. I enrolled into creative writing workshop for beginning writers at UCLA extension. Writing is something I have always wanted to do and felt I could savor life experiences better and enhance creativity doing this. As is the normal case, fears of an introvert kicked in and I was wondering if I should withdraw even before attending it. But fortunately, I decided to hell with it and give it a shot. After a drive of an hour and a half in 405, my limited stock of creative juices dried up when I reached the center, but the greenery around the campus restored some of it. I sneaked into the class late and went and sat down silently. When I decide to break out of introversion, I generally go full-monty, trying to wisecrack my way out of it. But, I have noticed that when I become a wisecrack, I lose focus on the actual work at hand and botch it up. And vice-versa. I intend to treat this class as an experiment for me to find a balance between being focused and having fun.
The workshop in itself felt like a sitcom rehearsal table one sees in youtube videos, a first for me. The instructor of the class, Nancy was a very gentle and thoughtful person who kept the negative criticism to the minimum, as it was the first class. I was not familiar with most of the authors she mentioned as examples but the ideas she imparted were great. The other students in the class were of varied range. There were the romantics, the pragmatic and the cynics. But the uniform string across was that people had a passion for stories and most of them were super creative when it came to writing. Some of their impromptu writing was very natural and perfect for a first copy that it is yet to sink in completely. I made small talk to some 3-4 people to know where they came from, what drove them towards stories and it was captivating to listen to them. Then a “narrative gang” was played where one starts telling a story, which the next person must continue. I turned the story on its head by killing 2 key people right in the middle of the story. The person next to me was pissed, but hey, that’s part of the game!. And after that, “the Joys of Ekphrastic riting” exercise started, where the concept is to write a story according to a given Modern Art in less than 10 minutes. This was a first for me and I was dumbstruck for a minute with the given art. It was a very creepy image of a girl on the floor, with one eye closed and the other showing the emptiness in her soul. It struck me like a lightning and I could hear the echoes of its thunder for the rest of the class, and it is still echoing in a way. Immediately a super dark story crept up in my mind but I felt odd to develop as I did not have the confidence to recite it. I tried developing a different, softer one, but this overpowered me. As others were telling their stories, I was sinking quickly in the quicksand, the eye that was. I dreamed my way out silently through the rest of class. Some lessons from the day:
-> Do not get dreamy eyed in the workshop. Keep moving with the class and stay in the present
-> Develop and tell the story you are confident of with no fear
-> Develop plot points on paper, type out in laptop
Thought Modulation 