…otherwise known as Canberra, the capital of Australia, I spent a small part of life, after coming back from living in London and travelling the world, going to University. Now some people love Canberra. They love the formal, rigidity of the place and the stick up the arse rules and social conventions. And then there’s me. I hated it. Rules? Oh please? Dressing the right way and saying the right thing? Oh fuck off. I believe Popeye summed it up best when he said ‘I am who I am.’ Anyway – back to University – I went to the one in Canberra because I was a ne’re do well and they were the only one who’d accept me. So I turned up in an attempt to do a BA, or as I like to call it a ‘bugger all’, in journalism. No, I didn’t want to be a journalist. It was just a course I picked out of the blue and thought – yeah okay, I’ll take a crack at that.
The point of my rambling? I had to attend a creative writing unit/class for a semester. We had to write – as the course name suggests – creatively and then read it to the class on a regular basis. I sucked at this. The reading out loud wasn't the problem. Public speaking, to me, is easy. I'm a natural ham. It was always the content of my work that went down like a lead balloon. One of mine I read – part of a horror romance – and everyone stared at me. What was wrong with it? Well everyone else in the class had attended some basketball game the previous night and they had all written about basketball. The lecturer said I needed to ‘think a little more about my audience and experience life’ before I wrote the stories that I did and that ‘maybe creative writing wasn’t for me.’
Why do I mention this now? Well, I’m going to use that horror romance story from the robot years in my current Amarinda story. I still went on to finish my degree in Communication/Psychology at a different Uni. I still don’t conform and I write some creative – non basketball – stuff when the mood takes me. The moral of the story? Don’t let wankers drag you down or you'll never do anything in life.
The point of my rambling? I had to attend a creative writing unit/class for a semester. We had to write – as the course name suggests – creatively and then read it to the class on a regular basis. I sucked at this. The reading out loud wasn't the problem. Public speaking, to me, is easy. I'm a natural ham. It was always the content of my work that went down like a lead balloon. One of mine I read – part of a horror romance – and everyone stared at me. What was wrong with it? Well everyone else in the class had attended some basketball game the previous night and they had all written about basketball. The lecturer said I needed to ‘think a little more about my audience and experience life’ before I wrote the stories that I did and that ‘maybe creative writing wasn’t for me.’
Why do I mention this now? Well, I’m going to use that horror romance story from the robot years in my current Amarinda story. I still went on to finish my degree in Communication/Psychology at a different Uni. I still don’t conform and I write some creative – non basketball – stuff when the mood takes me. The moral of the story? Don’t let wankers drag you down or you'll never do anything in life.
**mannequin pic is from a store in the Darwin mall.
Amarinda Jones
Penn Halligan
www.amarindajones.com
www.amarindajones.blogspot.com
Be daring...read an Amarinda book
Posts
2 comments:
AMEN, AMEN, AMEN!!!
That is so wrong on so many levels. Absolutely no one should be told creative writing isn't for them. And I can't think of anyone who has a more creative mind than you.
Post a Comment