I've been trying to do it, but I don't always.I think I need to try though because it's my habit not to take my writing seriously. I was gonna type work but I can only hear that in sarcastic quotes, so...

I'm the only freak out there who just sits down and writes?

Freak! Freak with twelve novels!

I never took a creative writing class in college; my favorite English prof recommended against it. I read the Utilitarians for pleasure, and I took lots of English courses that didn't stand between me and the creation.

I know it doesn't work this way for you, Deb, but it took a lot of ego-buttressing before I believed that I could write. Some of that ego-buttressing came from books. (Some of the ego-knocks came from books, too, like assertions that if you don't HAVE to write, you're not a writer.)

I'm the only freak out there who just sits down and writes?

Um, Deb, I'm finding that a tad judgemental of those of us who have looked into the underpinnings of structure without having our essential voices contaminated.

No, Deborah, you're not. That's what I do now, but not in college. Now, I don't want to be "molded and shaped". Then, I was a Mentor Groupie. It would be sad, except they were very kind about it.ETA: 12? I would love to be a Freak Like You.

So, I'm the only one who studiously avoided anything remotely resembling a lit class that so much as mentioned Aristotle, Plato and the utilitarians?

Oh, nothing so highbrow for me. My writing classes have been strictly crit groups with occasional discussions of how to submit a manuscript and how to handle various aspects of the storytelling process. And I ignore half of what the instructor says on the latter anyway, because he's writing in a different format and genre than I am.

Betsy, no, I really do understand the ego-buttressing thing - I don't need it for writing, though, I need it for other stuff. But the ego, she is good.

Some of the ego-knocks came from books, too, like assertions that if you don't HAVE to write, you're not a writer.

And that's what I meant by not bothering with the books and the classes and that whatnots. Because, HAVE to write? Um, bite me. Some days I sit and write, some days I don't because other things get in the way, sometimes I walk away and don't write a word for nine years. Am I less of a writer? Screw the books and the seminars, at least those that insist on telling me there is only One True Way. That is such shite. How many different human beings are there out there, putting ideas on paper (or screen)? That's how many One True Ways there are.

hearing on a documentary that Tolkien would put LotR aside for months on end, and that sometimes it took CS Lewis nagging him to get him going again.

t grin I understand Tolkein also worked on whatever scene took him that day. He wrote large chunks of TTT before he worked out what happened in FoTR.

Connie, not judgmental at all, sweetie. I took the courses in history (love those), not writing. But I do sometimes feel like a martian, because a single mention of "ah, the professor's book on deconstructing postmodernism" will set off a huge roll of conversation - it seems to be a prereq. And I often find that a tad snotty, truth to tell; "you haven't read Derrida? Oh, dear." Why, no - I actually studiously avoided reading more than a snippet.

Which, as it happens, seems to me to be the college version of judgemental. What Betsy said, about the classes that don't get in the way of the writing? Those are ones I'd line up to take.

But I do tend to resent the One True Way theory. And I resent anything at all that tells writers - including and especially great fanfic writers - that they MUST DO THIS or they aren't "real" writers.

That's all.

edit: um, not sure if this is clear - I don't think studying the underpinnings is anything other than excellent, and I don't think it necessarily contaminates the creative process. I do think it can contaminate it (if the writer is uncertain of themself to begin with), so the underpinnings should be studied with that possibility in mind. And I do not now, nor ever shall, believe that the underpinnings of the idea have anything to do with the personal execution of same.