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

t raises hand

As said earlier, mileage is so individual on this one that there are no specs to be found.

Big heapin' word, to this and to what everyone's said about the "One True Way".

Many of the books I read early on were big on outlines, systems, and the idea that if you're not driven to write every single day, you're obviously not cut out for this.

"Driven" to write? Eesh. Ideas keep burbling up out of my head, but organizing them into actual stories? It's an awful lot like work, so it's an awful lot like "choosing" to do it...

I never took a creative writing class in college; my favorite English prof recommended against it.

Have I mentioned how I was accepted into Bennington on the basis of my writing and then turned down by the creative writing profs? And how I'm not bitter about that at all?

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

Four hours a night, six days a week... up until January when everything went haywire. I miss it, now. I'm getting back on the horse as soon as I cut this job-and-a-half down to one job.

Timelies, all. Sleepytime for me.

Have I mentioned how I was accepted into Bennington on the basis of my writing and then turned down by the creative writing profs?

Kill them.

A lot.

I got four C's in college, one of them in Freshman Composition. I got an A+ in Advanced Composition, and the prof was sad he couldn't give double plusses. I think my problem in Freshman Comp was utter bafflement with the assignments. "Write about your favorite television show." Huh? Write what about it? "Write about your weekend." Mmm, I did laundry, I worked on my heavily Mary Sue Star Wars fic (didn't know the word then).

Advanced Comp was "Something descriptive." "Something that really happened to you" (I completely faked both of the essays on real events, both of them got A++'s, hee. I ficced my own life). I could do that.

just--does the thing tell a good story? Does it illuminate some facet of life? Heck, if nothing else, did it move you to some authentic emotion--even if it was just being so mortally offended that you threw it across the room?

... Because my reading for this course has swallowed my brain (the best state to be in, for me), I'm just cracking up right now because you kinda sound utterly like the 1960s, "against interpretation"!Susan Sontag.

(And she's so not about the avoiding any of the academic-predecessors stuff, that's not her style. She throws around names and works with enough frequency and causality to intimidate anyone.)

you kinda sound utterly like the 1960s, "against interpretation"!Susan Sontag.

"Ack!" said my brain. "I'm channelling the philosophy of someone I've heard of favorably in an intellectual capacity!" I have the strangest hillbilly mind. You can get the girl out of Greene County, but you can't ...

Seriously, dude, you should read that essay! You would love her. You could just skim the names of people you don't already know about. It's what I do. Because I am bad.

Where would I find this essay?

Uh, I don't know. Lemme google a line from deep within it and see if it's reproduced online anywhere.

Woo the first. (It's only an excerpt though.)

Woo the second.