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Violanthe · Webmaster Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 5903

Have you ever taken a creative writing class, whether at school or independently? How did you find it?
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Nik · Senior Member Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 805 Location: UK

I was asked to present a creative writing course.

Due to an administrative oversight, college thought I was in next county, not the next continent. Happily, they accepted my excuse that I did not consider myself qualified...

David Thomas Lord · Visiting Author Joined: 05 Jul 2006 Posts: 172

Violanthe · Webmaster Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 5903

I was a fiction writing major in college. I found the classes I took valuable in two ways:

1) Getting a lot of feedback on my work. Like it or not, workshops are hard to come by out here in the "real world." I had a fiction workshop class almost every semester the last three years of college.

2) Honing editorial abilities. As I said above, workshops are hard to come by outside of a college setting. It's rare to find as varied a workshop experience anywhere else. With a different group of writers and different professor/moderator every time, it gave me a lot of valuable experience in editing. By reading the ho-hum (and occasionally good) fiction of my fellow students, I developed a much better editorial eye and better revision instincts.
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Richard H. Fay · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 3:16 pm

I took a total of two creative writing classes in college - creative writing short story and creative writing poetry. I don't recall much about them other than they were easy A's.

I don't remember there being much feedback or discussion. The teacher did make a few brief comments on the material I handed in, but nothing deep. I do recall that I read an early version of one of my poems in class and it got the class laughing. Since that was the reaction I was trying for, I was happy with the results.

I've learned much more about writing poetry by just doing it and seeing the reaction I get from editors and readers. People seem to like my stuff, so I must be doing something right. And even rejections, at least those with personal comments, can help me hone my craft.

Since I went to college for science, most of my writing while in school was of a technical nature. I wrote lots of term papers. I was pretty good at it, too.
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Mervi · Warlord Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 1119 Location: Finland

I took both of the available two creative writing classes at the uni. Unfortunately for me, the first one was geared towards variety: poems, haikus, book reviews... pretty anything except long or short prose. The second class focused on short stories but the topics were strickt and only handled real life in the modern, Finnish setting. In other words Really Not My Thing.

I was disappointed with both.

Violanthe · Webmaster Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 5903

I only ever took fiction-specific classes in college. Though, I agree that they had a similar downside, that non-realistic fiction was discouraged.
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Queen Of The Abyss · Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:18 am

Well, in the fourth grade we actually had a Creative Writing period. Aside from that, I have not taken a creative writing class.
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Coroner: I sometimes read them.
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Violanthe · Webmaster Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 5903

We had a sort of creative writing class back in middle school. It was called Language Expression. It was for all the kids who decided against taking a foreign language. We needed something to do while the other kids were learning French and Spanish.
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Ian · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:53 am

I took one once in London but the teacher wasn't very creative. Because I had written a script about a killer dog on the loose all she could say was what have I got against dogs.