snap!

[adelaidesean]

Of his experience studying English at university level, Garry Disher says (in the latest issue of Lumen, the University of Adelaide Alumni Magazine):

"I hated it. Back then I was already keen on becoming a writer, and it seemed to me that English was going to ruin my love of reading and books. I found the analysis of the novels we were reading too academic, too difficult, and in some respects wrong-headed. But I was just a kid, what did I know? I wasn't ready for that way of looking at literature."

I had the same experience at high school. It feels very weird to be a PhD candidate now.

(Received my first knock-back for a conference paper the other day. It didn't occur to me that by entering this world I'd be opening myself to rejections from a whole new sector!)

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Listening to: Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie - How Close Your Soul

Comments

[nyssa-p.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I'm going through this now!

I'm studying for a bachelor of creative arts, majoring in writing, and the writing part so far is really....lame. All the advice given is so generalised as to be almost useless, and even at university level, people look down on spec fic (and they don't seem to have anyone who knows something about the genre).

The two pieces that I put in for the workshop, one was set in a sort of purgatory/limbo realm and in the other the character was dying, and the response to it was just "more scene!". Especially with the first one, as it was a prologue, I didn't want 5 pages of what flowers looked like (y'know, since there were none).

I was going to do a masters in creative writing afterwards, but I think a masters in editing and publishing will serve me better. At least in that I can relish in typography (mmm fonts....).

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

It can be tough at uni, certainly, when no one shares your own love for a genre. I was lucky in my Masters year: from a class of ten, eight of us were writing something speculative, so even though it wasn't our supervisor's thing, we had each other to get us through.

That said, the more I learn about this game, the more certain I am that the same rules apply to every genre and that the end result is identical: writers can write any way they want, as long as the reader is held tight within the story. Learning technique can help, even though sometimes what works in a particular mainstream story won't work in a particular SF piece. I reckon it's all good to hear at least once. Keep your eyes and ears open (as I'm sure they are) and exploit the knowledge later. :-)