Graduation

Graduation is a momentous rite of passage, a welcome conclusion to a long and arduous journey often followed by an unexpected void. It was such a relief to be free of high school, of the stress of homework and the six three-hour comprehensive exams that capped every year. Those were the worst three days. Each day we'd have two tests, three hours apiece, and then with no time to recover I'd have the books out on the train ride home studying for the tests the next day. My brain was FRIED after that. It was so nice to do NOTHING all Summer. College was actually easier than high school for me, probably because I majored in art. Electives outside of my computer and illustration classes included theology, philosophy, and English. One semester I took a class in movie soundtracks. I liked the English classes the best, especially the ones that required a lot of writing as well. One professor had us record a daily journal, writing about the stories we read, the events in our lives, and sometimes both. In a way, I suppose those sheets of looseleaf were a prototype for what I now do online.

Graduating from college was an odd experience, since I was already out of school in a way. My last semester was a full internship working at a publisher, returning to campus only once or twice to give my professors an update about what I was learning. The day of the actual ceremony, I'd already gotten out of the routine of going to classes and seeing my friends everyday, and into the routine of sitting in a cubicle for eight hours. Yet that event marked the end of another chapter of my life, and true freedom from homework. In high school, the three hours between getting home and watching television were filled with homework, and sometimes with the more difficult courses I found my homework time bleeding into prime time. In college, I spent a lot of late nights in the computer lab, since I didn't have one at home and it was the only place to get my work done. Other nights I'd simply draw or hang with my friends. When I started working though, and the day ENDED at five, it was a tough concept to wrap my mind around. Coworkers would sometimes remind me to leave. I worked five minutes from home, I still didn't have a computer back in 1996, and at the time I still didn't have a girlfriend. I had absolutely nothing to do from 5PM to 8PM when my shows started. Some days I'd actually work on jigsaw puzzles.

These days my problem isn't too much free time, contrary to appearances. If anything, it seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. Every night I go to the gym, some nights earlier than others when my workload is under control, and most nights I get home around 8PM. It's nice to not have homework, when my main concern is catching my favorite shows, watching a Netflix rental, and writing a blog entry. Ten weeks ago, I took on something more. Through my job I had an opportunity to take a free writing class, and so I engaged in a 10-week Science Fiction workshop. I didn't know what to expect, if I could handle it and fit it into my schedule, and how it would affect the things I liked to do. I also wasn't sure of my level as a writer since it's not something I've ever focused on outside the internet.

The course proved challenging. Each week we had a lecture to read as well as a short story. The works of various authors were used to illustrate lessons in exposition, dialogue, characters, worldbuilding and more. We also had weekly homework assignments, usually in the range of 500-1000 characters in length. Sometimes we had to describe a scene, other times a conversation. The official day of the class was Tuesday but, being online, we could log in and post comments and assignments any time. I did as much reading as I could during the week, using the weekends to catch up and tackle the writing assignments. In addition to our weekly homework, every student had two opportunities to post a story for the entire class to critique. There was quite a range in abilities, from dabbling amateurs like myself ,to professionals brushing up, to people I tried really hard to say nice things about. Last Tuesday was the last lecture, on marketing stories, and offered a whirlwind of information about approaching publishers, submitting manuscripts, formatting, pay information, legal copyrighting, and much more. Today was the deadline for the last assignment, simply researching possible publications to send work to, and as of 1AM last night I completed it. Whew.

It's weird; I'm basically done, but there's no ceremony. The teacher will continue to check the site for another week to answer any lingering questions and comment on any last minute assignments, and my access will last another two weeks. It's a relief to have the time back, to not come home and HAVE to read something, or take vacation day to write something as I did once or twice. Still, the course generated a LOT of good story ideas and, more importantly, explored the ground work of HOW stories are formed. I don't deny that a lot of television shows, especially science fiction series, seem to recycle plots. But it is possible in a sort of reverse engineering that different writers went through the same thought processes. It is by intent that the “science” preceeds the “fiction”. Our first week we had to read articles on REAL scientific developments, and then posit story ideas from there.

Now that I've “graduated”, will I write a novel? I don't think I'm at that level yet, but there are a lot of venues to pitch short stories so I might develop some of the ideas I played with in the class, and submit them to a few places. I have nothing to lose. I just hope I can maintain the motivation outside of a structure. The one consistent tendency after any graduation has been extended vegetation. I NEED deadlines, as much as they stress me out. If I'm free to do nothing, I will take the path of least resistance. Probably the best solution is to assign deadlines to myself, and stick with them. If I can develop good habits like running three miles a day or writing for this blog seven days a week, I can take the hours I spent on my class on weekends and use those to write a few thousand words each week.