This past spring semester at SMC, in addition to continuing with the web design series of classes, I took a class I’ve been wanting to take for a long time now. I was curious. The class was Creative Writing and there’s no way I would even attempt to break down the emotional impact this class had on me (after a particularly emotional 2010), but I enjoyed it immensely. It’s doubtful that I really am good at any sort of fiction writing, but another aspect of the class that I loved was the assigned reading and thorough discussion that followed. We were given numerous short stories from all over the globe, all by very acclaimed writers—from Borges to Welty and Kawabata to Carver—and we broke down these stories to get a better understanding of these wonderful literary masterpieces, as well as how they were crafted. I’m not one to shy away from stories I don’t always understand, things that bother or stick with me because they weren’t tied up neatly, but I don’t always give them a good mulling over. My teacher got us thinking, or got me thinking, and though to some he might seem a tad pretentious, I don’t believe so. He’s read A LOT, studied a lot, taught as well as been published a lot. He’s quick to admit what he can and cannot write, or that he has and still does write crap and has to really work at it. He doesn’t dismiss popular fiction, but he wanted to get us thinking about the short form and study the words, the intent, not just plot driven machines that wrap everything up in a bow at the end. He gave us a list of authors to take the library with us, on our happy reading journeys, and I told my husband that I intended to take it and try out every author on the list. It’s 2 columns, front and back, and though I have read and own books from a few on the list, I’ll just have to be sure to sample something else. Rice says I should blog it, but we’ll see how it goes. I don’t really want to give my own critical analysis of what I read, nor would anyone care to hear it. I’m not that smart. It’s just a new goal I’ve set for myself, no matter how long it takes, and one day I hope to take the 30b class, which is treated like we are all writers in a workshop, right there at lil ole Santa Monica College. For that, I’m grateful.

While I’ve just read a Margurite Duras (L’Amante Anglaise) I am picking up one more from the library today because she is one of my faves (Blue Eyes, Black Hair)

Next, Yasunari Kawabata’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa.