Every time I went to class, I sat on one side of the conference table and everyone else sat on the other side, with our teacher at the head. It felt a little odd and the teacher even mentioned something about it once, but, no one moved to change. It made doing her seating arrangement much easier.
I had signed up for this writing class in a community education program along with seven others. We were all older people looking for something to do with our time and maybe some had dreams of fulfilling long held wishes of writing that great American novel. But, as it turned out, most were into mysteries.
When it came time to read some of our stories outloud, there were alot of words about blood and guts and how hopefully the main character was going to get away with it all. And, as a result, two weeks into the class, I was falling to sleep at night with visions of gruesome scenes swimming through my head, awakening me in the middle of the night with nightmares.
I began questioning my weak little voice, wanting to discuss feelings and pastelly things. So, I tried on the tough guy for a few minutes, trying to write something interesting with excitement and adventure. But, I couldn't. I wasn't going to make it with this group.
I discussed my predicament with a good friend, who advised me to leave and never look back. But, there was something there pulling me in, showing me a glimmer of hope. I was learning something, but, unable to write. I thought I'd present the quitting idea to my husband, who I knew would be very disdainful of the idea and make me feel like a failure. So, I did and he did. I even went so far as to think I could hide my defection from him and just go to the library where I could read for two hours. But, I then remembered that the class was in the library and a fellow classmate would undoubtedly see me. I'd never get by with it.
So, what was I doing anyway. I didn't have a history of quitting. Once I started with something, I was in for the long haul. Driven by this need to achieve, I realized quitting was not an option. Which led to a pep talk to myself.
Why was I on one side and they were on the other? Who had whom in a headlock? Was I going to let these people push me around? Would they be the ones to decide what I would write and how I was going to do it? It has never been my style to knuckle under.
So, when Wednesday night rolled around, I put all my papers and pens and books in my bag and headed out the door. And, in robot-style, went to class and sat on my own side of the table, staring over at the others across the way. And, noticing that two people were gone. And, by the end of the semester, two more were gone.
That last class was actually fun, with people joking and laughing about first and second voices and opening up about decisions about character development and plots. I told them I had switched to fiction after thinking I wanted to write in a memoir-type style and one of the other tough private detective guys confessed that he wanted a happy ending to his story. Instead of writing the truth about his friend's death, he was going the fiction route and keeping him alive. Yeah, why not keep things happy.
We all filled out our instructor evaluations and left with smiles on our faces, planning on the next online summer class.
(The kicker to this story is that I took it in Louisiana and a year later after returning home to a remote area of Michigan got a notice from our small school library that this teacher was coming to my small town to sign her new book. Small world.)
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