EXPERIENTIAL WRITING

In two sessions of English 103, I’ve learned that the basis for most, if not all creative writing is experience. We’re asked, as writers, to observe and internalize the world without judgment and preconception in order to produce a piece that, rather than convey information or position, renders experience and emotion. We’re told to create pictures so vivid that the reader is not only TOLD to feel a certain way, but is guided, through specific imagery that appeals to the senses, to experience emotions themselves.

However, there are things called “abstractions” that are difficult to envision, such as love, friendship and deception. Friendship, for example, is a concept that can be exemplified and understood, but can’t be drawn or painted. A group of people laughing in a coffee shop is sign of some sort of platonic relationship, but it’s not friendship in and of itself. Then there’s deception, which can be signaled by a cunning series of lies or signs of guilt, but those are factors of deception, not deception itself.

This class isn’t just about learning how to be a good writer. It’s about observing the world around us through a non-discerning eye. It’s been about finding the extraordinary in the mundane, the exceptional in the ordinary, the potential in the impossible. It’s about understanding the world around us, not as spectators, but as participants.

*You know what can really kill this unbelievable class for me? That's right, Joemama, I've got one of those smart-ass students too! The thing I appreciate most about community college is the varied demographics of each class. I've got classmates who look 18 or 19 years old mixed in with much older people, clearly in their 50's and 60's, and us 20's and 30's members in between. However, sometimes the older generationers feel they know EVERYTHING. There's this lady in our class who's about 50+, talks whenever she has something to say (and sometimes when she has NOTHING to say) and when I walked into class today, she had her BARE FEET propped up on the seat of desk in front of her! GROSS LADY! PUT SOME SHOES ON, THIS AIN'T YO HOUSE! And she sits right next to me so I'm all nastified out! Boo!