My Writing Class  or 

A Rant on Rants

The world is full of writing classes.  There are writing classes at the senior center, writing classes at the university extension, writing classes at the community college. There are writing classes through Oasis or through the senior center or at the “Y”.   Many of these writing classes are directed toward those seeking to memorialize their own life in the form of a biography or memoire.  These courses are quite well attended and must be profitable given the large number offered and large numbers who attend.

I have availed myself of some of these opportunities and would make some observations, though limited to a thousand words.  The courses are invariably offered on Tuesday mornings at 11 AM or Wednesday afternoons at 1 PM. It is self-evident that the only people who might be able to attend the courses are those who are not working, generally those who are retired or unemployed. If they are unemployed writers, I can see why.  Thus, the demographic is that of the geriatric or pre-geriatric crowd or at least those seeking an outlet in the idle hours of their day.  The teachers are generally younger than the students though not exceeding 20 years.  They often seem to be English teachers (particularly those teaching composition courses) who are supplementing their income by day-light moon-lighting.  

The methodology of these seances is for each student to present to the class a composition they have written. If the class meets once a week then one has a week to complete an assignment.  Occasionally the authors use material which they wrote in the past.  If the class meets every two weeks, well then you have two weeks to come up with something. Depending on the size of the class, it may or may not be possible that each person’s essay will be read at each session.  Usually the teacher generates a random sequence of the presenters.  There is no obligation to have a prepared essay but extemporaneous outbursts are frowned upon since it is a writing course, not a public speaking course.  Once the paper is presented there is a period of critique by the members of the class followed by the mentor’s own critique.  

One of the peculiarities of these courses is that while they are supposed to promote advancement in writing skills I have found that it is rare for there to be any meaningful criticism offered.  Generally, observations about the work are almost universally positive and limited to the writing style with comments such as “oh, that was quite insightful” or “what a beautiful story of your experience”.   Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “That has got to be the worst piece of drivel that anyone has ever put to paper” or “Hey, does anyone care about grammar or syntax here?”  Most often I’m thinking “Has this person ever read this before today?”  Few seem to follow the Steven King truism, “To write is human, to edit is divine.”  The maxim generally followed is “once and done”.

There is an explanation for this general approbation of all the works presented.  There must be a positive economy for increasing the returns (to next session’s class).  That is, the larger the number of students who return, the greater the revenue for the sponsoring institution.  It is probably not wise to tell the student that what they just presented was akin to sitting in a dentist’s chair for 20 minutes.  

The material presented generally falls into the category of prose.  Occasionally it’s fiction but mostly it’s biography and probably most of that is memoire.  Often these courses are geared to that genre.  Most people seem to write about the winter of their discontent.  But there is little if any insight into these woeful tales of quiet desperation, no irony envisioned, no humor gleaned, no Platonic self-examination.   A few brief examples: An older man was writing his life’s story and had a number of episodes relating his time in the Army.  These stories revolved around his sergeant and squad mates.  Most stories were of the type that, to quote him, “Well, you had to be there.”  And since we weren’t, and since the language was what is euphemistically called “barracks vernacular”, and although appropriate to that time and place, it became that time in the dentist’s chair for me.  Another example was a younger person writing about his adolescent and early adult adventures.  It was pseudo-Kerouac with plenty of drugs and sexual liaisons and travels to Haight-Ashbury.  The essence seemed to be more like bragging.  It would have been better if there had been a beginning, a middle and an end with the end offering some insight into this hazy existence fifty years ago.  The last prose example which one invariably finds at these sessions is “The Rant.”  Here we see opinions offered on all manner of the ills of society, usually in some random order, and with no conclusion except that, in general, it’s the President’s fault and no alternative solution is given.

I think it’s also useful, and commonly done, to limit the work to, say, 300 words, or 500 or something less than a thousand, as in this essay.  The shorter the length the more it has to be revised, pared, axed, guillotined but this makes a story sparing the reader of excess nouns, verbs and particularly adverbs and adjectives and clauses.  As above, “to write is to edit”