Creative Writing and James Gunn

[alyciachristine]

As some of you know, I'm taking an eight-week online creative writing course with SciFi author James Gunn. So far the class has been really, really hard because the first four weeks were spent writing one scene a week and then having it critiqued by everyone in the class at the end of the same week. I don't take huge amounts of criticism from strangers well, especially when I have little time to really polish a scene and see it's context in the rest of the story before submitting it. The whole beginning process sort of blindsided me because I'm not used to critiqueing a story scene by scene. The last few weeks have been much easier though because Gunn sent us off to finish our stories on our own after we had written the first four scenes. Atmittedly, I have had a much easier time writing and polishing the later scenes of the "Space Junkers" story based on the earlier scene criticisms. In the end, I might actually learn to like this trial by fire. In any event, it is definately the kick in the pants I need editorially speaking. We'll see what my colleagues have to say once I submit the final piece. Wish me luck as I finish it this week!
:-) Alycia