(no subject)
Okay, I have to get this off my chest.
This class is called Rudiments of Fiction. FICTION. That means made-up stuff.
This is at least the third story I've workshopped for this class which was memoir. I say "at least" because there were probably more in the one-page stories that were actually nonfiction, but were so short the authors didn't have to mention their own names, or managed to avoid it.
Now, I write fiction all the time that's based on my own personal experiences and observations. And, I do enjoy writing straight-up nonfiction as well - I don't look down upon it as "lower than" fiction, which I think some professors do in a weird backward kind of way. But this is a FICTION class. There is another class for nonfiction. In FICTION class, we're supposed to be making things up, embellishing, delving deeper into stories we might have only brushed by in our real lives...we aren't supposed to be writing about things that really happened to us, and if we wrote about those things anyway, the least a student could do is MAKE UP A DIFFERENT NAME.
And it seems like the people who write memoirs for this class instead of fiction tend to take workshops personally. Because suddenly you're no longer critiquing the plausibility issues in a story, you're CRITIQUING SOMEONE'S LIFE EXPERIENCES, OMG. Which is a nasty thing to pull out your sleeve when defending your story: well, your critique is stupid because this actually happened to me. I don't care. If I don't believe it in the context of your story, it doesn't matter whether it really happened or not. THAT'S CALLED FICTION.
This class is called Rudiments of Fiction. FICTION. That means made-up stuff.
This is at least the third story I've workshopped for this class which was memoir. I say "at least" because there were probably more in the one-page stories that were actually nonfiction, but were so short the authors didn't have to mention their own names, or managed to avoid it.
Now, I write fiction all the time that's based on my own personal experiences and observations. And, I do enjoy writing straight-up nonfiction as well - I don't look down upon it as "lower than" fiction, which I think some professors do in a weird backward kind of way. But this is a FICTION class. There is another class for nonfiction. In FICTION class, we're supposed to be making things up, embellishing, delving deeper into stories we might have only brushed by in our real lives...we aren't supposed to be writing about things that really happened to us, and if we wrote about those things anyway, the least a student could do is MAKE UP A DIFFERENT NAME.
And it seems like the people who write memoirs for this class instead of fiction tend to take workshops personally. Because suddenly you're no longer critiquing the plausibility issues in a story, you're CRITIQUING SOMEONE'S LIFE EXPERIENCES, OMG. Which is a nasty thing to pull out your sleeve when defending your story: well, your critique is stupid because this actually happened to me. I don't care. If I don't believe it in the context of your story, it doesn't matter whether it really happened or not. THAT'S CALLED FICTION.