--'cos I just found out Openoffice.org's word processor, doesn't like to copy and paste from this blog...damn. Now I have to re-write everything all over again...I'm referring to an idea I had for a play or short story or whatever, a few days back.

I wanted to copy it to word, so I'd not forget about what I wanted to maybe do with it, as far as a story and characters go. I suck at plots, and have a rather bad "let the chips fall where they may," attitude--meaning, I largely sort of make the story up as I'm sitting there writing it...which means my plots are weak and the story flow is probably bad. I don't know...as I keep saying, I know jack squat about writing ANY kind of fiction...playwriting class taught me the mechanics, but never really touched on plot, other than the whole exposition-rising-falling action thing. Of all of the 6 English courses (not counting a theatre writing class and broadcast writing class) in my 2 year college, plus 4 English classes and some journalism writing courses in my 4 year college---out of all that, I had all of TWO WEEKS in fiction writing...taught by a ditsy middle aged hippe-new age flower child woman, whose teaching was so abstract as to leave me a tad out of my depth.

To give you an idea of what I mean, she began the creative writing course--which was mostly poetry, as it turned out--with a very short poem entitled, "The Pope's Penis." As you can guess, the tittering teens in the classroom, found that the height of hilarity. My reaction was: "okay, when are we going to get to the REAL poetry?" I was doomed to disappointment. No instruction on the types of free-verse poems out there, about rhythm, flow or punctuation..nope, it was, I assume, about "thinking outside the box," but without any real structured logic behind it. It was a college course geared to 9th or 10 year high schooler's...which is more like saying 7th or 8th year, in the UK.

Thankfully, my next two poetry courses, were much more in-depth in their approach. Still, I would have given anything to have one decent fiction writing course under my belt--not so much that it changes the way I write, as something to change the way I think about writing (fiction). Nothing so rigid and staid as to bore me to tears, and nothing so loose and abstract as to lose me completely...something just to give me a boost of confidence, I suppose. Well, that's just another pipe dream, I guess. They don't have anything like that around these parts, so I will just keep muddling through. Gotta' find a better word processor though. Think I'll surf the net this weekend, see what I can find.