RABID WRITER CAPSLOCK RANT GO
let me just start by putting this on the table so we can all see it:
the way literature and creative writing are taught in schools is completely and totally wrong.
it is. it’s fucked up. it’s backwards. now, to be fair, i don’t have an alternate suggestion for schools. i’m not school guy. but i do have an alternate suggestion for writers, and it begins with looking back on everything you learned in those classes, and throwing it the fuck out.
The way I analyze literature and the way I analyze, say, Homestuck, are exactly the same. And maybe I was lucky in that, for instance, I got to do a project on the Iliad that involved a modern day retelling of the death of Patrokles with biker gangs and blatant homosexuality.
It was totally an A project.
I got to write a treatment of Othello that used single colored costumes to represent qualities of character and I only didn’t get an A on that because apparently you can’t drop the lights for too long without boring the audience.
I wrote my capstone paper on bisexuality and cyborgs. Literary analysis is awesome.
I proudly obsess over commas.
And obsessing over commas got me from shit writer to where I am now, which isn’t actually as shit as I’d have you think.
When you have a story to tell there are a thousand ways to tell it and HOW YOU TELL IT — ie. what literary analysis looks at in a big dialogic way — is the real skill of a writer. Sometimes that means obessing over commas.
And, as a rule, don’t trust anyone who can’t seem to appropriately wield a shift key.
Both sides are worth listening to. What is everyone’s opinion on this matter? Or is it not that important to you? I’m curious to know.
