fandomhigh | Creative Writng; Tuesday, Period Two [ 03/07 ].

There was nothing particularly special about Valentine's class when the students moseyed their way in. Just a classroom, and a young woman sitting on a desk up front with a friendly smile for each of them, and CREATIVE WRITING written in very big letters on a chalkboard behind her, along with a quote:

"I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly." -Edgar Rice Burroughs

"Welcome to Creative Writing," Valentine said, with a quick glance at her roster to guess that everyone was here. "Behind me on the board are words from someone much wiser and more prolific than myself in writing, a quote that very much embodies my approach to creative writing. We can talk mixed metaphors and qualifiers and thesaurus abuse all day, but, at the bottom of everything, are you telling a good story? We'll leave the technical stuff to the grammarians and the cunning linguists. Over these next few weeks, we're just here to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

"As you know, the first week is full of introductions. We're only on Tuesday, so you're probably not utterly sick of the yet, but we're still going to do something a little different in this respect. There's a popular line of thought in the writing world, that there's a certain duality to the writer. As a writer, you have your everyday self, and then there is the writer self, and the writer self has the ability to go to places your everyday self would have never dreamed of. When there is a pen in your hand, you cease to be, say, Valentine Wiggin, and you become some other great and powerful creature, a world builder, a storyteller, a myth maker. Some authors even go so far as to use a pen name, a new alias to separate the writer world from the waking one.

"So that's what we'll do today. We're going to invent our writer self, and the moment you enter this classroom, you will leave the Daves, the Lokis, the Natalies at the door. You'll say sayonara to the Maebys and Peetas for at least an hour and invent yourself a writer persona. If you'd like, choose a new name for yourself, a pen name, and that's what you'll be once you're here. Now, if you really like your name, which is understandable, because it's your name, then keep it. But you're still going to tell us a story about your writer self.

"I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with the Two Truths and a Lie game, but the essential idea is that you tell everyone two truths about yourself and a lie, and the others generally try to guess which is the lie. We're using that principal to invent our writer selves today, only I want you to frame it as if it wasn't a mere list, but an antecdote about yourself, and I want you to use two lies and one truth. We won't play guessing games on what was the truth, but I certainly welcome everyone to speculate.

"Since it's only fair, I'll go first. I'll be going by the name V. A. Waters, a reflection of the fact that I come from a time where a woman didn't have much luck getting into the writing business unless she went traipsing about under a more masculine name. George Elliot, eat your heart out. I'm the middle child of two brothers, which left me eager to express myself creatively and stake a claim beyond my gender, and I absolutely abhor squirrels,"--with a little side-wink to whichever reporter was hanging out with them today--"which is why you will commonly see a theme of squirrels representing all that is evil in the world today."

And once "V. A. Waters" had finished, she gave a nod and a smile to her class and asked the penultimate question, "Okay, who's next?"

[[ ~~please to be waiting for~~ the OCD is ready for peer review! ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With your soon-to-be nom de plume.

Lillian Bluth

Loki Laufeyson

Arnold Douglas

Where Valentine is slightly talky meat and was half considering making everyone put on sports jackets with leather patches on the elbow.

...She still might make you do that, you know.

Okay, truthfully, Maeby was just in this class to help problems like when she got stuck with a multmillion dollar script that had no ending. But she was actually intrigued by the idea of a writer self. And of pretending not to be related to her parents. That was a big one.

Dave had no idea what he was getting into when he signed up for this class, apparently. He wasn't a great liar. The number of times he'd almost admitted to being a Canadian spy when he wasn't even a spy was proof of that.

Still, he'd have to try.

Who is your writer self? Introduce yourself with your chosen writerly name and tell us a little story about who your writerly self is, constructed around two lies and a nugget of truth.

"My name is Lillian Bluth," Maeby said. "The Bluth family is --"

Wait, did anybody here actually know the Bluths? Nobody seemed to be reacting, so she was going to keep going.

"-- we're old money. Very traditional. So home has a lot of rules, you know? And I'm not really big on rules. I don't want to disappoint them, but I want to express myself, and be creative. Half the family faints when anybody's name ends up in the paper, even if it was for doing something good."

This, from a girl whose mother got into a catfight at a low-rent Denny's.

"I want to be me, not just a Bluth. I want to go on adventures, and they want me home at bedtime. Sometimes I feel like I'm not even related to them at all."

"Lillian Bluth," mused Valentine with an amused smile on her face, head tilted and reveling in how the idea of getting them to tell mostly lies rather than truths could potentially reveal just as much as getting straight truth. All conjecture, of course, but it made for a fun game. "Nice to meet you. So you're...like a rebel with a writing cause."

Edited 2012-07-03 22:13 (UTC)

"Yeah," Maeby said. Wait, that sounded way too much like her. Time to channel her inner George Michael. "If you think that's okay. Maybe I should get one of those pen names so they don't know it's me. I don't want to upset anyone."

Maeby would take an ad out in Worst Moms Magazine if she thought her mom read it. Or would care.

"I am Loki of Asgard," he said cheerfully. "Before I arrived at this school, I lived within the town of Broxton, Oklahoma with mine brother Thor. He is now a teacher here. Which I think is the best thing to happen so far."

Well, considering that there was supposed to be two lies in there, and Valentine knew Thor was certainly one of the teachers, she had to snort over what she assumed was the opposite of Loki's feelings about it. "I see," she said. "Nice to meet you, Loki. What are you interested in writing about?"

"Oh, I like writing about things that happen around me," he replied. "You are Peter's sister, yes?"

Now there was a complicated answer. Valentine snorted again. "In a manner of speaking," she said. "I'm cuter, though. I take it you're one of his--" and wasn't this a strange word to apply to Peter still-- "friends?"

"In a manner of speaking."

And that earned Loki a full on laugh. "Good answer," she said. "Maybe one day, that's one of the stories you'll have to tell me, Loki of Asgard."

"Um, hi. I'm Arnold Douglas," Dave said. "Back when I was growing up in the wild Canadian suburbia, I spent most of my time finding blueberries to pick and wolves to befriend."

Should she be needed, she's available and ready to go.

By all means, please feel free to ping off each other during any of these classes. Valentine's definitely a messy-class sort of teacher.

Creative Writng; Tuesday, Period Two [ 03/07 ].

Sign In - CW, 03/07.

Re: Sign In - CW, 03/07.

Re: Sign In - CW, 03/07.

Re: Sign In - CW, 03/07.

During the Lecture - CW, 03/07.

Re: During the Lecture - CW, 03/07.

Re: During the Lecture - CW, 03/07.

Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Re: Introductions - CW, 03/07.

Talk to V. A. Waters - CW, 03/07.

OOC - CW, 03/07.