Once I took a writing course at The Toronto School of Adult Education. The first day the class was full but as the weeks went by, the class got fewer and fewer. But that was before the relatively young woman with fancy boots and hair with a figure for clothes; answered the teacher's question everyone thought about but dared not to answer that way. "I want to write to make lots of money." That answer intrigued me but sadly I went on vacation the next week and in that one missed week, she too had dropped out. I wanted to read one of her stories to find out if she truly had talent. Now I will probably never know. But most likely than not, she never made the money she wanted to at writing ( that's if she tried at all.)
Then there was the teachers favourite, a very nice guy who was a paramedic. That was because every story he wrote, was about a paramedic saving lives. Isn't that what they say about writing, write what you know? My writings got shorter and shorter because I was a wallflower in that class. I was ignored really, my homework assignments not worthy of his interest. But I had him pegged, the teacher that is. His homework assignments were photos that he'd taken and we were to make a story about them every week. They however were very outdated, almost ten years or so. This meant that his heart wasn't really into it and it was just for him to do something on a Wednesday night. He was an odd fellow who never looked you straight in the face.
Nevertheless, I stayed in his class until the last day which ended up to be only six of us. One diehard student was a woman almost in her nineties who would take a bus every Wednesday night to get there, even in rain or snow. Now that is true dedication. Her writing was excellent given that English had been her second language. She was from Holland who came to Canada some time after the war. Now back to his favourite, the paramedic. The teacher on the last day had gushed about him—saying how he had great talent much to our chagrin. What were we, chopped liver? Needless to say at the end of the class the paramedic and I began talking and he was saying how embarrassed he was that the teacher was gushing praise about him. "I can't even get past the first page!" he said. I wanted to tell him to write something else instead of the same thing and to go past the first page but atlas I was not an instructor. We said our goodbyes not knowing what we gained from creative writing 101.
Then there was the teachers favourite, a very nice guy who was a paramedic. That was because every story he wrote, was about a paramedic saving lives. Isn't that what they say about writing, write what you know? My writings got shorter and shorter because I was a wallflower in that class. I was ignored really, my homework assignments not worthy of his interest. But I had him pegged, the teacher that is. His homework assignments were photos that he'd taken and we were to make a story about them every week. They however were very outdated, almost ten years or so. This meant that his heart wasn't really into it and it was just for him to do something on a Wednesday night. He was an odd fellow who never looked you straight in the face.
Nevertheless, I stayed in his class until the last day which ended up to be only six of us. One diehard student was a woman almost in her nineties who would take a bus every Wednesday night to get there, even in rain or snow. Now that is true dedication. Her writing was excellent given that English had been her second language. She was from Holland who came to Canada some time after the war. Now back to his favourite, the paramedic. The teacher on the last day had gushed about him—saying how he had great talent much to our chagrin. What were we, chopped liver? Needless to say at the end of the class the paramedic and I began talking and he was saying how embarrassed he was that the teacher was gushing praise about him. "I can't even get past the first page!" he said. I wanted to tell him to write something else instead of the same thing and to go past the first page but atlas I was not an instructor. We said our goodbyes not knowing what we gained from creative writing 101.
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