Been busy

I can't believe that it's been a year and a half since I last posted. That's what I get for joining FB.

In summary, two years ago I took at course at UofT that nearly turned me off writing for life. The teacher was only into 'lit-er-a-ture' and laughed at my ideas while looking around at the other students and encouraging them to do the same. At the end of the class, I had a piece of c*&p that I wouldn't have read for two minutes -- but I had passed the course.

It took me almost a year to summon up the courage to enroll again -- which I did last fall. I handed in the work that the teacher two years ago had passed as 'acceptable' and was told, in no uncertain terms, that it would be better to have more action than memory. In the end, I reworked what I'd started with the year before -- based on what I learned in last year's courses -- and was told by two teachers that it was much better, far more readable.

So, it seems that my original ideas weren't so far off the mark as I was led to believe by that one teacher. Oh, and I went back to read some of the works by the teacher who dissed my aspirations (to write commercial novels for fun). My opinion of his work is best summed by John Spencer Hill, in a character's description of a book he was reading:

"There was something, it was clear, in the post-modern spirit that recoiled in horror from old-fashioned values like clarity and simplicity."

- Ghirlandaio's Daughter -