Extra Homework

A teacher telling off a student.

Our resident agony aunt, Andrea Kon, gets a ticking off from teacher during her second class.

January 10th 2008

Thursday's class, the Advanced Creative Writing, was entirely different to Monday's initiation. I'm surrounded by serious students here, 18 of them including the Head of Department who has signed up because she hears it's such a brilliant class. Everyone except me, has a degree and we are required to start work immediately, learning to follow 'ground rules'.

We read a very odd (and I think very pretentious piece) by Allen Ginsberg (I'm apparently the only person in the class who has never heard of this very famous writer, which just goes to prove my literary ignorance). We have to comment on it and I said I think it should rate in the running for 'Turner Prize' in Literature.

Then we split into groups of four to compose a 500 word story and are handed three bits of paper - ours are to do with the marriage vows and the commandment 'thou shalt not covet' etc. We (Rosemary, Keiran, Frances and I) have 15 minutes. I'm elected to scribble (and find it's awful physically being forced to write in longhand without the aid of a computer or even a typewriter!) and we come up with what we think is a perfectly incredible tale about Fred and Wilma who win the lottery, to the chagrin of Margaret and George! Wilma died. Fred, with Margaret's encouragement, re-marries a Thai lady who ends up having a lesbian relationship with Margaret. I start to feel this is beyond me - and tell Josie that I really don't think I'm up to this class. Which lands me in trouble. I'd forgotten one of the golden rules of 'school'. NEVER tell a teacher what you can't do. I get lumbered with writing a 500 word story using the same ground rules and I have to read it out loud to the whole class next Thursday!! Wish me luck.

Back in Monday's class, the Twins book lady reads an extract from her exquisitely written Victorian style tome. I wish I could write like that. She is followed by the 'bi-polar' lady whose book is more an autobiographical, but written as though about someone else. Not literary, but extraordinarily powerful stuff. I can really see that being a best seller!

So far, I've done 2,750 words of the first chapter of my book, so it's definitely on the way.

Andrea Kon is writing a weekly blog about her experience of going back to school. Check next week for her next installment.

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