I knew it was coming the moment I heard "assignments". This was not about you writing because you want to, but you writing because you have to.
I had my fair share of assignments in college and if writing - just writing anything - made you a better writer I'd be better than Ernest Hemingway by now. Alas, one does not become better by writing alone.
One must read the right books and likewise write the right stories.
What follows will be an immensely subjective evaluation of the Scripture Union's Young Writers' Camp, 2008. It will be, in other words, my opinion.
Dividing into teams, each one of us had to write something to fill up our paper. Our word count was budgeted; our stories edited. By the end of the camp some of us may have mastered the fine art of writing what your editor wants.
Unfortunately such accommodation I did not find particularly amusing nor enlightening.
I ought to say that I have no qualms about journalistic writing. My experience at a New Straits Times journalism course taught me a lot - including the joys of writing newspaper articles. They can be fun. It was there I learned how to write the perfect bite size article for a reader with an excruciatingly short attention span. The nut graph? Check.
It was not because I knew all these things when I sat through the sessions that made it so unenjoyable. I think it was because from the start, we had to write something that had to come out a certain way, meet a certain expectation. Of course, writing is always about meeting expectations. But as you'll see below, I was troubled about what those "expectations" were.
I noticed fiction was almost non-existent here. Obviously. And that is the problem. Non-fiction is almost always more powerful than fiction (and indeed, I read more of the former than the latter) but in the recounting of facts and figures creativity is stunted.
A facilitator remarked to me that this was less a creative writing camp than a journalism one. Perhaps that was the organizer's intention, but he spoke to me as if he had expected something else. As if the end result was not quite satisfactory, not quite intended.
A brief digression: I must say that the camp was one of the more energetic and fun ones that I have been to (although that may have been because we were confined entirely to our mountain retreat in the previous year's camp).
The cave trip was different, and provided a respite. When I found myself back at Harvest Haven (run by the amazingly genial staff there) though, I found myself back into the expected, into the required. I vaguely remembered college.
We learned about writing alright. I just wonder that, in the process of editing pictures, transcribing interviews and meeting deadlines the real point of us going here - to learn how to write - was lost.
I also wonder, in our rush to admire our writing in our make believe newspapers, did we have the wrong conception as to what writing was?
The Writer's Slam, where our works are commented and criticized upon showed as much. Less than half of the campers actually came up to speak, which either shows that they were lazy or had nothing to write. If it was the latter, then that is troubling indeed.
I learned little about inspiration in writing, which for many is so so very important. Without inspiration our writing will be hollow. Or, as is the case most of the time, we end up writing nothing at all. And if your only inspiration happens to be deadlines, do not be surprised if you find your writing so uninspiring.
I suppose that has been my problem. Less with the program than the idea behind this camp. My issue was with its philosophy, which I don't like. But forgive me, I suppose my idea of writing is still so romanticized. Time, always the dependable teacher, will tell.
__________________________
I would like to thank the facilitators and other organizers (and subsidizers, hehe) who made this camp happen. Sorry, I had no other way to word it. I really, really appreciate what you guys have done and please, keep the Young Writer's Camp alive.
I had my fair share of assignments in college and if writing - just writing anything - made you a better writer I'd be better than Ernest Hemingway by now. Alas, one does not become better by writing alone.
One must read the right books and likewise write the right stories.
What follows will be an immensely subjective evaluation of the Scripture Union's Young Writers' Camp, 2008. It will be, in other words, my opinion.
Dividing into teams, each one of us had to write something to fill up our paper. Our word count was budgeted; our stories edited. By the end of the camp some of us may have mastered the fine art of writing what your editor wants.
Unfortunately such accommodation I did not find particularly amusing nor enlightening.
I ought to say that I have no qualms about journalistic writing. My experience at a New Straits Times journalism course taught me a lot - including the joys of writing newspaper articles. They can be fun. It was there I learned how to write the perfect bite size article for a reader with an excruciatingly short attention span. The nut graph? Check.
It was not because I knew all these things when I sat through the sessions that made it so unenjoyable. I think it was because from the start, we had to write something that had to come out a certain way, meet a certain expectation. Of course, writing is always about meeting expectations. But as you'll see below, I was troubled about what those "expectations" were.
I noticed fiction was almost non-existent here. Obviously. And that is the problem. Non-fiction is almost always more powerful than fiction (and indeed, I read more of the former than the latter) but in the recounting of facts and figures creativity is stunted.
A facilitator remarked to me that this was less a creative writing camp than a journalism one. Perhaps that was the organizer's intention, but he spoke to me as if he had expected something else. As if the end result was not quite satisfactory, not quite intended.
A brief digression: I must say that the camp was one of the more energetic and fun ones that I have been to (although that may have been because we were confined entirely to our mountain retreat in the previous year's camp).
The cave trip was different, and provided a respite. When I found myself back at Harvest Haven (run by the amazingly genial staff there) though, I found myself back into the expected, into the required. I vaguely remembered college.
We learned about writing alright. I just wonder that, in the process of editing pictures, transcribing interviews and meeting deadlines the real point of us going here - to learn how to write - was lost.
I also wonder, in our rush to admire our writing in our make believe newspapers, did we have the wrong conception as to what writing was?
The Writer's Slam, where our works are commented and criticized upon showed as much. Less than half of the campers actually came up to speak, which either shows that they were lazy or had nothing to write. If it was the latter, then that is troubling indeed.
I learned little about inspiration in writing, which for many is so so very important. Without inspiration our writing will be hollow. Or, as is the case most of the time, we end up writing nothing at all. And if your only inspiration happens to be deadlines, do not be surprised if you find your writing so uninspiring.
I suppose that has been my problem. Less with the program than the idea behind this camp. My issue was with its philosophy, which I don't like. But forgive me, I suppose my idea of writing is still so romanticized. Time, always the dependable teacher, will tell.
__________________________
I would like to thank the facilitators and other organizers (and subsidizers, hehe) who made this camp happen. Sorry, I had no other way to word it. I really, really appreciate what you guys have done and please, keep the Young Writer's Camp alive.
