It's hard to concentrate with the chinchillas freaking out

I just finished reading a disturbing but sad story about a woman who has a job selling cemetary plots. We've gotten to the last unit of my Intro to Creative Writing class, creative non-fiction. Taking this class was a good idea, because I've always had a bit of a writer in me, but I haven't really worked on it very much.

We just finished the fiction unit, which was really hard. I mean, I spent most of it trying to figure out my place as a fiction writer. I'm comfortable with poetry because I get it, I've written a lot of it. With poetry, I can be deep. Non-fiction writing is also pretty easy for me. I love stories, true stories especially. I always come home with stories to tell my roommates about my day, and the books I like the best usually fall under the umbrella of "creative non-fiction."

But fiction. Oh, God. I had no idea what I was doing. I suck at plot, and creative ideas and characters and all those things you need to write a short story. I almost felt like I was cheating the whole time I was writing, like just making up stuff for a story was wrong. Even though fiction is decidedly not my genre, though, it was good to try it. And while I'm not particularly ecstatic about the story I wrote, the process was interesting and it was good to try. I'd post the story here, but it's 6 pages long and things don't seem to copy and paste well in here.

As with anything else, once you've taken the intro class it's time to specialize. If I take any more creative writing classes (which I might) I'll have to decide which I like best: fiction, poetry or non-fiction. They give you the option for your English Senior Project to do either a paper (research or analysis or literary criticism) or a creative writing project. Writing is for sure not a career avenue for me (I can't take the pressure) but I'd like to be able to do it for fun.