I took my creative writing class to the computer lab last week. Getting them to produce on the spot can be a chore, for they, like many writers, procrastinate by checking email and surfing the Net instead of writing.
Creativity usually doesn't bubble to the surface like crude oil, I tell them. It's work, and you've got to dig. So, get busy and write!
Most of them were trying to write. I was correcting papers at a table where I could casually see the computer screen of one of the worst procrastinators my class and the world has ever witnessed.
Sure enough. He had the computer camera on, goofing around. When I looked up and saw him doing this, I, like a good teacher, chastised him, as I have to do on a regular basis.
"Avi---get to work and quit fooling around."
He laughed at me, saying, "Oh, that was soooo perfect."
I was getting pissed.
I got up to tower over him and assert my authority, and he replayed the video he had been recording and turned the sound up.
"Just watch," he said.
There he was with me in the background of the picture, and he was narrating: "Well, I'm sitting here doing nothing, having fun recording myself, trying to be creative, but any minute now Mrs. Kies is going to look up and yell at me."
It was at that moment, as if on cue, that I looked up and yelled at him.
The class got little writing done that day. Several helped Avi slow my voice down and then speed it up so I sounded like I was on crack.
Creativity abounded that day, but not much writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment