posted
I have a rare opportunity: taking a class with OSC, not the summer class, but a regular college class. I live an hour from the place where it'll be taught.
Looks like the tuition is going to be about $1500. I'm dithering. If it's nice . . . that's a lot. If it kick-starts my writing career, it's cheap.
posted
Things to consider: 1) He's a really good teacher. 2) Is this class something that would fill a need if OSC were not teaching it? 3) It won't jumpstart your career, but I can guarantee it will move you to the next level in your writing. 4) He's a really, really good teacher.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Wow! That's a once in a lifetime sort of thing, Will. $1500 bucks is a lot, okay, it's criminal, but it's no more than any other college course. I say go for it. Have a few garage sales or a jog-a-thon.
posted
1500 is a lot for what I assume to be a three credit hour class. It must be at a private school; tuition at UT Dallas is 3500 or so for fifteen credit hours.
Other than that, I say take it. I wish OSC taught at UT Dallas.
posted
The other thing to consider is that OSC is a classicly trained writer who writes genre fiction. That means he will not force you into a mold. Other than that, what Mary said is right on as far as my bootcamp experience goes. On the other hand, bootcamp wasn't graded. That's an unknown variable.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
You know, OSC has been posting in the regular Hatrack forum fairly regularly the last couple of months. You could just ask him.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
"There are those who took writing in college, / There are books, there are courses, and then, / There are those who will follow their teacher, but / I've never been one of them. / I'm a self-taught writer, / And I have been since the day I began, / And the one thing that's true about writing / Is you can start it as soon as you can. / You don't need a contact or market, / You don't need to take it in school, / You don't have to fret about selling / You're a writer without following rules..."
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Surely sounds like a rare opportunity. Wouldn't we all want to be taught by a very successful person in our craft of choice? If you missed this rare opportunity wouldn't you regret it? The answers seem obvious to me. Hopefully you'll be able to share some of the experience and wisdom you learn if you decide to take the class.
Ask him what? "Hey, Scott, are you worth $1500 as a teacher?" *grin* It WOULD be nice to get some sort of curriculum outline to be able to weight what you might learn vs what you already know.
Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Our class has begun. Much like the summer writing class: starting with the Thousand Ideas in an Hour, to generate a plot. Here's part of what we generated.
So, pick a character. Man or woman? Man. How old is he? They picked my age.
What happens when you're that age? Got to a writing class at SVU, I said. Mid-life crisis, others said. ("Hey!" I said.)
What do you do in a mid-life crisis? Piercings. (I figured I was safe from detection on that one.) Get a tattoo! (I made sure my shirt sleeve was down.) Buy a convertible. (I resolved to tell no one about my Jeep Wrangler.) After all, convertibles are bought by two kinds of people: 20-year-old women with more money than brains, and men in mid-life crisis with more money than brains. (Hey!)
On a more serious note, it looks like our homework will be pretty light, to someone who's used to Mike Munsil's weekly challenges, and I was thinking of bringing this up . . . are Mormons forbidden to murder classmates for asking for more homework? My school is Disciples of Christ, which has no official position on justifiable homicide.
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> are Mormons forbidden to murder classmates > for asking for more homework?
I believe the position of some would be: Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a class should dwindle and perish in excessive homework. (See 1 Nephi 4:13)
[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited August 30, 2005).]
posted
Google "Mormon blood atonement" and you'll find some claims that Brigham Young essentially advocated murder for certain sins. You'll also find lots of claims that there never was any blood atonement doctrine and that saying there was is just anti-Mormon propaganda.
Either way, I don't think requesting additional homework was one of the sins that required blood atonement. I think you're safe.
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I was an Architecture major, then double-majored in Creative Writing and Geology, then graduated as a double-major in Geology and Physical Science. That was the first degree. Majored in Geology for the second degree. Am considering Anthropology or Archeology for the third. My wife thinks I should major in Daily Apology, though. Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
From what I understand, and I could be wrong on this, of course, OSC will regularly be teaching at that particular college.
Posts: 48 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Your classmates probably won't murder you. But you have to consider what requesting additional homework will accomplish. You are in that class entirely to gain the benefit of having that particular instructor. Your instructor requested the amount of homework he felt comfortable asking the class to do. Very probably, the amount that he felt would be the most effective use of class/student/his time.
In other words, you picked out this guy for his expertise in teaching writing. Is it really such a good idea to start off by second-guessing his teaching methods?
Instead, why don't you outdo yourself on this homework, turn in the best writing OSC has ever seen in his class? Maybe you'll impress him. At least you won't be whining for more than he thought advisable to give.
posted
I'm betting he was talking about the "blood atonement" thing, if he followed Beth's advice and Googled it. If he were crazy enough to actually open some of those links and start reading, "rudeness" wouldn't cover it.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Oh, well it might have been good to warn him what kind of stuff would pop up in response to such a search, but I meant that the results of the search would be rude. I thought the suggestion that he do that was merely amusing.
In sort of a mean way
By the way, I wasn't trying to be rude either. I actually removed a particular phrase that, though I thought it rather witty in a "doesn't this sort of thing always happen" sort of way, could have been interpreted as an aspersion on wbriggs writing ability.
I'm a little surprised that anyone could think referring to someone as "whining" would not be intended as insult. It hardly seems a compliment! But I get that you, Survivor, don't see how that could be rude. Ask people to describe your comments in that way for a while, and I think you'll get it. I appreciate the willingness you have shown to consider my comments on this.
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited August 31, 2005).]
posted
wbriggs, if the Mormons here consider that you really didn't mean you expected Mormons to actually murder anyone, whether that person asked for extra homework or not, because you were speaking in hyperbole (or rhetorically or whatever), then referring to your concern about how much homework you get as "whining" goes along with the ironic tone of the whole discussion. Usually people "whine" about too much homework, so the irony is that you would be concerned about not enough and "whining" goes along with that irony.
There is probably more inference of rudeness on the internet than is actually intended.
posted
Um, yes, I was using that with the connection to students whining about how much homework they get (and children whining to get more candy--like that ever works).
But I wasn't trying for irony, I was just pointing out one of the obvious problems with such a course of action. The one I concentrated on was that interfering with Card's teaching method would be counterproductive to the reasons you chose to take his class. But the fact that asking him to alter the amount or type of homework he gives you will not be likely to leave a favorable impression also deserved to be mentioned, so I mentioned it.
To clarify, I didn't mean to say that you were whining to us, I thought your post was funny. I was warning you that if you started asking Card to change your homework assignments because you felt dissatisfied with them, that would definitely be whining.
I know, I know, I'm sure that you weren't really thinking of doing any such thing...but you didn't actually say that you weren't really considering doing it. And, people here have done stuff like that. It really does happen.
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Enough with discussions on rudeness and whining. Lets get to the important stuff, Was Card totally cool as a teacher or what? What is it like to actually be taught by him. Do you feel like the class was worth the money *Hint* the answer is yes!!! I really envy you, becuase if I could choose one author to be taught by, it would be him. So let us know some of the stuff he teaches you, if you really want more work Posts: 102 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I am happy to leave behind anything about rudeness and whining. I've done before what we did in class Tuesday, on the 2-day class 2 summers ago he held. So: yes, it was way cool stuff: A Thousand Ideas in an Hour (see his book Characters & Viewpoint). I suspect I'll get to new cool things after 2 days!
I am not aware of any author anywhere I would rather take a class from! OK, it was Tolkien who blew me away, but... as a writer (not a reader) I wish I'd never heard of him -- he started LotR w/o knowing where he was going, and I thought that was ok! AFAIK he just started writing. I can't do it that way.
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited August 31, 2005).]
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Actually, Tolkien crafted Lord of the Rings very carefully, and spent decades working out everything about the book. But his model was that it was going to imitate a quasi-scholarly text written by an old-fashioned...you know, one of those old guys that used to use their familiy fortunes to be amatuer archeologists and whatnot.
It is true that he "just started writing", but none of that material entered his finished work except as "source material".
posted
He certainly spent a lot of time on the mythology, culture, history and languages of Middle-Earth. But I did get the impression that he did just start writing The Lord of the Rings. Here is the quote that gave me that impression, from the introduction to the Tree and Leaf portion of The Tolkien Reader (pg 31 in my edition).
quote:Also, they were written in the same period (1938-39), when The Lord of the Rings was beginning to unroll itself and to unfold prospects of labour and exploration in yet unknown country as daunting to me as to the hobbits. At about that time we had reached Bree, and I had then no more notion than they had of what had become of Gandalf or who Strider was; and I had begun to despair of surviving to find out.
--Mel
[This message has been edited by MCameron (edited September 01, 2005).]
posted
It must be recalled that Tolkein was the world's foremost philologist and Beowulf expert. That doubtless provided him with a huge advantage in his ability to be able to just start writing something like the Lord of the Rings.
Interestingly, (although a little off-topic), Tolkien seemed to be an intractable edit-as-you-go writer. He found the world of scholarship and his own attention to detail so debilitating, that he wrote a rather depressing (presumably autobiographical) short story called "Leaf, by Niggle" about a man whose life's masterpiece is painting a picture of a solitary leaf.
[This message has been edited by J (edited September 01, 2005).]
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"Leaf by Niggle" is one of my favorite short stories. I don't think that it is depressing at all. The whole point of the story was that the painting of the leaf was Niggle's attempt to create the beauty in his head, and when he died he had the chance to create it for real. It was a beautiful story.
Sorry, Mary. Back to your regularly scheduled OSC class notes.
posted
According to The Inklings, a biography of Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams, Tolkien started writing his story w/o knowing where it was going (except out into the Wide World) till Strider showed up, in Bree. This surprised Tolkien, and he didn't know who this guy was or what it meant, to begin with.
My characters don't just show up. They have to be constructed first!
posted
What we got in class: brainstorming for a fantasy milieu. The q: what is the price of magic? That is, why isn't everyone a magician of extreme power?
Humility. OK, so people prostrate themselves and crawl on the ground, until this becomes a display of pride (because the most powerful people do it), and so the low-status pose keeps shifting ...
Duty. You can only do it if you don't benefit. So if you help your community you must leave town. If you help your family you must leave it. Or else go blind. Or, no, the magic won't work. Or maybe you can stay in town, but only if you become a hermit, and you don't love your family. Or ...
You can change into an animal, but you can't change back. Or, you're allergic to that kind of animal. Or, it makes you sick to be that animal for long, but now it makes you sick to be human again. The kingdom needs loyal tigers and elephants, and you're drafted -- but you'll never be human again. Or...
We didn't really get to making stories, much, after that. Maybe we should have done that in the second part of class.
More happened with me after class, and that's in my blog (youwillknow.blogspot.com).
posted
I do have to construct most of my characters, but I had one just show up out of the blue. Her name is Maria and she betrays her sister in law. It just popped into my head, and she works so I'm keeping her. It can happen. Posts: 102 | Registered: Aug 2005
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