First impressions





Ok, so partying until 4am is probably not the best thing to do before an 8am class, but I did it anyway. I cut myself off from the drinks soon after one and so felt, upon waking, if not good than at least not bad. I did, however, curse outloud when I arrived downtown only to find none of the coffeeshops there open until 8am, the exact start time of my class. I had to try and pump myself up with vending machine hot chocolate, which I assure you is very definitively NOT the same as a proper cup of coffee.





The classroom was locked when I got there, so I had a chance to scope out the other students while waiting in the hall. It was your usual creative writing class collection of freaks and geeks (although, if I'm to be perfectly honest, it was mostly just freaks), skewed heavily to the female side of the gender continuum. As time ticked past 8 o'clock and still no teacher, I began to grow irritated because a) the teacher was late on the FIRST DAY OF CLASS and I'd managed to drag my 24-hour party people butt in on time despite being sans coffee and b) there seemed to be no slightly neurotic dude out of the three present that I would potentially like to date. Where was the dorkily cute guy in rumpled jeans and converse? Every creative writing class has at least one -- it's in the Law of Writerly Things, Section 3.1.2.3.4.





Then the instructor showed up. Oh, but of course! The instructor was the dorkily cute guy in rumpled jeans and converse. It had never occurred to me before that this might be the case, but it made perfect sense once he was there, live and in person. I'd been expecting either tweedy-jacket guy or dashiki-hippie guy, so dorkily cute guy in rumpled jeans and converse was a thrilling surprise.





But of course, this being Atlanta, he had a wedding ring.





Rather than giving you a play-by-play of how the five hour class progressed, I'll simply list a few of my first impressions:


- My choice to not say, "I'm hungover and I hate you all" when I introduced myself to the class was probably a wise one, although as CV pointed out later, "It would probably have been a very apt introduction to you."


- However, I did tell people I was on a mission from God, which produced exactly the anticipated response of 1/3 of the class laughing (whether or not they got the Blues Brothers reference is another discussion for another time), 1/3 earnestly nodding in support of divine purpose, and 1/3 looking confused as hell.

- I had to bite my cheek not to laugh out loud when Larry the Cable Guy's Juicin' Cousin wandered in at 10am and said, "Sorry I'm late. I've been trying to get into the building since 9, but all the doors are locked." True, many of the doors to the building were locked and people were late to class because of it, but hey cuz, class started at 8! Way to make a great first impression.


- There was a lot of talking about writing today, but very little actual writing. I don't think I've ever spent five hours in a creative writing workshop where all I produced was an outline. That's right, we had ONE writing exercise today ("Find a partner and write an outline for a modern allegory." FYI, Group writing = LAME!) Note to dorkily cute instructor in rumpled jeans and converse: Less talk, more rock! I signed up for this thing because I wanted to be given prompt after prompt, with me scribbling furiously into my notebook, trying desperately to keep up with my speeding brain. I did NOT intend to sit around with a bunch of social misfits and pontificate about the writing life.


- Did I mention being hungover and hating everybody?





I also volunteered to be in the first group to turn in stories, because nobody else would and I was one of the few with extensive workshop experience who wasn't completely terrified at the prospect. This is the "Do it now!" push that I was looking for. So this week, I will be out of social circulation as I hole up in the library to bang out my first short story in...a really long time.





Holla.

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