A rant.

On Sundays you can find me cracking steel chairs over wrestler’s heads in a local independent wrestling organization I co-own called Kings of Brutal Wrestling. Sporadically you can find me hunting down leads of local paranormal activity in the surrounding Mid Michigan area in hopes of finding my Michigan Paranormal Investigators (M.P.I.) next investigation. Did I mention I am a super senior at Saginaw Valley State University? Needless to say I spend a lot of nights writing essays and digging through mounds of notes or burying my nose deep into Malory’s writings. Yet despite all of these amazing and important aspects of my life there is one thing that I always make sure I have ample time for, Writing. So I have deiced to open my first blog with this quick introduction of who I am, and then go into a extremely long blurb about something’s that have always bothered me about “writers”.

Writing is my first love; it’s my therapeutic release from this crazy and often time depressing world in which we all commonly share. I have been writing forever. I’m twenty-five and I have finished my first novel “The Deity Chronicles: Journals of Bennett Kingsly” and am currently self publishing it to a decent amount of success through word of mouth. I spent four years writing it, and to this day I am still mastering and perfecting its every written word.

I’ve study this art form for three plus years. To say I have learned a lot about writing is nothing short of an understatement. If you think you’re a writer because you have taken an intro creative writing course (or even an intermediate class for that matter) then you’re in for a rude awakening. I won’t lie, I thought the same. I thought I was above the majority of those in these classes (which honestly I was). Countless times I have been greeted from my peers with praise outside of class, boasting at my skills with dialogue or my ability to clearly depict a specific scene. I was honored, flattered, even a little humbled. I grew cocky; I felt that there was nothing left to know about writing. I realized now I was a big fish in a small pond, clichéd intended.

Let me give one important piece of advice for anyone thinking about going into a creative writing as a major. Realize that the more you grow as a writer and the higher level of classes you will be enrolling in, that there is a much larger picture you’re missing out on. I don’t know how many people I have seen in advanced level writing courses that come into the workshop with generic unintuitive clichéd pieces of work. They fail to take into account the literary theories presented, they think they have mastered the basics concepts like dialogue, momentum, conflict, all of which are important yes, but have nothing to truly do with these courses… they call it “creative” writing for a purpose people.

Here is one main thing I have come to notice. There is always this struggle with these “upper” courses that boil down to two factions, The Elitists versus the Popular Culture. Elitists strive for the knowledge, study the literary theories; they strive to write for a higher purpose, manipulating writing for a reason; whether a statement or an act of artistic intent. Pop writers write what they like to read, what they see on television, what they expect when they go to a flick. They are not “high art”. So help me if you write a vampire short story about love or a fucking werewolf piece following all the stereotypes we’ve already read with Anne Rice, then fuck you.

Why would anyone want to read your crappy version when they can read someone who has already mastered it and made millions from it? I’m not saying you can’t write a vampire tale -I do however- think it would be very hard to. Here comes that artistic merit, that concept of creativity. Make it different so that we are not reading that clichéd bull shit. Leave that for those intermediate classes. You may even be praised for your pretty use of language. I don’t care how good of a writer you are, if you don’t present us something that’s at least fresh, then your barking up the wrong tree.

Here’s the problem. These poppers (that’s what I’m dubbing them) hold this hatred for the elitist who tell them straight up that there stories suck. They’re not saying they suck as writers (at least not always), but that the ‘story’ told sucks. There is a big difference; you should never get the two confused. Poppers get this chip on their shoulders and often times will pull away from the class, unwilling to take in this wealth of knowledge they are paying for. They write off the literary readings that are meant stimulate them into thinking about the higher order of concerns. Readings that are meant to make them question the knowledge of not just writing and art, but of life itself. Let’s face it, all great pieces of work reflect some form of life; if not then what merit does it hold? If the concept of Deus-Ex-Machina or Jean Baudrillard's ideals of Simulacra doesn’t interest the shit out of you, then perhaps you should be rethink yourself as a writer.

You should never, eeeever, limit your knowledge on a subject. Why would you turn your back on theory? Yes they are often times extremely hard to read, but once you open yourself up to the ideas and concepts you will find yourself in a whole new world of understanding. Once you learn to read under different lenses, whether its capitalism, post-structuralism, or Marxism, you will learn to manipulate them into your own writings consciously.

I’m not saying I’m an elitist by any means. I am saying that I am striving to become one. We all should.