First of all, this blog wasn’t my idea. Even as a writer (not a professional writer, but an aspiring one), I have never written a blog. I never wanted to write a blog. I never wanted to write this.

I have to write it, though, because it’s a part of my class called Creative Writing. Creative… Writing. Sadly, I don’t see the creativity in this.

All I know about blogs is that they’re mostly a person’s point of view on a certain topic in today’s world. How can that be creative?

Why can’t I write a short story? Have a classic take of the old fantasy trope of a brave knight slaying a dragon and saving a princess…  No. Instead, I have to write a story about a fire drill. ...Really? A fire drill? Forced to write about a fire drill… in Creative Writing? Creative… Writing? I still don’t get it.

Why not make a freelance poem? Write what you want, how you want, and pick any theme you wish, and make it flow with good rhythm, or lack thereof…  No. Instead, I have to pick the seventh book from my shelf, open up to the seventh page, take the seventh sentence from a paragraph, and start a seven-line poem with that seventh sentence. ...Was my teacher obsessed with the slot machines or something when he came up with this? What if the book isn’t any good? What if the sentence sucks and doesn’t have any good way to make it into a poem? And this is a part of Creative Writing? Creative… Writing? What even?

How about planning an outline for a novella? Even if you’re not actually going to write it, you could have a plan for how it might go, creating the characters, settings, actions, and ultimately choosing your own theme or moral to integrate into the story… No. Instead, I have to analyze Superbowl Commercials, figuring out the marketing tactics and what audience would be interested in it. ...I’m sorry, did I apply for Creative Writing or did I mistake it for Economics? What the hell do commercials have anything to do with Creative Writing? ‘Because all writing has purpose’? Are you trying to say that my inevitable purpose as a writer is to write skits for commercials instead of actual stories? Actual stories that can be creative? Creative… Writing?...

Here’s what I think creativity is. Creativity is the ability to use your imagination to create something unique and interesting that will have a lasting impact on yourself, on others, and maybe even for the whole world. To me, stories are what highlight the true uses of creativity. Whether they take you to another world or have you going through a unique mystery case, stories always have a creative mind behind them. Now, not all of them have to be extraordinary and extraterrestrial. There are ways that you can simply have it be set on earth, with no real apparent use of magic or future technology, and it can still be very creative. Creativity tests your imagination. It tests whether you can be able to come up with something out of the norm.

My Creative Writing class, in my opinion, seems to have this concept thrown under the rug. It’s not so much Creative Writing as it should be. Instead of being tested to implement a theme to our own stories, we’re being tested to see if we can analyze the themes of commercials and songs. That’s not really Creative Writing. That’s more like Writing Comprehension. Instead of being taught like we already have an understanding of writing and are looking to expand our capabilities, we’re being taught as if we have no experience in writing and are trying to get into it with the variety of writing. Call me opinionated and selfish, but for me, that’s stupid. I applied for the class, thinking that I was going to be looked upon as a writer with experience. But instead it was the opposite. Maybe I should’ve said something, but the teacher saw me like a lot of the others: what I could assume was someone who didn’t have a lot of experience. But it’s not like the class has no creativity to it whatsoever. It’s just that the way the class is taught severely limits the amount of creativity you’re able to put into your projects. It’s a shame, really, because I was really hoping for something good from the class.

Hmm… Hope. The second of the Three Angels, if I can remember correctly. We always hope for things. We hope for this, we hope for that, we hope to get this and that. We always keep hoping. And yet sometimes when we hope for one thing to happen, the opposite happens. Like, say someone hopes that their pet will get better by sending them to the vet, but something goes wrong and the pet ends up dying. Sad, right? It seems like that’s what hope often does, in my experience. Hope makes you sad. It’s a sign that you’re losing confidence. Having hope in the first place, for me, isn’t that good of a start. Losing hope makes things even worse because you lose even more confidence. Wishing is no better, either. Hoping and wishing might as well be identical twins for that matter. Still, though, that’s not to say that wishing and hoping is always a bad thing. It’s not, really. It’s just that from my experience, it’s never done much good for us.

Huh… I guess making this blog wasn’t as pointless as I thought…

That still doesn’t mean I wanted to do it.