I'm told I can't write - Hate Mail part of an ongoing series

I'M TOLD I can't write. I'm told that for years.

 

I say I never claimed to be a writer. I've said that over and over again.

Last fall I decide to ask my only close relative who writes for a living,  telling her that I write stuff.    

 

She didn't know I've been writing stuff online for going on fifteen years.  The only person in my family who knew that before is my brother and he NEVER looks at what I write online.  He's my brother, after all.  A prophet not getting any respect in his home town is nothing compared to an Irish Catholic brother who thinks, "meh".

She was surprised, said I had potential.

I remind her of my age.  Surely it's too late.

She says I should try a writing class, see what the teacher says.

I remind her of Covid.  She sends me a URL for an online adult-ed class in creative writing, more or less daring me to take it.

I do. I get the list of assigned writing. The first one was to write a short story about football, I consider dropping out of the course, ask the teacher if I can write about something else. Tell him I don't know much about football except I hate it. He tells me to write a story about what's wrong with football. I tell him I never knew much about it except I hate it, he says research it.

Research is my weakness. I love to research stuff I don't know anything about. I look up stuff about football and find out I hate it as much as I thought I did but I find out some stuff about it to use in the story.  Only one scene is about that.

 

I hate football stories with their cloying sentimentality, I talk to the teacher about that and he says, Write one like

that but which twists that convention a different way, one that expresses your hatred of of football. 

 

[Update: I forgot, he said you should never go against how you really think even in fiction, that you have to have the courage of your convictions.  Might be a good tip.]

 

So I did, it ended up being 45 pages long, he said almost no one else had one five pages long.  No heroes winning games or making valiant efforts, the team doesn't win the season, the kid doesn't end up playing football, he hates it as much as I do but he's a lot less rude about it.  All of the football jocks in it are assholes.  The coach ends up leaving the game and being the better for it, he's the central character of the story. It's told from his POV.

I'm thinking of posting it but the teacher says, Make sure you've got your rights protected.   I don't know how to do that. Maybe I should research it.  He said it's not a bad story, it has potential.

He likes my writing. I tell him I'm not a writer, he says anyone who writes is a writer. 

 

He's published, he teaches writing at the college level. He shares my disdain for people who make their living writing as pop-level critics. "Critics are people who can't write and want to discourage everyone else from doing it." I told him Virgil Thomson said a similar thing about failed composers who went into music criticism.  He said,  Great minds think alike.   I almost point out that's a cliche, but he was making a joke by using a cliche.  He's big on not using cliches,  I don't point out that if you don't want those you shouldn't ask for stories about football.

 

Maybe I was wrong about me not being a writer but I don't know. He's the professional. 

 

He said he includes that football assignment because if there are men taking the class it's something they can relate to.  It could be worse, he could have asked for a romance story.  Maybe the women who are most of the students for the class are smarter than the men who take it.  Too smart for those.  He didn't ask us to write a critical piece.  He respects his students too much.