Creative writing class

 

I had a crazy dream last night. Not a nightmare this time, but a strange one that made me wonder, “Why would my subconscious need to manufacture such quirky fantasies to keep me sane during the day?”

In this dream, I was taking a creative writing class in English and the classroom or hall where this took place was also used by a jazz band. The seven musicians had a practice just before my class started and they would sometimes take longer than the time they were allotted. I didn’t mind because I like jazz and a 15-minute mini-concert was enjoyable.

The first hour of our very first writing class consisted of learning how to write in cursive. This being a dream, I didn’t question the legitimacy or need for such a lesson in a creative writing class. I did, however, find the lesson rather stressful because my handwriting has never been very elegant at the best of times and my ability to write by hand has decreased considerably with age.

The second task the teacher assigned was interesting and challenging. He provided us with a long list of words. We were to choose one of them as the theme of a four-hundred-word paragraph. I did not find it strange or inappropriate that he would ask us to write such a lengthy paragraph – critical thinking is obviously not a forte of my subconscious. What made the assignment challenging, was that we were to write this in the shape of a Christmas tree: one letter for the very first line, three letters and/or spaces for the second line, five for the third line, and so on. In addition to this directive, we were told that we could not use an “i” at the beginning of any of the lines.  The theme I chose from the list provided was “butter”. Mercifully, I did not get very far into this crazy assignment before waking up. This is as far as I got:

A
bit
or so
of soft
or frozen
nice butter

Where in the world did my mind gather the material for this dream? I did have a conversation with my daughter Geneviève yesterday. We talked about her blog, and I told her that I was impressed with her writing skills. She does write very well. Don’t take my word for it and check it out: https://mmehawtree.blogspot.com/ . Her blog is so good in fact that one of her articles was quoted in a CTVNews broadcast in 2014 (https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/striking-b-c-teacher-blogs-confession-1.1839835). The image at the top is from her latest blog article and deals with teaching children how to form letters. I should take a class with her to learn how to write in cursive!

Geneviève told me that I shouldn’t be surprised about her proficiency in writing, because “I am my father’s daughter after all.” I am very proud of her and that comment was the greatest of Father’s Day presents.