Back in November 2007, I was an Anthropology student who’d taken a Creative Writing elective under the late Professor Butch Guerrero. I’ve been able to read since I was 2 1/2 years old, and devouring books outside my age range since I was 6 or 7. I knew from a young age that I wanted to write books, but as I wrote stories throughout high school, I figured I didn’t need to study English to write one.
But Professor Guerrero changed my views on that. In his class, he taught us flash fiction. How to tell a story in two pages: 700 words or less. He said nobody in his class would get an uno, the highest grade possible. We read and read and read and wrote and wrote and wrote and edited like heck and when it came time for workshops (my first workshop experience) the writer had to be dead silent and take notes while all the class critiqued the work. And in the end, the writer would reveal themselves, and maybe answer some questions about their work.
It was a packed class, maybe 30-40 of us in there. Sir arranged it so that the science fiction and fantasy flash fiction would be critiqued last. And when we started on those, he made it doubly clear: he would be extra harsh on science fiction and fantasy, because there were greater expectations for the quality of the work. It was sorta scary. One girl was the first to have her sci fi work critiqued, and it was about the Bio pavilion being encased in a blob and transported to an alternate dimension… Her work got shredded, verbally. When asked, she couldn’t explain what had happened in her story, what were the rules of her world. But that was the thing about science fiction and fantasy – if you wanted to break the rules of earth’s physics, you had to make your own rules for it, sir said. It didn’t have to be written out in the story, but you had to understand the logic behind it so that logic could shine through.
And then it came time for my story to be critiqued. “CALA,” the planned first chapter of my novel.
Dun dun dunnn! – My classmates went over it first. They noted that I had too many side characters referenced who weren’t important to the plot of it as a short story. They could tell there was a much wider world around what happened in my 647 word piece.
And then Professor Guerrero spoke. I braced myself for the worst. And then he praised it! He loved how I’d introduced Cala, the girl ‘seemingly made out of ribbons and bubbles and juicy fruit gum.’ He’d enjoyed how I described her powers and the conflict facing the characters in the story. And he loved how I’d handled the ending of it. Yes, there were improvements that I could still make. Techniques of writing I could still learn. But he said I had talent as a writer, and it was his encouragement that helped me take the leap into the Creative Writing course the following year. 🙂
Some years ago, Professor Guerrero passed away. I was never able to thank him enough for the encouragement he gave me in my first creative writing class in college. He also gave me my first uno there too. 🙂
16 May 2020