Not Creative Writing

At a long conference table, a coterie of young adults sat, open laptops and pads of paper strewn in front of them. A flyer taped to the open door of the room came loose, fluttering to the floor and cutting through the silence. The last person to speak had fallen silent minutes ago, and the one to their right tapped a few times on the touchpad of his laptop, and cleared his throat. “Um, hello everyone. I’m Kil Potrie, he/him, first year, and um, and my story is uh, about like a uh, detective with a katana who is like, chasing? Or actually no, pursuing, this bad guy, like a mobster, who is actually like, an alien.” At the mention of his story, all the clicking of keyboards and scritches of pencil on paper ceased. As he spoke, Kil snuck glances up from behind his laptop screen, surveilling the room, and found each time that everyones’ eyes were intensely fixated on him.

Minutes passed, and he finished speaking with a slightly shaky breath mixed into his final sentence. Looking up, his eyes darted from side to side, with everyone else at the table having stoney expressions. The first to speak was a guy across from him, who inquired, “What major are you again?” Kil subtly raised an eyebrow, responding, “Um, political science.” The one from across the table had a small smirk creep onto his face before saying, “Pssh. A useless major. The story sure sounded like that.” Both Kil’s eyebrows furrowed, as he curtly replied, “So what are you then?” The smirk now fully growing into a condescending one, the guy replied, “English and philosophy double major.” With his eyebrows returning to their original position, Kil deeply inhaled before replying in a soft tone of voice, “Okay!”

The woman to the double major’s right chose to speak next, commenting, “Um, this sounded more like pure fiction or fantasy, rather than realistic fiction, right?” Kil nodded, squeaking out, “Yes.” With a quizzical look now on her face, she questioned, “Don’t you think it’s a bit lowbrow, or not really in-line with what we’re all looking for?” It was Kil’s turn to be confused, as his eyebrows furrowed once more and he replied, “Wait, what do you mean? I thought this was the creative writing club?” He swiftly turned his head towards the flyer on the floor, and confirmed, he was in the right place. She went on, explaining “Yes, but… don’t you think that pure fiction is a little… primitive? I don’t think it’s as creative as other forms, like realistic fiction.” Kil pursed his lips, and used his teeth to hold back his tongue before replying. “I thought this was the creative writing club, not the realistic fiction club.”

Another guy chimed in, towards the further end of the table to Kil’s right. “Well, quality of the content aside, you could’ve written in limerick form!” Someone to his left chimed in, “Yes, your story could’ve used a bit more iambic pentameter!” Kil, confused once more, asked, “Wait, so you guys are saying my genre isn’t creative enough, and the medium of my story isn’t either?” He received a few nods around the table, before asking, “Ok then… How about like, the content of my story? You know, like the plot, and, like, characters…?” A guy outside of his field of vision towards the opposite end of the table shared, “One time an alien tried to assimilate me, and I was forced to rip it limb from limb with my bare hands. This story brought back the memories of that fateful day for me.” Kil curled his lips inward, and through the line of his mouth replied, “I’m sorry to hear that?” The club president, sitting at the head of the table, took back control of the discussion. “It’s everything about your story, Kil. Your genre, story content, and medium are all just so lazy. Creative writing is a form of art in which the purest examples use poetry to test a writer’s mastery of word manipulation, or realistic fiction, in which a writer must fully make use of the constraints the real world places. Pure fiction, like what you’ve put out here, is just slop that anyone with half a brain could do.”

No longer held back by pretenses, Kil shot back, “Well, first off. I hate poetry. Second-” The club president slammed both her hands against the table, before screaming “WHAT???” Everyone at the table turned towards Kil, shooting venom into him with their gazes. Kil shooks his head in disbelief, throwing both hands in the air before exclaiming, “What?” The club president blew the whistle around her neck, and the door was thrown open by two tall men in black uniforms, who grabbed Kil by his arms and dragged him out the door. “Wait, what!? What are you doing!? Get your hands off-” he said before a black bag was thrown over his head. While he felt himself dragged about, he heard the screech of a microphone and crowd cheering through the muffling of his bag. When it was removed, Kil found himself tied to the giant marble pencil statue in front of the creative arts department. A crowd of creative writing majors had gathered before the club president, who was behind a podium. Tied in place, Kil watched as she turned and walked towards him, producing a book from behind her back while doing so. One eyebrow raised, he asked as it was held up to his face, “A book?” She then opened it, which elicited his response, “NOOO!!! POETRY!!!!!” Satisfied, she took a step back, and motioned towards the crowd, and then back towards him with a wide swing of her arm. They rushed forward, and began to pelt him with their poetry books and creative writing textbooks. His cries of pain and pleas were drowned out by the raging crowd, and his voice was barely audible when he said, “I JUST WANTED TO DO WRITE FICTION!!!...”