Thursday, July 30, 2015

the summer of ending things

     Today was my penultimate day at NC State's Teen Writer's Workshop. I have cherished being part of this program for the past two weeks, and I can't believe that it'll be over tomorrow. 
     When I went to choose my two classes in this year's program, I first went with my go-to: fiction. I am a fiction writer first and foremost - being a novelist is my biggest dream. So obviously I was taking fiction. I had a difficult time choosing my next class, though - should I go with poetry, a class I took last year and loved, or dramatic writing, a new realm of creativity that I was not particularly interested in? Figuring that I needed to branch out and try new things, I went with dramatic writing. I wasn't expecting to like it, but I recalled the eccentric instructor of last year's dramatic writing class and the hilarious craft talk he gave about plot structure and decided that I wanted him to teach me. I guess I'm curious about eccentric people. Like calls to like.
     Now here I am with two weeks of writing classes under my belt, amazed at all I've learned and all the friendships I've made. Dramatic writing turned out to be an extremely beneficial choice. Not only was the class fun and hilarious, but it taught me so many new things that I would never have considered hearing about otherwise. I have such an appreciation now for plays and screenplays and the efforts that go into material for movies and TV shows. During the class, I wrote a screenplay about some hot chocolate that falls in love with a marshmallow, and I also wrote an incredibly stupid play about a proper English Regency-era family who get into a bit of a kerfuffle over who put too much sugar in the tea. It's called "Tea Time with the Huntzbergs", and I'm quite proud of it. I'm super excited to see it performed tomorrow in our reading! The friends of mine who practiced it today did a perfect job and it was all silly and absurd and wow, I just love writing camp and how am I ever going to let it go?
      I'm so aware of how a lot of things are ending this summer. My writing camp. My summer camp. My high school career. I'm so excited to start at university, but all I can think about is this song from the Paper Towns movie and these lines that say "i'll meet you in the evening, i'll meet you in the evening, we'll do it all again", and the lyrics land on this one chord that just makes me want to cry a lot. I won't get to do it all again. This is my last year of writing camp. I wish I could freeze time and live in these summer days forever. 



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