{"id":952,"date":"2007-04-22T18:05:52","date_gmt":"2007-04-22T16:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larshvidberg.dk\/blog\/?p=1057"},"modified":"2007-04-22T18:05:52","modified_gmt":"2007-04-22T16:05:52","slug":"whats-the-point-of-going-to-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/?p=952","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the point of going to school?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some say that writing can&#8217;t be taught. If you have the talent, you have it, and if you don&#8217;t you don&#8217;t. So what&#8217;s the point of going to school anyway? Why don&#8217;t you just sit at home and write!?!<\/p>\n<p>But school is good for lots of stuff in my opinion. The thought that creativity springs magically from an inner well of talent is misguided and comes from a romantic prejudice (that art is about &#8220;un-learning&#8221; culture). You can learn many things by taking courses (the workshop form is the best), and among them are:<\/p>\n<p>1. Critique and feedback. It is often hard to judge your own work. In class you quickly learn to accept critique and take it in the right spirit. If somebody doesn&#8217;t understand what your script is about, it&#8217;s not their fault &#8211; it&#8217;s yours.<\/p>\n<p>2. Reading your script out loud. If you write for the movies, you need to hear your own lines and see people&#8217;s reactions. Laughs, tears, toe-curling?<\/p>\n<p>3. Getting assignments you didn&#8217;t think of yourself. Writing from the gut tends to be producing the same stuff over and over again. If you write &#8220;dark&#8221; why not force yourself to write something funny? Why not draw index-cards with character descriptions on them and write a story from that?<\/p>\n<p>4. Getting rid of your self-importance. Writers can sometimes choke on their own high estimation of themselves and the importance of their work. But if you are forced to write a comedy scene in two hours and read it aloud in class you will quickly loose your Proustian self-image and get over it. It might not be art, but it&#8217;s finished!<\/p>\n<p>More?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some say that writing can&#8217;t be taught. If you have the talent, you have it, and if you don&#8217;t you don&#8217;t. So what&#8217;s the point of going to school anyway? Why don&#8217;t you just sit at home and write!?! But school is good for lots of stuff in my opinion. The thought that creativity springs &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/?p=952\" class=\"more-link\">L\u00e6s mere <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What\u2019s the point of going to school?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whiteberg.dk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}