R u riting if u kant spel?

I know that I am a pedantic old goat.

After having completed seven out of the ten weeks of the creative writing course, the last class being next week, I have decided it is time to take a look back at what I have learned during the course.

It was successful in getting me to write one short story - the first short story I have ever completed, even if it was very short. So I suppose that gives me some sense of achievement. And it was also the first time I let anyone else read any completed piece of fiction I had written. The lectures were also interesting - if not always illuminating - and served as a somewhat narrow backbone to the learning process.

(Note: The pedantic old goat within is charging forward.)

The main problem, however, is that after having read and criticised other classmates' work as well as my own, I have now been left with the unshakeable feeling that the course is nothing but a huge exercise in self-delusion: that we amateurs could write something printable at some point in our lifetimes. It seems ludicrous that any of us would be able to polish our nascent craft with the fervour or knowledge required to make it to the point of publication. For one thing, no one had any concept of grammar or spelling. Good stories can be written but who will be able to make sense of it if you can't differentiate between 'compare to' and 'compare with'? Or 'too' and 'to'? Editing may be the answer, but if writing is a craft as well as an art, this lack of understanding of the basics is nothing but a demonstration of lack of requisite skill, especially when it is coupled with an inability to formulate a logical storyline. None of my classmates were able to come up with a sustainable plot. An example - taken out of a story written by one of my classmates - of the ridiculous storyline: Hero was a rowing champion at school. Now he is a successful, ass-hole lawyer who suddenly has midlife crisis after going through a McDonalds' drive-thru. Hero had claustrophobia. Meanwhile, hero's wife is talking to dry cleaners. Hero decides he loves his wife and will stop being an asshole. So he phones home. The end.

So much drivel has driven me to distraction and despair. Nonetheless, I have realised through the course a couple of things about myself which may help me lay down the notion of my being a writer trapped inside a lawyer's body. I do not have sufficient desire to write to apply myself to the task as required in order to become a published author - to sit and write and polish what I wrote and continue to write, take the criticism, write some more, take more criticism, continue to write, experience numerous rejections and eventually find joy in being paid 100 dollars for a month's work. But I do love reading good writing, and I love talking about what I read (poor M. has to hear it all the time). And I like writing enough to carry on with this blog, which seems to satisfy the itch for now.

Thankfully, none of my classmates have quit their day jobs.