Hello beautiful people who still read blogs, I am back with another blog entry from my quarantine hotel room. It has been a glorious four days of relaxing and reflecting on the past year.
For those who do not know who I am, I am a medical student who has just completed my third year at the University of Aberdeen in Scots-world. To say that this year has been eventful would be both an under and overstatement. Frankly, there really is not a word in my vocabulary that can truly encapsulate this year's happenings. However, what I do know is there is a lot to unpack from my experiences this year, and I have decided to start with the subject of creative writing.
Now, I am not sure if medical humanities is something that is unique to my medical school, but essentially for six weeks, third-year medical students are given the opportunity to take on a short course that is meant to be more an arts & humanity subject. There were language courses, medical education, anatomy, history of medicine, and so forth. I was extremely excited about medical humanities because this was probably going to be my one opportunity to study something that is wholly unrelated to medicine.
I decided to choose creative writing.
Honestly, it was the easiest decision I have made since entering medical school. I love writing. I have been writing since I knew how to hold a mechanical pencil. I used to write short stories and doodle in my 笔记本, which is this homework diary I had in primary school. I even thought of writing a book, which I imagine is a rite of passage for all bookworms and people infected by the writer-bug.
Then, I learned that I would get to learn from a professional on how to conjure fairytales, weave poems out of thin air, and serenade my family with haikus? For six whole weeks? Plus, I would be graded on said writing pieces and this grade contributes to my overall medical degree? A degree that could not be further from the word "creative"?
Bruh, I could not hit the "submit my choices" button fast enough.
Prior to starting the course, I did wonder how our course coordinator, Dr. Lynch (we call her Helen) would conduct the class considering that it would be entirely online. Of course, I was not complaining. It was only because of the whole online thing that I could stay in Malaysia with my family during the pandemic. But I did wonder whether it would be awkward doing the teaching over blackboard collaborate.
However, I was pleasantly surprised by how natural the flow of teaching was. Helen was the life of the party, bubbly and engaging. She coaxed each of us out of our comfort zones in no time.
I remember during the first session, we got allocated to breakout rooms and were asked to brainstorm ideas to create a "social media personality", complete with their background information, hobbies, likes/dislikes, appearance, etc. It was like creating your own Sims character, but through words, though I remember one of us did draw out the character with coloured pens and paper. Then, we got to share our outrageously flamboyant character with the rest of the class. I remember us giving our character a three-part name which sounded posh and something to do with jewellery. He was a social media influencer whose family owned a world renowned jewellery chain store, but secretly wanted to be a cook. Hence, he would find ways to promote his family's jewellery pieces on Instagram but included food inside his product placements as a final act of rebellion. I know, all this sounds ridiculous, and at the time, there was a part of me that thought: this is ridiculous. That part of me was Medical Student Who Does Not Know How To Have Fun.
I left the class feeling slightly bewildered by what had just transpired, with my first assignment, which was to write about this character we had created from his point of view. It could be a snippet of his day. Anything. I was honestly at a loss.
We had two days until the next class, and the next day, I felt completely uninspired and unmotivated to write anything because I was just not feeling it. I had some idea of what I wanted to write but every time I tried writing, my brain felt constipated. It was very frustrating because I used to love writing about random topics, and I loved spontaneous writing, so I spent the day trying to rouse the writer in me from her slumber.
Finally, on the second day, I got down to writing my first creative writing piece. My creative process was something like this: Right, this influencer likes cooking, and promotes jewellery. Cool, cool. How about I write about him trying to cook something, and failing at it, then trying to salvage its presentation by placing a shiny piece of jewellery on top of it?
Hence, I present to you a snippet of my first creative writing piece- "A Diamond in the Rough"
I slide the ring off my fingers, give it a rinse using tap water and then place it in the middle of the mini-volcanic eruption of Bolognese sauce in the pot. I exert minimal pressure onto the ring and the golden band disappears into the lump of sauce, leaving behind the single opulent gem glistening in the morning sun. I also sprinkle the charcoal-like bits that I set aside just now around the diamond, for the extra phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes effect.
I know, such splendid writing.
Well, I was proud that I managed to write anything at all, all things considered.
During the second class, I eagerly volunteered to read out this piece, because I am a glutton for attention (hehe), but really I was quite interested to see what Helen would make of it. To my utmost surprise (though I tried not to show it), she actually analysed my piece quite astutely and commented on some of the things I did well, and things I could improve upon.
One of the first and most important pieces of advice she gave was to "show, not tell". Essentially, the whole point of writing a story is to show the reader what you want them to see, without giving too much away at the beginning. There is no need to spell out everything.
For example, instead of writing "my parents want me to focus on the jewellery production business", writing "mom and dad want me to put more heart into the business" does a better job at leaving just enough cookie crumbs for the reader to be interested, without having to give away the entire cookie.
After my turn, other students in the class also read their pieces out loud and I found myself genuinely fascinated by them. I had never attended a creative writing class of this nature before, so it was quite exciting to listen to their stories and analyse their writing styles, which were so wildly different from my own. Truth be told, I cannot really put a finger on my writing style, considering how rogue of a writer I am. How would you describe my writing style? I am intrigued.
Anyway, even though I did not know (and still do not really) know the students in my class well, I definitely got an insight to their creative process. I loved the adjectives they used like "border terrier the colour of wet sand" because they were so vivid and added flavour to the words. It was interesting to listen to both Helen's as well as each other's feedback because they commented on things I had never even noticed before. I had my writing broken down into its basic components, and it was exhilarating if not slightly terrifying, because it felt like my writing was being stripped bare and laid for all to scrutinise. However, thankfully, no one criticised or used disparaging words, because there really is not a gold standard to creative writing, or a hole big enough for me to stick my head into.
After my second class, I decided that I adored this creative writing course, and I was beginning to let down this mental barrier that had kept my creativity at bay for years (sigh adulthood).
Our next writing prompt was "a childhood memory" in first-person. The interesting bit was that we had to narrate this story as though we were re-living it as our children selves. That meant no bombastic language or jargon, unless your name was Sheldon Cooper.
I will leave this blogpost here for now. Tomorrow, I shall continue this creative writing saga by narrating how many failed attempts I made at writing about an interesting childhood memory and how I finally recreated a childhood memory about curtains.
Till then!
PS: If you have any questions about creative writing, medicine, or want to fling rotten cabbage at my writing prowess, feel free to leave them in the comments (actually keep the cabbage).
Yours untruly,
Jie Fei