Community Member Guest Post: ACC Creative Writing

“I used to be such a closet word-lover. Then, I took a fiction class at Austin Community College and realized, there a lot of people like me here. A whole world devoted to crafting stories slowly revealed itself to me.”

-Sol Wooten

Community membership with WLT allows businesses and organizations to support our programming and services. It’s also a great way for our community of writers to learn about the many valuable and varied services, programs, and opportunities available to them.

The Creative Writing Department at Austin Community College offers a wide variety of creative writing classes, each limited to 15 students. Sol Wooten is a student of the program, so Department Chair Charlotte Gullick invited her to share her thoughts on what being a writer means to her.

Sol: “Imposterism is real. When I was invited to write this post, it instantly raised its horned head. Was I even qualified to talk about being “a writer” in Austin? My resume said, “Nope. Maybe after that MFA you’ve been going on about. And a published collection. And when writing gives you a livable wage.” But I decided to hush my snarky inner-resume. I write all the time. I am a writer. So, here’s my personal list of what that involves:

1. Getting to know your local writing community. I used to be such a closet word-lover. Then, I took a fiction class at Austin Community College and realized, there are a lot of people like me here. A whole world devoted to crafting stories slowly revealed itself to me. I began sharing work at the monthly Literary Coffeehouses at Malvern Books and attending the Third Thursday panels that WLT puts on at BookPeople. Through the help of the Creative Writing Department at ACC, I attended the Texas Writes in ATX event and learned firsthand from influential writers. I’ve also had the great pleasure of interning with American Short Fiction and discovering what goes into creating a quality literary journal. You should be warned: With this level of involvement comes constantly adding to a never-ending list of things to read according to respected professors, literary heroes, peers, writing blogs, and library shelf browsing…
2. Establishing a long-term relationship with coffee shops. Ritual has become increasingly important for my writing and work. On the toughest days when I want nothing more than to hit “STOP” on my morning alarm, having an established routine (wake up at 7am, get out of the house and away from the bed, insert coffee with coffee shop vibes, begin writing) has made all the difference in my productivity. An added benefit is the dialogue and strange human quirks I gather, many of which often find their way into poems and stories.
3. Rejection letters. The writer who has never experienced rejection is missing out. There’s something about the tenacity it takes to receive letter after letter of “your story/poem/essay just wasn’t the right fit for us” that helps affirm your identity as a writer. At some point, you become mostly immune to the self-doubt that ensues each time you receive one of these rejections and learn to celebrate the not-so-flat-out-rejections that say something about the quality of your work and how you made it to a certain journal’s short list of what-might-have-been.
4. Writing, writing, and more writing. One of the most challenging parts of writing is also one of the most necessary: consistency. Unlike some of my writer friends who appear to have the self-control of Olympic gold medalists, I often need external structures to move me to grow and produce. My hack has been to commit to learning and practicing by taking at least one online or in-person creative writing class at ACC each semester. Now, previous professors and fellow students have become irreplaceable mentors and trusted feedback-gifters.

The result of these confessions of a wannabe writer? My writing is sharper, I’m taking more risks, and my desire to continue through the writer’s labyrinth—riddled with sacrificial submissions and sphynx-like identity questions—is more resilient. That said, becoming a writer is not all monsters and riddles. I think the (non-monetary) payoff is definitely blog-worthy. Writers get to develop greater insight into the human experience, play with language in all of its simple complexity, and create characters and made-up worlds that matter, or share a particular way of understanding this world. Not to mention the unrivaled cocktail of good endorphins that are released when you extend the boundaries of language to capture something beyond what you were previously capable of—the shining product of all your yesterdays spent wrestling with this wily craft.”

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Thanks, Sol and Charlotte!

For more information about spring courses, click here, and to learn more about enrolling through continuing education, click here. Or you can call or email the department chair, Charlotte Gullick, at 512-913-4479,cgullick@austincc.edu

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Community Membership is a great way to connect with the Writers’ League’s membership base and share news and information about writing-related services and events. For more information on Community Membership click here or call our office at (512) 499-8914.