The other night I woke up from sleep thinking “I took a class in creative writing and since then I haven’t written a thing.” Not entirely true but whatever writing there has been since then it has been marginal. The class took the passion out of writing and I come from the bottom.

I took the class partly because I had adopted a very critical attitude towards literature bred in creative writing classes, novels did not evoke curiosity any more. On the contrary, I found them dull and stylistically uniform, thematically they seemed written on commission by publishing houses, mass-produced in other words. 

Creative writing classes had turned creativity into a question of productivity, the creative act had become another mode of production. Literature had become an industry, like the film industry, the music industry and so on. Late capitalism had once again made its mark and found a way to appropriate the arts.

Last edited: 2021-01-07 tagged: productivity filed under: metatexts :: on writing