// Sentimentality//
Today, I jotted down some expansion notes— what I’m calling revisions of ideas— for a play I started two years ago. A few sentences in, I realized that this kind of writing would never, ever have been approved while I was in Oxford. I was usually writing essays, for one thing, but I was also learning from a creative writing tutor who disliked sentimentality so much that he sometimes mistook difficult emotions for it and would yell at me. (No worries. No trauma. He was just a passionate man encased in tweed.)
Hah. That’s unfair. It’s more like I didn’t care enough to give those difficult emotions their best words— so they became sentimental. And he would yell and I’d know I was a liar.
Anyway, I sometimes took another crooked shortcut by avoiding honest sentiment altogether.
I guess I’m trying to say that… I need to remember to give the best words to difficult emotions; rather than skirting life.
