What is your major and year in school?
I’ve been at school for four years and I’m a creative writing major. I’ve had to take a couple terms off here and there, but I’ll graduate next fall. A lot of what I have done since changing to a creative writing major has been writing workshops, just kind of basic English classes. Last term, I took a poetry workshop and modern American literature. This term, I’m taking science fiction and the scriptwriting workshop.
What made you choose creative writing?
I have always really enjoyed writing and a lot of things to do with writing. I play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, so I’ve always done worldbuilding and stuff like that. I guess what really ended up making me change to creative writing was when I was taking general chemistry and I was sitting at my computer for like eight hours a day, just staring at spreadsheets.
I was talking to my girlfriend one night and I was just like, “Man, this is driving me insane.”
And she was like, “You understand that if you get a job in STEM that this is going to be your job?”
And I went, “Oh God,” and decided to change my major.
What gives you inspiration to write?
Curiosity. A lot of the time, I’ll see something cool and just be like, man, I wanna incorporate that into something I’m writing. Sometimes, if I’m very emotional—whether that’s me being really angry, happy, or horribly depressed, it doesn’t matter—I just kind of hit a certain point and I’m like, I need to get this out of me. That will then spur me on to write a few hundred words.
Tell me about some of your classes and what they entail.
For science fiction, Chris Riseley is teaching that. There is a lot of homework, certainly a lot of reading. But a lot of the time it’s just kind of like you read something, you think about what choices make someone develop a world or a setting like that. For scriptwriting, every page you write is one minute of screen time. So you’re trying to figure out how to fit a full story into 120 minutes max, which is a little bit unreasonable at times. I assume that’s why the workshop exists, to teach you that you are never going to get everything exactly how you want it – unless you’re like Guillermo del Toro.
With poetry, Tristan Striker taught that class and the poor guy was stressed out, he had like an extra two classes he wasn’t expecting to teach. But a lot of what we did with poetry was he would teach us one thing about poetry and then have us practice doing that thing that week. Sometimes we would have weeks where it was like, show someone else your poetry, have them give you some feedback, call it good. For literature classes, it is quite honestly just a lot of reading and analyzing literature, which is enjoyable, but I tend to branch out into other kinds of media for literary analysis.
Currently, I’m working on a very large analysis of a horror game [called] “Signalis.” It came out a couple years ago, but it’s made in the style of a PS1 horror game like “Silent Hill.” The reason I’m doing an analysis of it is because it shows the book, “The King in Yellow,” several times and it also has quotes from “The Festival” and “An Inhabitant of Carcosa.” All three of those are works I’m very familiar with and enjoy quite a bit so when I saw them in the game I was like, “Oh, I’m going to think about this way too much.”
What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of school?
I’m working on a big video essay for YouTube; I do a lot of video editing and stuff like that. I play an abhorrent amount of video games, kind of always have. I play Dungeons & Dragons with some friends. I also go to the local music shows around here a lot and raves sometimes.
I heard you were involved with the Creative Writing Club. What is your role with that and how did you first get involved?
Several years ago, someone offhandedly mentioned that it was a thing. I looked it up, saw which room it was in, and started going. I think outside of Dio [Morales], I’m the only person from when I first started going who’s still there. I’m technically just kind of [a member] there. I’m sort of second-in-command unofficially, but it’s mostly just because if Cooper [Madison-Dawson] is not there, I’m the only one who corralls people and I deal with a lot of organization things on Discord.
What are your plans for after LBCC?
The main thing that I’m working on right now is video essays, kind of just like analysis and things like that. Investigative journalism is always something that I have been really interested in. Outside of that, writing, and hopefully in an ideal world I plan on going to OSU for New Media Communications so that I can get taught how to do video editing instead of figuring it out for myself. I think I’ll end up graduating fall of next year.
What is one piece of advice that you’d give to someone who is considering joining the creative writing program?
Just do it. I know that it’s one of those things people always tell you, and I was told a lot that, “Oh, you are never going to make money doing that.” It doesn’t matter. If you do something just to make money, you are going to go insane. Point blank, it is going to drive you crazy, you are going to hate it, and it’s not going to be enjoyable whatsoever.
Just do it. And there is money in writing. Maybe not as easily, and maybe it’s something where I’m not really authoring my own things, but I’m editing for someone else. It’s about getting there more than it is about just having it. You can get paid a lot as an engineer, but if you don’t enjoy engineering you’re not going to have a very good time.
Visit fools-guild.com if you are interested in reading some of Logan’s work.
