Bill Dungsroman wrote:

HOWEVER! Taking what you say at face value, it is funny that you can take a female (seemingly) at random, instruct her to write about whatever she wants, and that's the crap you get. But what do dudes commonly write about? Anything?

I know of the two novels I wrote in high school - one, a craptacular sci-fi yarn about an isolated military outpost in a no-man's land section of space. The planet was completely covered in ice and snow. I was trying to catch a feel somewhere between The Thing, The Shining, and Battletech (seriously!). That was a side project I did after burning through my homework in class and having jack shit to do for the rest of the period. That, and drawing characters for my stupid comic books. The second was actually a commissioned piece that I did all second semester of my Creative Writing class my senior year. My teacher was a n00b who dug the pretentious, awful stuff I did during the first semester, and he offered me the opportunity to write a novel all second semester in lieu of the moribund assignments he had come up with (which he admitted to me was mostly all ad-hoc busywork). Mostly because he figured I, of anyone, could write a novel, because I was no less verbose at 17 than I am now - moreso, even! It was an oh-so-thinly-veiled cry of loneliness and more or less typical high school angst and wish fulfilment. Our Hero, a 17-year-old boy, new to a school (I wasn't new, I just often wished I was, although seeing how the new kids were ostracized, that probably would have been worse), meets a hot girl, falls in love, gets bullied and fights back with his....mystical magical powers! Yeah, yeah, I know. But! His powers were indisious and covert, like John Constantine's in Hellblazer (which is why it's my favoritest comic ever).

But, due to a wacky mix-up, my CW teach quit halfway through the second quarter (I know: 9 weeks to go, with Spring Break in there as well! Pussy), and the fill-in called me up to her desk on her second day and asked me, rather calmly, why the hell I slammed an A the first semester and hadn't done jack shit since. I rather nervously explained WELL IT'S LIKE THIS HEHEHHH and she let me continue (I'd be dismissed to the library to write alone). It sucked, incidentally. It reminds me of something I read or saw (maybe on Trekkies?) regarding amateur script submissions the Star Trek guys typically get. Some new cadet or ship's officer to the Enterprise appears. He or she (coincidentally always the same sex as the writer) is more diplomatic than Picard, smarter than Data(!), more battle-savvy than Worf, more empathetic than Troi, and of course gayer than Wesley. They end up saving the day, earning the undying admiration of the entire crew nay the galaxy, and end up in Berman's trashcan in short order.

College? That stuff was worse.