I'm a student at the University of Oklahoma majoring in Professional Writing. Recently in my Introduction to a Professional Writing class, we had an assignment to write a short story. This assignment was quite different from what we had done up to that point in class. We had only written non-fiction, whereas the short story assignment was fiction. I was looking forward to the assignment since I am first and foremost a fiction writer: a novelist to be specific.

I ended up putting off the assignment until the last minute. Can you really blame me for not wanting to do homework over Spring Break? When I sat down to write the story, I had a serious case of writer's block. I either couldn't think of ideas, or the ideas didn't stick. Even my brother, who is also a Professional Writing major, tried to help me. Out of desperation, I considered using a short story I had already written. However, they were either too long, too short, or just not that good. My brother suggested I take my favorite short story and remove all the adjectives to meet the word count. I indulged him for about a paragraph before realizing how much that would diminish the quality of the story.

Eventually, I went with the only decent idea I could come up with: a widow goes on a blind date with a man who turns out to be blind, and his ex-wife shows up and reveals that she's pregnant. According to my dad, it's chock-full of irony. I finished the story just in time, and I'm fairly proud of it. I may even submit it for publication. What this experience taught me is just how different it is to write for class and to write for pleasure. Even though this assignment seemed right up my alley, it was still fairly difficult for me because it wasn't what I really wanted to be doing.

I have written two books. No, they're not published, but that doesn't decrease their value. At least not in my eyes. I started on a potential third book last year, but I forgot about it after about 25,000 words. Ideally, I would like to finish it. I would also like to finish editing my second book so I can submit it to be reviewed for publication by Amazon. It is because of my love for writing that I decided to major in Professional Writing. So how come I never have time to write what I want?

I'm so busy doing non-fiction assignments that I hardly have time to work on my fiction stories. Full disclosure: the most writing I get to do that I actually enjoy is when I secretly work on my fiction during my Professional Writing class. I feel like my hands are tied. I want to write fiction, but I have to jump through all these non-fiction, journalistic hoops to get there. I actually had to interview a classmate last week and write a feature on him. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have changed my major from Journalism to Professional Writing. It's like being a baker but all you get to do is cook, and the one time you get to bake, you have to bake something you don't really like.

As a fan of irony, I can see it in my life. I'm a writing major with no time to write. The reason I'm majoring in writing is so I can get published, but I don't have time to work on publishing my book. How long must I wait to be able to do what I want? To write what I want? Luckily, only the rest of this semester. Next semester, I am taking short story writing class. The semester after that, I am taking a novel-writing class. My hoop-jumping days are coming to an end.