Creative Writing in the Classroom: Well Worth the Work, Part II

For a few semesters I have taught a graduate level class called Creative Writing for the Classroom Teacher. For those several weeks, I ask my students (a few of them working teachers; some future educators) to consider that the teaching of expository writing and creative writing call for different methodologies. Though the purpose of both forms is to communicate a message to the reader, that which is communicated is different. One’s aim is to tell it true factually, the other’s is to tell it true. One relies on verifiable evidence, while the other relies on authenticity. So it makes sense that that which the author sets out to tell dictates how it’s told, therefore how it is written.

So, I ask my students to learn to write in at least “two forms of literary writing.” They write a short short story and a collection of poetry for certain, and if time allows, the script for a short graphic story. I inform them at the outset that ours is not a creative writing class in the traditional sense where we’ll write and workshop our pieces, nor will they be graded on the quality of their short fiction and poems. Though I do expect high quality work, the focus is on pedagogy, that is, how educators take the writing of poetry to their own students.

The class objective is multi-faceted: for my students to experience the very writing that they are expected to teach their own students; to provide them with adequate training for them to more competently meet curricular standards; and to afford them the platform to share their concerns about their feelings of inadequacies as they pertain to the teaching of fiction or poetry writing.

I ask them to talk about themselves as writers, to describe their early educational experiences with creative writing, and to discuss how confident they feel about teaching fiction or poetry writing to their own students today. Following is a sampling of their responses: “I think that the lack of experiences has had an impact on how I do not see myself as a poet or author”; “Basically, my experiences with writing have been pretty weak and generally [include] only the academic writing, formula writing and not real exciting. Stories were not really encouraged”; and “When I think back to my school experience, my opportunities to write creative[ly] in an educational setting were limited.” Those who claim to have been exposed to creative writing wrongly identified journal writing as an example of such. And because they themselves were not trained to teach creative writing, they would either avoid teaching it or simply gloss over it. It is easier to teach a lesson on a specific device (personification, for instance) then have students compose a poem (a haiku is short and sweet thus doable) in which they will include personification. If they do so successfully, they score a high grade and we have met that particular standard. Much easier to do that than to teach fiction or poetry as a craft, in and of itself, with its very own tools that require a specific knowledge. In my own travels into classrooms as writer, I’m sad to report that much of the creative writing that is going on reflects my own students’ reactions above.

Over those same several weeks, I try to instill in my students’ minds the great influence they can be in children’s and young people’s writing lives by simply holding open the door leading to Van Gogh’s room, by making available to them the time to walk around in the shoes of working authors, and by sharing with them the tools of the trade.

To that end, following is a list of the suggestions I offer my students:

1. Distinguish creative writing from all the other writing that students have been doing all their educational careers. For students to begin to conceive of themselves as writers, they must first realize the vastly and categorically dissimilar purposes and approaches to writing essays versus writing stories or poems. If “creative writing” is nothing more to them than filler or another task set before them like all the others, they will never get what it means to be a writer, a poet, a playwright and instead consider creative writing nothing more than an instrument belonging solely in an academic setting. Students will have missed out on the opportunity to think that perhaps they, too, might want to contribute their version of the Body Electric that is our great nation and the part that they’ve played in forming it. Instead, they will complete the acrostic, diamante, or haiku, but will never have thought that they might want to give this writing thing an honest go. Related: though the reading of fiction and poetry plays a large role in one becoming a writer and growing one’s craft, reading literature as such doesn’t help a reader conceive of himself as writer, much less to become writer, and much less to improve his craft (as an example, to have students read The Great Gatsby to write an essay about the meaning of the green light at the end of the pier is different than having them read the same book to discuss how Fitzgerald handles telling about a younger James Gatz and Daisy when neither of them is present in the scene to recount this history: major difference, then, between reading a novel as literature and reading it to learn about the craft. More on this below.)

2. Set apart some serious time for students so to more realistically experience a writer’s life. A two- to six-week unit on creative writing would best serve students and give teachers enough time to introduce them to the craft(s) and, more importantly, to the idea that they have the permission to think of themselves as writers-in-the-works. This is not to say that dedicating two to six weeks to writing short fiction, or six entire weeks to composing poetry can replace actually living the life, but an extended unit will do more than a mini-lesson on onomatopoeia that culminates twenty minutes later in a heroic couplet which utilizes words that replicate sounds. Creative writing involves more than mimicking devices—it is a skill in need of developing. The adage holds true: practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. But practice, especially of the perfect variety, takes time. (Please don’t misunderstand: I’m not advocating for perfection in writing; even the best writers of all time (except for Rylant, apparently) work in drafts. I don't’ necessarily count myself among them, but to help clarify with a personal story: even when my books are published and I’ve worked with more than capable editors over the years, I find myself crossing out what’s on the page, and revising. It’s never perfect. It can always be better. What I am stressing, though, is that time, and enough of it, is crucial to the task.)

3. Provide would-be writers with plenty of mentor texts. If you are teaching fiction, then have handy much fiction as is available, examples of what writers have done successfully or not, but that young writers can learn from either way. I don’t mean how-to manuals that outline how a story’s arc should unfold, where and when the conflict should begin and end, that to get to know a character thoroughly a writer should fill out a character questionnaire, a copy of which, as it happens, seems to always be included in one of the many appendices. Reading must take a different form. Teach them to read a story not for theme or use of symbolism (which writers don’t sit and think about before, during, or after working on a project, so why should apprentice-writers read likewise?) but to see how an author has consciously constructed it. Writers think about how to best develop character, selecting just the right word, how a sentence falls on the page. They think about how to slow down a scene (read how Tobias Wolff in his short story “Bullet in the Brain” does exactly this expertly) or speed it up (for wonderful examples of this read Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty for his more than effective use dialogue and action). When I’ve experienced pacing issues in my own writing I’ve revisited either of these two works by these master-craftsmen, to study again what exactly they’ve done in their storytelling to slow it down or speed it up. This will take some doing because for umpteen years these students have been taught formulaic writing, for the most part, and worse, formulaic reading. They’ve learned how to read for the test: even my own sons who are at this point in elementary school know about underlining “key” words and phrases, circling names and dates, etc. This is exactly what we want to avoid: because when my sons grow up they will think that in order for them to write an effective story or a poem they must require a formula. (As a side note, non-fiction or expository writing of any sort, if it’s any good, is not formulaic. Side note two: dedicating this much time and energy to teaching fiction and or poetry will likely not improve a child’s grades on state-mandated exams, though the benefits will most certainly be greater for the child than this school or that being able to decorate the fence surrounding it with Styrofoam cups informing the world of passers-by that this school or that one is recognized by the state for scoring what it deems good enough, never mind how environmentally unfriendly those cups are. Side note three: above I mentioned exposing would-be writers to poorly written mentor texts as well: if they are bored reading it, why on earth would they want to imitate it? If a poem is overly-melodramatic, let’s say, and weak as a result, take the time to teach why they need to try hard as they will to avoid the same and then teach them how to use melodrama well. If another poem uses too many adverbs (and I argue that one is too many), jump on the opportunity to teach them to show don’t tell, or, conversely, where telling does come in handy. We can never throw away an opportunity. Ever.)

To Be Continued...

Creative Writing in the Classroom: Well Worth the Work, Part I

A while back, my family took to watching archeology-related shows on PBS, during which our then-five-and-a-half, Lukas, sat spellbound at all of the bones, treasures, and assorted old stuff that was unearthed and put on display for viewers; after which, without any prompting from his teacher-parents, he stated rather matter-of-factly that “When I grow up I want to be an archeologist.” You can imagine my joy at the news because this same thought came to me, though much later in my life (I was in junior high school when I decided this same line of work suited me). Nobody ever asked me then what I wanted to be when I grew up, but if they had that’s what I would’ve answered.

Back then, though, the last thing on my mind that I would want to be was writer. In those days it didn’t occur to me that someone would want to be an author. Why would anybody choose that as their job? We all wrote essays and book reports in class, so we knew first-hand the hassle writing was. But to do it as a job, like my father worked for a paving company for upwards of 12 hours a day? The thought never crossed my mind. Of course I knew there had to have been someone jamming words together into sentences into paragraphs into chapters into books. I wasn’t dense. But the materials we read in class were nothing more than texts we were assigned to plod through. They were by Ray Bradbury, whoever in the universe he was; Guy de Maupussant, whose name I had problems pronouncing and as for his masterpiece, “The Necklace”—quelle horreur for a young middle grader; and O. Henry with his silly trick endings. But to me, a student, they were nothing more than names on book covers. I read them because they were required of me and I wanted the high grades. The authors were long dead, or, if they were still living (which I had no way of knowing, really, and no desire to find out), they were from faraway places like London or New York City, all strange and exotic and inaccessible to a boy from deep South Texas. Nevertheless I read them. They would help me become an archeologist. That is, until I discovered the tedium of the dig lasting between several months to years, with the likely possibility that I may not uncover anything of great significance. I’ve got no memory of it, but I must have changed my tune quick because when I applied for university a few short years later, I checked graphic design for my major, not archeology or anything else connected to science or history. But that didn’t fit me either. Nor did accounting, journalism, or publishing.

Author, then, if it entered my mind (which I’m positive it didn’t) was for others to take up as a vocation. It was for the leisured, the monied, the educated. None of which I was. In high school I was required to write two fictional pieces, for which I received As, but even so I didn’t entertain the notion of myself as would-be writer. (On a side note, I’ve kept both stories, now hidden away in some unmarked box in the deepest, darkest corner of our garage, buried there because I realize now they are horrible and cheesy. As far as stories go, embarrassingly so.)

            
It wasn’t until I was in my second year of college that I granted myself the permission to conceive of myself a writer-in-training. Not a writer, mind you, but one merely in the making. With years of training ahead of me still if I so chose this course. I had no assurances of success, only of hard work and certain rejection. Even so, I chose the path that would require of me much. Ultimately, argues author Nicholas Delblanco, “the definition of a writer is, simply, ‘one who writes’” (135). This is not to say that the simple act of my putting pen to paper automatically earned me the right to call myself “writer.” Like I said before, as early as high school I wrote, but I wasn’t a writer. To be able to call myself a “writer” would take more than scribbling a story down in a notebook, pounding my chest when I’d finished a draft, and pronouncing myself so. “What it comes down to,” writes Delblanco, “both at the end and in the beginning is work….work and work and work” (135). He likens the process of becoming a writer to a medieval cadre: after apprenticing himself to a master-craftsman for some time, the apprentice turns journeyman laborer, and eventually, having learned what he can at this second level, he becomes master-craftsman himself (124).

Such a master is short story writer Raymond Carver who says, “There has to be talent” (87). Cynthia Rylant agrees: “…writers are born with the word in their blood and the plain truth of it is not everybody can be a writer” (18). Nonetheless, a writer writes. Those with talent, she proposes, belong in an altogether different “room entirely,” Van Gogh’s room she calls it, where would-be authors are about the work of writing: they “are talking about art, about thinking art and creating art and being an artist every single day of one’s life” (19). Delblanco’s argument that creative writing takes “work and work and work” and Rylant’s notion that writing consists of “talking about art” and talking “about thinking art and creating art” take time and dedication on the beginning writer’s part, time that we educators in the classroom setting don’t seem to have free chunks of.

In Texas, where I live and teach, our curriculum is governed in education by the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Throughout children’s academic careers, they are expected to write creatively. As early as kindergarten, students are required to write “to tell a story and put the sentences in chronological sequence” and will accomplish this by “dictate[ing] or writ[ing] sentences” (The State of Texas, “110.11. English Language Arts and Reading, Kindergarten,” 14.A). Not much changes between then and 12th grade. As per the TEKS for English IV, “Students write literary texts to express their ideas and feelings about real or imagined people, events, and ideas. Students are responsible for at least two forms of literary writing. Students are expected to: (A)  write an engaging story with a well-developed conflict and resolution, a clear theme, complex and non-stereotypical characters, a range of literary strategies (e.g., dialogue, suspense), devices to enhance the plot, and sensory details that define the mood or tone; (B)  write a poem that reflects an awareness of poetic conventions and traditions within different forms (e.g., sonnets, ballads, free verse); and (C)  write a script with an explicit or implicit theme, using a variety of literary techniques” (The State of Texas, “Chapter 110.34”). Nowhere in this document does it state that educators must dedicate a specific amount of time to teach literary or creative writing, how to fit it into their lesson plans, or that when they teach “literary writing” that they need to do much more than to touch on genre and devices at a very superficial level. Educators, in general, are not trained in teaching creative writing, and the responsibility of ensuring that their students pass one state-mandated exam or another is foisted on their shoulders, so who has time to meet this writing standard other than to give it a passing nod?

Admirable though it is that students are challenged to write creatively, even minimally, Rylant says in essence that a different kind of writing involves its very own approach (19). It requires a mindset modification, from writing academically to writing creatively. It entails a significant shift in writing gears. But students cannot go it alone, nor can they do it with only a surface knowledge of the craft. The implication in Rylant’s article is that teachers must accompany their students as they step out of one room and into this other.

To Be Continued...