Shelnutt, Eve. "Notes from a Cell: Creative Writing Programs in Isolation." Creative Writing in America. Joseph Moxley, Ed.

Well, I couldn't fit the entire citation in the title, but I know I have it in an earlier blog.

I disagree with a great many things Eve Shelnutt says in this chapter, although perhaps I can see where she's coming from. Shelnutt claims that creative writing programs are separated from academe, that "for teachers of creative writing and M.F.A. students in writing, the intellectual life has, I believe, never been so disconnected from our niche in the university" (3). Her beliefs for this stem from her argument that critics of undergraduate and graduate writing programs across the country would "no doubt answer that they never expected 'real' writers to emerge from the cocoon of academe, much less intellectuals from among those writers."

Well, for those of us who have graduated from undergraduate and graduate programs in creative writing, and also speaking as a teacher of creative writing, I can say that, if I were to speak of the professors I know, and being one myself, she can count my vote out. I see real writers emerge, publish, become teachers themselves to encourage other writers follow the same path. I don't see us as a bunch of dumbasses -- I've got three degrees, and I'm working on my fourth and fifth, if you want to put it into an academic context. For me, this is just a bunch of Ph.D. snobbery, the kind that want to look down at the MFA as a terminal degree, probably because they've never been through a program themselves (or if they did, or teach at one, I wonder what their level of commitment is).

Some of Shelnutt's argument is at the heart of what I find so snobbish about academia -- that the publishing industry is at the heart of what we strive for (of course, academics don't have "publish, don't perish" as one of their mottos, now do they?) or that because we might consider writing commercial fiction, that surely writing for a mass audience isn't up to snuff of those articles we might find in the academic journals. Yet, I don't think either of my master's-levle programs pushed me to publish -- although both recognize that writers do like to feel acknowledged by being accepted by the publishing industry, and the programs celebrate us when we do publish. I think the same is tru for Ph.D. students -- we're pushed to publish all the time, just not for a mass audience, both for each other.

A bit more snobbery occurs when Shelnutt admits that she strives to have her students "aspire to the quality of work producedby Naipaul, Gordimer, Coetzee, and Jhabvala, even if I believe that most students will not become writers" (7). Well, probably not, if she's not asking them to find their own voices, but to imitate those that have achieved "literary" success, if not commercial. Again, this smacks of the lines that "educated" people like to draw to make themselves feel better; it's as though if someone without a formal education could dare to understand and appreciate a book, or even be entertained by it, then surely it isn't worth reading.

I do agree with Shelnutt that MA and MFA in creative writing programs can suffer from identity crises, especially if they're housed in traditional English departments with long-standing literature and composition components that don't quite know what the requirements of a creative writing degree should be -- so they shove their courses into the mix and hope that the poor, poor creative writing student has gotten at leasat a somewhat-sufficient education, now that they've been served by taking classes from their own sequences as well. however, I would argue that creative writers are eventually the best served of the bunch; we've had a taste of the entire English department education, and begin to understand how literature, composition, and creative writing and merge and intersect to create one body of learing. Shelnutt disagrees, saying we can't possibly comprehend it all and literature professors complain that we bring down the quality of their programs. But I feel that's all preconceived snobbery. Perhaps that the reason why creative writing students might keep to themselves.

Freud, Sigmund. "The Creative Writer and Daydreaming." 1908. The Uncanny. Adam Philips, Ed. David McClintock, trans. Penguin Group: 2003.

I was given this essay at Goddard for a workshop; it so intrigues me as possibly a link between creative writing and composition that I had to annotate it here.

Freud writes, "We laymen have always been greatly intrigued to know where the creative writer, that strange personality, finds his subjects -- which is much the same question as a certain cardinal once put to Ariosto -- and how he contrives to enthral us with them, to arouse in us emotions of which we might not even have thought ourselves capable. Our interest is only heightened by the fact tht the writer himself, when questioned, gives us no explanation, or no satisfactory explanation, and it is in no way affected by our knowledge that even the best insight into what determines the writer's choice of material and into the nature of literary composition would do nothing to make creative writers of us" (25).

I think this does much to speak of the mystification that surrounds the writing process, when even I, as a creative writer, often say I have no control of my story as I watch my fingers type it onto the page. control is the key word here; even though composition will speak of the "prewriting" and "planning" processes that should be inherent to writing, at all times it feels that composition seems to have a "handle" on the eventual final product, while creative writers will just throw up their hands and proclaim they didn't even have an outline, the work just happened.

Freud points out that the beginnings of "poetic creativity" could stem from childhood: "The child's favourite and most intense occupation is play. We may perhaps say that every child at play behaves like a writer, by creating a world of his or her own or, to put it more correctly, by imposing a new and more pleasing order on the things that make up his world. It would therefore be wrong to think that he did not take this world of his seriously; indeed, he takes his play very seriously and expends a great deal of emotion on it. The opposite of play is not seriousness -- it is reality" (25-6).

For me, this speaks of another ambiguity between composition and creative writing. Compositionists seem to take the process far more seriously, able to explain the writing process away in all its academical journals, whiel creative writers have very few published works on the creative process. We speak of craft and consider how respected authors have mastered the craft, but wwe don't seem to be able to -- or want to -- explain the process of putting together the work.This is not to say that creative writers don't take their work seriously -- we do -- we just don't seem to consider as much the process as we do the final work, and whether it is "successful."

I don't think I want to try to analyze the following quotes I also found interesting from this essay, so for now I'll just record them here in case they prove helpful to one of my works at a later time:

"When the child has grown up and ceased to play, after putting years of mental effort into understanding the ralities of life, together with all the seriousness they call for, he may one day find himself in a frame of mind in which the opposition between play and reality is once more suspended. The adult can recall the high seriousness that he once brought to his childhood games, and now, by equating his ostensibly serious concerns with these games, he throws off the all too oppressive burden of life and wins the great bonus of pleasure afforded by humour" (26).


"It may be said that those who are happy never fantasize -- only the dissatisfied. Unsatisfied desires are the motive forces behind fantasies, every fantasy being a wish-fulfillment, correcting an unsatisfactory reality" (28).

" ... the reason is that at night we are visited by desires that we are ashamed of and must conceal from ourselves, that have for htis very reason been repressed, pushed into the unconscious. Such repressed desires and their derivatives can be allowed to express themselves only in a grossly distorted form" (29-30).

Moxley, Joseph, Ed. Preface. Creative Writing in America: Theory and Pedagogy. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English, 1989.

note: I don't know if I have the title in proper MLA format. Will need to check on that when I get back from Vermont.

The preface of this book points out what I have long suspected about creative writing pedagogy: that it seems "no debate rages in professional journals as to whether creative writing programs are providing students with the necessary writing skills, knowledge of the composing process, or background in literature needed to write well. Although professional writers frequently have criticized the workshop method, few have recommended viable alternatives" (xi).

As both a student of creative writing and rhetoric and composition, I have noticed that much theory and debate has been written about composition, but little exists on creative writing. I see areas where the composition theory could cross over into the creative, i.e. expressivist theory, or compositionist's nod to understanding that style is a part of the writing process, but when it comes to craft, there are more exercises, or prompts on what a teacher could do in order to start the creative writing process, but little talk on what the creative process is.

Why are composition and creative writing kept separate from each other in academia? Perhaps it is the nature of calling expressive writing "creative." It is difficult to discern what is creative, much as it is difficult to determine what is "art," -- it's generally in the eye of the beholder. To pull apart "creativity" might be to take the heart out of the creative process -- and perhaps creativity is just that, the heart of writing, an intangible. It is hard to theorize what initiates the creative process, as it is stated in this preface, "some students take our courses because they are possessed by a need to write, a need to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Motivated by a love for language, an active imagination, or a powerful feeling of dissonance, some of our students are prepared to shape their lives around their writing goals" (xii). Even the words used to discuss creative writing here -- possessed, need, express, imagination, feeling, love -- are all intangibles.

Workshopping has become the norm for facilitating the creative writing process. Here Dr. Moxley writes he believes that this pedagogical approach has not evolved since the workshop became popular at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1936 (xii). The workshopping, or studio, method is described as follows: "The writer-teacher asks two or three students to distribute copies of their manuscripts a week before the works are to be criticized in class so their peers can write comments on them and be prepared for discussion. Then, with varying degrees of authority, the writer-teacher guides the group's discussion by asking questions relevant to the manuscript's strengths and weaknesses. Instruction regarding the writing craft -- such as choosing a point of view, setting the scene, writing dialogue, and developing a satisfying plot -- typically emerges from these discussions. The copies of the manuscripts -- now marked with the peers' comments -- are returned to the authors at the end of the discussion" (xiii).

As the preface points out, the workshopping method can be quite effective. I have been through numerous workshops as both an undergraduate and graduate student of creative writing, and some comments do seem to hone in on, or affirm, what needs to be revised in the work to make it better. Yet the preface also points out that this method of teaching can backfire on some of the elements of what can make writing successful, such as "prewriting," or the time considering ideas and alternatives for the work (xiv). Also, workshopping might encourage students to write for the approval of the other students, rather than for craft or expression itself, with attention to audience later. I find this true enough; there have been numerous times when a well-meaning student (or even instructor) has offered advice that just didn't pertain to what I was trying to do. I was once warned by one of my creative writing professors, Sterling Watson, that eventually I would find myself wanting to wean off the workshopping process; I have to admit that this year I am finding that to be true. I still find feedback valuable, but now I tend to seek it from writers who understand what messages I am trying to put out there. I'm not trying to write for mass approval.

Moxley touches on some of the similarities between composition and creative writing processes that a teacher should be aware of and emphasize when it comes to his pedagogical approach. Again, prewriting techniques are emphasized, but also touched on are revision, understanding "inner speech" or writing from personal experience, the unconscious or "right brain," and images, literatures, and research that might generate creative writing (xvii). Also, Moxley believes that creative writing pedagogy should include researching material, good when developing credible detail and also analyzing appropriate markets for finished materials.

So far, the intersections I find most interesting for possible research in the intersections between creative and composition theories and pedagogy are:

Prewriting;
Research;
Expressivism;
Workshopping; and
Style.

"Going to See the Elephants: Our Duty as Storytellers" by George Garrett.

Garrett, George. "Our Duty as Storytellers." Creating Fiction. Julie Checkoway, ed. Cincinnati: Story Press, 1999.

In this chapter, Garrett says storytelling has "magic and mystery at the heart of it" (2). The creative process is something that people still don't understand and breaks any rules we might think up about it. The process of writing is creative, and no one knows what will make them feel creative until they give it a shot, or to follow the "original impulse." Garrett says our onlly responsibility as a creative writer is to tell the story as "honestly and accurately as possible" (3).

This might be one glaring difference between those who study writing as composition, and those people who see it as a creative process. While I'm generalizing here, it seems compositionists feel compelled to break down the process and explain it through theory and process. Creative writers seem to want to shrug and say, "I have no idea how I'm doing it. But I'm doing it." However, there is still correlation between the groups, as creative writers still break down the process as craft techniques -- character, theme, point of view, conflict, etc. -- while compositionists might see it more as "focus" (similar to theme), development, organization, style (same here for creative writers), etc.

Another similarity between compositionists and creative writers is the need to feel the audience is swayed somehow by reading the work. In composition I have heard this described as "appeals," or appealing to a reader's ethos, pathos, and logos in order to be effective. Garrett puts the emphasis in this chater on ethos, or emotion, saying the writer should "call up and to appeal to the emotions of our audience (one reader at a time) ... That is our currency as hunter-players, the universal coinage of laughter and tears" (3).