Parini, Jay. "Literary Theory and the Writer." Colors of a Different Horse.

Parini believes that theory and practice have been torn apart, not just in creative writing, but in "American intellectual and culture life today ... more specifically, the "creative" writers -- poets and writers of fiction -- don't speak to the critics of literature, many of whom practice what is now called "theory." In some cases there is open warfare, with the writers disdainful of the jargon-ridden prose and outright philistinism of theory; for their part, the critics have less than no interest in the "texts" being woven right undr their very noses. To them, the only good poet is a dead poet" (127).

Parini believes that "once upon a time" the major creative writers were also major critics; he names Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, and T.S. Eliot among them. He believe that the tides turned "when criticism turned 'professional': "F.R. Leavis and Cleanth Brooks, two influential critics in the professional mode, were among the first important writers about poetry who were not themselves poets. A gap opened between imaginative and critical writing which has only widened" (127).

The "professional" New Critics seemed welcoming to authors; "the probelem with the New Criticism, of course, was its pretense to being apolitical. As Lionel Trilling wrote in Beyond Culture in 1968, 'We all want politics not to exist.' The supposed purpose of high art is to go beyond politics, to rise above the taint of ideology, to loft us thither into the ozone layer of aesthetic bliss, a place where all ironies and paradoxical motions of a given text are, at lest, harmonized" (128). Once again, the separation of writing seems to go between what is artistic or "other", and what can be readily explained, or at least theorized.

Haake, Katharine. "Teaching Creative Writing if the Shoe Fits." Colors of a Different Horse.

First I want to record some terms that Haake says she familiarizes her own students with. Some of these terms I've heard of, some I haven't, but I imagine I'll be looking them all up before the dissertation work is done: "I introduced concepts of story and discourse, sequential ordering, temporality, focalization, structure itself. I talked about the narratee, narrative strategy, narrative stance. I taught that writing proceeds from language, which is itself a system of signs, governed by rules and conventions, and not a transparent medium through which we reflect on the world ... What I wanted was that my students would somehow come to view their texts as autonomous literary artifacts, separate from their real selves and subject to analysis" (77-78).

Besides the terms used here, I wanted to point out that Haake feels compelled to have her students separate themselves from their work, which seems to go back to creative writing seeming to stem from the self, rather than an academic work, which can stem from an idea or hypothesis but can be heavily research-laden, or based on previous beliefs (not necessarily those of the author, although (s)he can agree with the research).

Haake said the workshopping method didn't always work in her classes, "and the vast majority was clearly disinterested in teh critical framework I'd provided. Half were in the class because they wanted to 'express themselves'; another half were there for easy credit. At first I just tried to ignore them, convinced that since I was the teacher my own goals and objectives for the course were to be preferred to theirs. But after a few years of that, I started thinking about all the college credit that was being awarded -- for what?" (78-79). This affirms not just a teacher's potential for dismissing theory and criticism as part of creative writing, but also students; it also goes back to teachers perhaps being uncomfortable with this after realizing that the class should have an academic nature, as it is "graded."

"Theory helps us recognize the puppet strings. It helps us analyze not what texts mean, but how they mean, not who we are, but how we are what we believe we are at any given moment, and how, as well, that changes, as it does. This is useful knowledge for writers who, while tehy're occupied with their analysis, might want to clip a string or two, for play or emphasis, or out of curiosity or the tradition of rebellion ...

"You could call theory jargon-laden, or you could call it plain bad writing (which is what people often do when they're plain fed up), but I think the functional principle that sustains the stylistic eccentricities of theory is, again, one of power" (86).

I think my own battles with theory is that the writing is often far too convoluted and jargon-laden, and I work hard to make my writing accessible (probably due to my journalism training), so it's difficult for me to see why "heavy" theory can be associated with empathetic, sometimes even entertaining creative writing.

Finally, some theorists that Laake likes to offer her students. I am familiar with some, and will probably look at them more closely as I do my dissertation work to see why she finds them related to creative writing: "Out of the great mass of theory, I routinely introduce Saussure, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, some feminist theory, and a good bit of structuralism" (90).

Berry, R.M. Theory, Creative Writing, and the Impertinence of History. Colors of a Different Horse.

This chapter is completely fascinating to me -- it shows how the theory and pedagogy of creative writing came about, and good reasons as to why it might have split from other "English"-based studies in academia. So I'll be quoting a lot:

First, some information about the popularity of creative writing programs: "One could persuasively argue that in America the most influential theory of literataure since World War II has been Creative Writing. John Barth has estimated that by 1984 Creataive Writing programs had turned out over 75,000 literary practitioners (Churchman 42), and Liam Rector, former director of Associated Writing Programs, estimated in 1990 that around 3,000 poets and fiction writers were graduating from Creative programs each year. (For comparison, doctoral programs in English average around 800 graduates yearly (Huber 121-2). Although doctoral programs are the principal locus for the formal study of literary theory, the institutional home of Creative Writing is in far more numerous colleges and universities not awarding English Ph.D.'s -- places wehre courses in theory are rare. At present, four-fifths of all American undergraduate English programs offer courses in Creative Writing, almost half offer specializations in Creative Writing, and nearly two-thirds of all Creative Writing programs are located in English departments where no doctoral courses are available (Huber 139, 141, 173) ...

"...Part of what makes this situation interesting is the likelihood that Creative Writing programs exert a more direct influence than any other part of the American academy on the nonacademic production, distribution, and consumption of literature. Most concretely, this influence makes itself felt on the public audiences for the writers' festivals, summer workshops, and readings sponsored by Creative Writing programs or faculty" (57).

This shows that even though formal creative writing programs might be relatively new to academia as compared to literature and composition studies, the boom in interest and exposure has been tremendous. I wonder if this causes some sort of schism between the faculty members who teach it.

More history: "That Creative Writing is a theory of literature seems less peculiar when Creative Writing is compared to the literary apprenticeship it replaced. Prior to the nineteenth century the most widespread European model of the poet's education tended to de-emphasize individual creativity and to foreground the deliberate imitation of other poets (Russell 1-16; Greene, McKeon 168-171; Kennedy 116-19; Sullivan, Michael 279-82). According to this pedagogy, the apprentice poet learned to replicate an adapt various models under the supervision of someone who had established his (the gender seems historically appropriate) reputation as a master ... Contrary to modern expectations, what the Greek or Roman apprentice gleaned from models was not technique only, but plots, themes, scenes, vocabulary, and even the topics of characters' speeches, as though becoming a good poet involved both learning a skill and acquiring a repertory of stories or lore. In this regard, literate poets in late antiquity probably remained close to the practice of earlier oral poets whose training involved learing the 'epic formula' (conventional image clusters, similes, line endings, rhyme schemes, etc.) as well as the ancient stories themselves ...

"...Horace recommended adaptations over original subjects but against against word-for-word translation (Poetics 11. 12-35), Demetrius distringiushed Herodotus' flat quotation of poets from Thucydides' skillful integration of the poets' phrases into his own discourse (paragraphs 112-13), and Dante regarded his own imitation of Virgil (and Virgil's imitation of Homer) as signifying, not inferiority, but the resotration of poetry to its rightful greatness.

"The best known Renaissance version of this mimetic pedagogy is explicated in The Courtier, where imitation, beginning with the learning of principles and correct execution, culminates in the student's attempt to go beyond resemblance and 'transform himself into his master' (Castiglione 42)" (59-60).

Whew. That was a lot of information. But it shows that our pedagogy is rooted in both the study of literature and oral literacy through the ages; and that creative writing pedagogy didn't just start with the Iowa Writers Workshop less than a hundred years ago.

More information: "According to D.G. Myers, whose dissertation on Creative Writing is the most complete source of information about the institution's past, the origins of Creative Writing are found in the early composition pedagogy (especially as developed in the freshman writing courses at Harvard in the late nineteenth century) and the creative expressionist wing of the progressive education movement. Myers regards Creative Writing as primarily a classroom phenomenon and claims that its pedagogical practices were well known among American educators a decade before their first incorporation into a university degree program in the thirties. To the extent that Creative Writing had roots outside the schools, those roots were found in New England transcendentalism and popular journalism. Stephen Wilbers, in his history of America's first graduate Creative Writing program (the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop), makes no mention of the new composition pedagogy or progressive education but stresses instead the role of a vigorous midwestern regionalism that focused interest on the work of apprentice writers. According to this view, the Writers' Workshop of Iowa developed out of the (non-academic) literary activity of local communities and the writer's clubs that organized this activity. Whereas Myers sees Creative Writing as part of a nationwide emphasis of individual-based instruction and professionally useful education, Wilbers argues that writing at Iowa arose as a protest against a homogeneous national culture, especially one dominated by the East.

"Both Wilbers and Myers agree, however, that the architect of Creative Writing within the academy was Norman Foerster, a former student of Irving Babbitt at Harvard and a proponent (along with Babbitt and Paul Elmer More) of the "New Humanism" (see Grattan). foerster -- who became director of the School of Letters at Iowa in 1930 -- was an outspoken literary theorist whose several books on American culture and the history of criticism attempted to establish a coherent foundation for an evaluative critical practice. His desideratum was a unified notion of literary study and practice that he called 'scholarship.' His enemy was 'research'...

"...Foerster's voice was one among many that deprecated the humanities drift toward science. The critics attacked the researchers on several fronts: research involved the accidentals of literature but ignored 'literature itself': it substituted mechanical method for 'living thought'; it prepared students for academic vocations but didn't educate them; it substituted pedantry for learning; and so forth. Many of the arguments were based on 'genteel' assumptions that imagined a natural alliance between Christianity, liberal democracry, and Aristotle, and they invariably presupposed a universie the size of white middle-class males" (64).

The drift towards religion and race at the end of this long quotation aside, it shows that creative writing pedagogy and theory is indeed firmly rooted in literature ... and the reasons why creative writing might have torn itself apart from those studies. As the change in the study of composition and literature became more research-based, the opponents of thinking of creative writing as a theory, but more an organic experience, went another way. Perhaps this is another reason why some creative writing instructors refuse to study theory; it would mean that we would have to acknowledge our base in a discipline from which we've tried to separate.

"In Foerster's 'letters curriculum' -- viz., linguistics, literary history, criticism, and Creative Writing -- criticism was to be the organizing center. Its centrality arose from Foerster's conviction -- shared by many other opponents of research -- that criticism disclosed the universal principles of literariness and, therefore, comprised both a distinct object of study and a basis for all other professional activities" (65). I find this interesting because I currently teach at a liberal arts college with its own Letters Collegium; now I understand why creative writing is separate there from literature, which I think is based in Creative Arts, and composition, which is based in Foundations.

"There are ironies here, perhaps more than the obvious ones. In order to enter American universities, practicing fiction writers and poets identified themselves with a theory of literature that, once Creative Writing was established, they seem to have abandoned. In 1944 when Foerster left Iowa in protest over administration attempts to dismantle his humanist curriculum, both the present and past directors of the writing program -- though expressing personal respect for Foerster -- acknowledged that they saw no essential connection between their program and Foerster's curriculum" (67).

Good stuff, this history. I'm glad I'm reading this book.

Aristotle. Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature. Trans. Leon Golde, Commentary by O.B. Hardison, Jr. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1981.

Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. Charles Singleton. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959.

Churchman, Deborah. "Fertile Time for Creative Writing: More College Courses Every Year." New York Times: Education Winter Survey 8 Jan. 1984: XII/42+.

Grattan, C. Hartley, ed. The Critique of Humanism: A Symposium (reprint). Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968.

Greene, Thomas M. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.

Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1980.

McKeon, Richard. "Literary Criticism and the Concept of Imitation in Antiquity." Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern. Ed. R.S. Crane et al. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1952.

Michael, Ian. The Teaching of English: From the Sixteenth Century to 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.

Russell, D.A. "De imitatione." Creative Imitation and Latin Literature. Ed. David West and Tony Woodman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. 1-16.

Sullivan, Dale L. "Attitudes Toward Imitation: Classical Culture and the Modern Temper." Rhetoric Review 1 (1989): 5-21.

Domina, Lynn. "The Body of My Work Is Not Just a Metaphor." Colors of a Different Horse.

Domina says that students of creative writing, even if their writing is structured through a creative genre like poetry or fiction, still struggle with the truths of their messages when they are exposed in a workshop: "Whether through malicious or inadvertent means, each student in these situations discovers herself in a situation which erodes the foundation of authentic writing -- the ncecessity of revealing one's own perception of truth. In each case, it is the student's person which has been dismissed and/or censored, and the content of any subsequent writing will be virtually irrelevant, since the student has been judged a prior incapable of portraying truth" (28).

I don't see this as too different from teaching persuasive writing in the composition class. As instructors, we are supposed to put aside our own predilections when considering the writing, deciding whether the student made a good case for their argument, not whether or not we agree. However, I have to admit that some of these papers can be more difficult than others, especially if it's something that I find cruel or shallow. I try to tell my students ahead of time what kind of papers are difficult for me to grade, such as arguing that one religion or race is better than another.

Perhaps it's trickier in creative witing because the "argument" or truth of the writing isn't (or shouldn't be) clearly stated, but implied through the story. We have to be careful during critical analysis of a creative work to look at the craft of it, rather than the message -- and perhaps that's another reason why creative and composition writing classes are separated.

Camoin, Francois. "The Workshop and Its Discontents." Colors of a Different Horse.

Camoin verbalizes something I've often said in jest of my literature-studying friends: " 'We'll write the stuff,' we say. 'Let the others (those across the hall, the critics) talk about it' " (3). I have to say that, even although I usually enjoy the reading in my literature courses, I often failed to get much out of the ensuing converstaions about it; I felt literature students were being overanalytical of a work that might have been meant to just be entertaining, not a commentary on the times or something equally lofty. I've had many people read tons into my own writing that I didn't intend to be there; I just think it's great they're getting something out of my writing and can identify with it in some way, but I'm certainly not as heady as all that some of my stories have been made out to be.

Camoin believes that the workshop is a "scandal" to the English department: "Imagine a class in which the teacher is, for the most part, silent. Imagine texts which deny their own authority. (For it is the Law of the Workshop, as pwoerful as the law of incest is in the culture at large, that the author must not speak. This fundamental Law shapes the workshop, makes it what it is.) Imagine a place in which fictions are not studied, but written. It denies everything, this place. Most of all it contradicts the metaphysics of literary study, which asserts that there is a place outside of texts where the scholar, the critic, can stand, and, like Aristotle's God, comment without being commented upon. In the workshop there is no outside; we speak and everything changes. We suggest a new narrative sequence, the collapsing of two characters into one, the elimination of a third, a new ending. Everything is different now; the text under study is no longer the text under study. We are always inside the text, working feverishly to make it different, to make it more complex, to change it. Nothing in the worksho is less sacred than the text" (4). In other words, writers realize that texts are never set in stone -- published authros change their works all the time, even after they are into second and third editions. John Updike once said that he rewrote his Rabbit books, just for himself, even after they'd been published a billionth time. This is no doubt unsettling for a literary scholar, who comments upon a text as a finished work, a commentary on something bigger, rather than something fluid.

"If the workshop is different from the literature class, it is nevertheless a place where texts are in question, and we must speak, without authority perhaps, but still speak. It's not a question of teaching without theory -- we can be goats and monkeys in the halls and at department parties, but in workshops the students want more from us than 'Be like me. Write" (which is not very useful advice, finally)" (5). So Camois is no longer allowing the creative writing teacher to be the silent sage (I don't see many of these, anymore, frankly, but I admit that I'm frustrated when I'm stuck with one of these creative writing teachers who are obviously not prepared with any words of advice.)

Ostrom, Hans. "Introduction: Of Radishes and Shadows, Theory and Pedagogy." Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory & Pedagogy

Ostrom, Hans. "Introduction: Of Radishes and Shadows, Theory and Pedagogy." Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom, eds. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teaching English, 1994.

Ostrom points out that teachers of creative writing "may well make up a disproportionate share of those who retreat from theory" (xii). His belief is that the "retreat from -- or at least resistance to -- theory may spring in part from teachers seeing themselves as writers first and teachers second: a distance second, as in 'it (teaching) pays the bills'" (xii). This goes again to the common belief that most creative writing teachers are published authors, not scholars -- perhaps one of the reasons why the MFA degree is scoffed at as not as prestigious as the Ph.D. in the academic world. (Although I think my MFA work is ten times harder than my Ph.D. studies, but anyway...)

"Most probably, those who retreat from theory and pedagogy are likely to fall back on the workshop in its simplest form: 'going over' poems and stories in a big circle, holding forth from time to time, pretending to have read the material carefully, breaking up squabbles like a hall monitor, marking time ...

"The writer is perceived to be an isolated author whose spirit breathes life into an organic art form, and when native talent or 'genius' meets solitude, good artistic things happen. Pedagogy and theory become incidental at best in the egotistically sublime pedagogy of the self. The author, as defined in Romantic terms, has no particular use for teachers or workshops:'he' was born with author-ity, with authorizing talent, with genius, with a potency ... he is gifted and blessed; he's got what it takes" (xiv-xv).

Well, wow. If I hadn't read that Ostrom has written creative works, I would wonder if he even likes creative writers. Surely there are some instructors of creative writing that adhere to his drawn stereotype, but I think he's relied on some heavy ethos here to try to sway the reader into thinking that creative writing teachers are ego-driven and find theory to be beneath them. I don't feel this is the case at all; if anything, we are taught to be craft driven and not presented with much theory in our classes, but that doesn't mean we aren't interested in it.

I think he might be falling into the ranks he describes himself: "Meanwhile, a growing rank of research- and theory-trained rhetoricians may be widening old divisions, perhaps unwittingly: Those who study 'writing' without adjectives (just plain writing processes, not 'creative' or 'imaginative' or 'art' writing) are eager to study creative writers -- in part to determine whether 'creative' is a useful adjective. With their very attitude toward the writing they wish to study, they thereby threaten to demystify an entire domain, or at least to demystify that crucial adjective, 'creative'" (xvi).

This again speaks to why there is a clear divide between creative and composition teaching: creative allows for the "mystical" quality of writing to occur, while those pushed by theory or research backgrouns very much want to be able to describe it away. There is no real way to describe what happens during the creative process, at least to my knowledge. I'm sure there's some sort of medical research that shows the right brain a clickin' or something, but we can't pinpoint what enables creativity to kick in. Methinks the straight-brained people are jealous of those creatives who are most comfortable living with their heads in the clouds.

"Directors of writing programs often -- and understandably, given university politics -- put most of their energy into training graduate students to teach first-yeare writing; directors may tolerate the presence of undergraduate creative writing courses, but training someone to teach the courses or reconceptualizing the role of creative writing is rarely a priority" (xvi).

And again, perhaps that's why workshopping has been around for so long; Iowa seems to have put its mark on workshopping as its own idea, and no one has bothered to figure out if there's a better way to teach creative writing, so we're still at it.

Ostrom points to the possibile fallacies of workshopping: "What do we know about group dynamics, and what should we know? Who gets silenced in our workshops and why? How often do we/should we revise our workshop methods? When are the conversations in our workshops most productive and why? What might be gained by dismantling the workshop method altogether and starting from scratch?" (xx). I still feel workshopping has its place in the creative writing classroom, but on feedback forms I've received from students in these classes, they sometimes seemed to value the workshopping less and creative exercises more, which to me speaks of planning, or a jumping-off point.

I like this section of the introduction very much: "In reexamining how we teach the subject, we should probably let ourselves be guided in part by the idea that connecting theory and pedagogy in itself suggests that students are worth the trouble -- that, to a certain extent, theorizing pedagogy honors the students and our profession. As we pursue the reeexamination, we might also consider the function of creative writing in universities of the twenty-first century. The subjects/concepts of 'basic writing' and 'composition' have unergone and continue to undergo close scrutiny and redefinition in our profession and at institutions. It may well be that (so-called) imaginative writing has a greater role to play in (so-called) basic and first-year writing; one old assumption is that students had to master skills before they produced literary art, but increasingly it seems as if the connections among skills, mastery, creativity, and so forth are more complicated and less linear than we have assumed. Such phenomena as computer-assisted writing and the ever-evolving ethnic and linguistic make-up of American society only complicate the connections further.

"We might also ponder the 'uselessness' of creative writing. That is, if courses in creative writing do not serve the university or the economy in the same wayfirst-year writing or business writing courses do, then why are they so popular, what are students drawing from them, how do administrators view them, what kinds of treatment do they get in curricular debates, and what will happen to them if the society demands with increasing insistence that universities concentrate on 'educating the workforce' and 'keeping America competitive'? In other words, what is the status of creative writing in the evolving political economy of American universities, and how is that status determined?" (xxi)

There is much to consider in this passage. First, Ostrom points out that the differences between creative and first-year writing might not be as crucial as theorists or practitioners of composition make them out to be. Secondly, creative writing might be considered artsy, and so in this culture, useless, in this society. Perhaps there is a need for theorists to draw a firm line between their work and creative writing in order to show academia that there is no correlation between them and this "useless" art of being creative -- even though students clamor to these classes, according to this passage.

Moxley, Joseph. "A Writing Program Certain to Succeed." Creative Writing in America.

Aw, my last blog on this book. I'm kinda sad about it, although I'm excited to begin reading Wendy Bishop's book tomorrow. I keep hoping a used edition of this book will show up somewhere on one of the numerous searches I've set up on internet bookstores, so I can own it myself for reference someday. I'm not excited about returning my present copy to the library.

Oh well. In Joe's last chapter, he summarizes what he thinks the book has proven about creative writing theory and pedagogy, and whether he feels that the current way creative writing is taught (this book was published in the 80s, but I don't think much has changed in the last 25 years) best serves students: "For me, it wasn't until I became familiar with the research and theories of rhetoricians and composition scholars that I learned about the creative process or about the composing process, and I wondered why there wasn't a stronger dialogue about the creative process or pedagogy among teachers and creative writing, composition, and literature students" (253).

I think, from what I've gathered myself, that there are clear connections between what works best in both composition and creative writing classrooms: a need for collaboration, crafting or processing exercises (critical thinking), and revision. There are definite needs to keep thems separate too: Composition still feels more directive to me, while creative writing allows for experimentation and opportunities to fail so that the next work will be better. I do feel that I have perhaps a better handle on why some pedagogical approaches work in the classroom, and why, than other students who study "just" composition or creative writing, and I feel students would have a better understanding and appreciation of writing, as a whole, if they took classes in more than one or the other of these currently separated styles of writing.

Finally, I just wanted to record some of the points you made in the final parts of your chapter:

1. "One of the best 'secrets of the craft' is perseverance. Successful writers must be disciplined and driven by a need to create. And although we obviously cannot imbue students with the creative spirit, we can certainly teach students how to generate, incubate, and revise material accordingto a realistic schedule by studying and learning from the working schedule of successful writers" (256). I have to admit, one of the best pieces of advice I've gotten from Joe is "one page a day." I've been so overwhelmed by the novels I've writing -- so much to do! -- that often I didn't start at all. When he gave the "one page a day" advice last semester, I applied it to my novel writing. It's coming along, at least in volume, much better now. I apply the same rule to longer critical works I have to do. Even if I'm ultimately writing three to four pages a day, it's in different works and it feels less overwhelming.

2. Writing is not solely a cognitive process, but a deeply affective one. We don't know enough about how personality affects composing strategies, but we do know that we are intellectualize beyond value when we ignore personality in our theories and practices" (256). I wonder if this is part of the reason why a line was drawn between composition and creative writing: Composition tends to want to explain away the process, while creative writing allows us to feel our way through it, finding our own paths.

3. There is no all-purpose writing process. Writers testify to an infinite number of strategies (256). That's why, again, I feel that students benefit from learning from more than one professor, if only to learn different strategies in which they can approach their work. What works for me one day doesn't the next, but I know enough strategies now to wrangle with that I can generally get the words out in some way.

4. We should require productivity (257).

5. We should teach a variety of prewriting techniques, such as drawing, meditating, transcribing, maintaining a journal (257). I've employed several techniques, including drawing, journaling, and freewriting, in my exploratory expository writing class, and it seems that students always seem to benefit from at least one of these, if not all.

6. Naturally our primary goal should be to help students write the kind of material they wish to compose. Yet, we should also attempt to stretch our students' writing muscles. The works and productive strategies of the writers in this book forcefully illlustrate the importance of writing in different genres. Much as we encourage students of expository writing to address different audiences and purposes, we should also challenge students of creative writing to write in different genres, such as children's literature, screenwriting, mystery and suspense fiction (257). Well said, and I concur. I'd also add they should write journalism, marketing, and traditiona essays, just to find out what craft issues are emphasized in each type of writing.

Miner, Valerie. "The Book in the World." and ... Henry, DeWitt. "Literary Magazines and the Writing Workshop." Creative Writing in America.

I wanted to merge my comments on these two chapters because I think one has much to do with the other.

Miner states: "In the late 1980s, I find myself back at Berkeley as a teacher. Much has changed. Much hasn't. Fiction, for instance, is still usually confine to two contexts -- the veneration of dead authors in survey courses and the ventilation of hopeful authors in creative writing seminars. So it is with some personal evangelism that I want my students to appreciate how fiction is published, to consider context influencing content, to acknowledge the social value ofliterary contribution, to understand how our individual writing ambitions are affected by the publishing profession and the book industry" (228).

To counter, or perhaps to add to, Miner's statement, Henry states: "Any writing workshop or curriculum should include an analysis of some lively, living literary magazines for the practical reason, ifnon other, that these are nearly the only outlet for poets, the pirmary one for literary fiction, and the most likely place for discover -- publication for hte previously unpublished. In addition to Ploughshares, which I have codirected and edited since 1971, and which grew out of my own workshop experiences as a student and later as a teacher with and without walls, there are about 30 literary journals of national significance. Beyond these 30 may be another 300 of regional, factional, or personal significance, offering publication to almost any writer of talent and persistence" (237).

I've published a handful of short stories and poems. Some of these were influenced by work, contemporary or otherwise, that I read. Some weren't. None of them were published in literary magazines that Henry would probably call "of national significance," although one was published by another literary magazine that comes out of the same college where he publishes: Emerson.

Do I feel I am a successful writer? Somewhat. I've published, and in more than one genre. I don't enjoy a national reputation and don't really want one. My voice and style are never going to attract the likes of the literary Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. And that's OK.

I've had friends that have published in high-end magazines, such as Georgia Review and StoryQuarterly. Another friend helps edit Ploughshares. Are they more successful than me? Nope. In fact, I think a couple of them are struggling more than I am to find a place in the working world. Publishing or working with them hadn't proved to be too helpful at all (although I hear one did get a couple of calls from literary agents, which ultimately led nowhere.)

Where am I going with this? Well, I think to study the tastes of a certain canon, or even that of a literary magazine's ideal of what constitues good writing, can be misleading. Students might want to emulate a certain writer or style just in the hopes of becoming published, without concentrating on developing their own voice and finding an audience for it, if they do the latter at all. Writing is a creative process, and while we hope it will be successful in that readers can understand and appreciate it, we can't cater to one magazine's tastes in order to find our own paths.

I do think Henry has a point that we can look to what's good and what we don't care for in a literary magazine's published work in order to refine our own craft, and what and what does not work for us. But our writers might become humorists not of the "literary" persuasion, or writers of a certain genre, or even commercial, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, as long as they are practicing their craft the best way they know how, and continue to strive to improve.

Ziegler, Alan. " 'Midwifing the Craft' -- Teaching Revision and Editing." Creative Writing in America.

This chapter touches upon two different perceptions of what is revision, both of which are important in the creative process: "The word editing often has a different definitition in academic circles than it does in the publishing world. For example, in The Confident Writer, Constance J. Gefuert writes that 'when you edit, you consider the surface features of writing -- grammar, usage, spelling and mechanics,' and states that editing 'should almost always come last' (1988, 17). But for publishing writers, this definition stands for a subdivision of editing called 'copyediting.'

'Editing,' in the larger sense, refers to a variety of means by which one or more colleagues help to make a piece of writing as good as it can be; the editing process can begin before a word is written, and end with the final set of galleys. Editors can help writers to conceive, shape, and revise their work" (209).

In other words, there's surface clean-up, when we pay attention to conventions, and then there's actual revision or editing, when we make sure we've said what we meant to, and that our message is getting across in the best way we know how to do it.

Ziegler says there's several ways to egg on revision in literary feedback. Some are more heavy-handed than others:

1. reactive: a general, unsubstantiated response, such as "This paragraph is great" (210). I like to use the all-encompassing "eh?" when I just don't get it. While some students don't like this because they want a professor to be more hands-on, to tell them what to do, to "fix" their writing, I think it's better that they think through the writing by themselves and decide what needs to be done to make it more clear.

2. Descriptive: "Describes what the writer is doing, positively or negatively -- 'I can't figure out where the flashbacks are taking place, and the dialogue is too convoluted." It's up to the writer to figure out what to do about it" (210). This might be more ideal for a beginning writer, who might not be able to identify what craft issue is at stake from a reactive comment.

3. Prescriptive: Offers concrete suggestions for change, like getting rid of a character (211). I don't personally have much use for this, becaue I feel it puts me too much into a student's writing, although I'll do it occasionally if I feel a writer is really struggling or is close to making a connection but is not quite there yet. I've had many prescriptive ideas offered to me in my own work, and often I'll find them too heavy-handed to take seriously, as the well-intentioned offer of advice more often goes to that person's style of writing or what (s)he likes to read, rather than what I'm trying to do with the piece. But sometimes it can be brilliant.

4. Collaborative feedback: editors or teachers actually contribute words to a text, rewriting sentences or offering substantive additions (211). Again, I feel that's a bit much for any type of creative work, although I'm more comfortable with it if it happens in a workshop setting than from me in a one-on-one consultation. If it happens when one of many workshop members offers collaborative advice, it just feels more like a suggestion than a "Here, you must do this or your work won't be successful" kind of feedback.

I think the most important information Ziegler offers in this chapter is that, no matter how you offer advice on revision, you need to remember to remain upbeat about it, and tell the student what is working well in their writing as well as suggestions for revision. We are all unsure about our writing, and it is easy enough to be discouraged -- and even to stop -- to write based on hard criticism. My young niece wrote a good short story in elementary school -- very good for her age group -- and her English teacher, who obviously doesn't have a creative writing background -- took it apart on conventions rather than what the message was. I'm going to find that guy and strangle him, because now my niece doesn't think she can write.

Schwartz, Mimi. Wearing the Shoe on the Other Foot. Creative Writing in America.

I loved this chapter, as it focuses on what I hope to make my dissertation about: the differences between composition and creaive w riting. Schwartz speaks of her experiences when she returned to the classroom as a "student writer -- and a novice at that. For although I'd been teaching and writing nonfiction for years, both academic articles and feature stories, I had never written much fiction. And although I dabbled in poetry, even had a few poems published once, I never before took a course in poetry writing. Frankly, I didn't have the guts in college -- never thought of myself as creative enough to risk such public exposure" (195). Here we see how students might be intimidated simply by the term "creative" writing -- because we might not know what creative depths or tendencies we have. I think most students are more confident of composition than they are being creative -- as though composition can be easily taught and contained, but being creative cannot.

Schwartz took two undergraduate creative writing courses at Princeton, with novelist Russell Banks and poet Carolyn Kizer: "The experience also provided insight into some unexpected differences between 'creative' and expository writing on the college campus ... First was the astonishing power of response either to encourage or undermine creative risk-taking ... when the material is experimental and new emotionally, intellectually, or schematically, then even seasoned writers can lose their ability to assess the value of their work. The greater the risk-taking, the greater the uncertainty -- and the more vulnerable the ego to outside response" (196).

Again, the emphasis here is that the creative is connected to risk, and it is seen by Schwartz that composition is not. While I don't always agree with this, I have to admit that composition can sometimes feel like there is a "form" to hold to. Also, creative writing can feel like it comes more from the heart, although in composition classes I often have students write about their relationships, their social structures, the issues they have in groups. This is because of the composition pedagogy I was taught, and I'm probably married to it just because of its creative aspects. And I don't like teaching "academic" writing as much if only because of the emphasis on MLA or APA format, because it's "formatting", a strict guide on how to do things. In fact, I wonder if the emphasis on citation put in traditional composition classes is one of the reasons why composition is so differentiated from creative writing classes.

Composition classes, if not structured correctly, can put too much emphasis on the final product, rather than the creation of an idea and the planning that goes behind it. Schwartz liked her creative writing experience because the writing turned into class was considered for "that ideal, yet-to-be-named text which, to use Kizer's own metaphor, is still being born.' " (197). Again, there might not be a clear thesis to a creative work when it is first drafted; the writer might still be realizing it. However, compositionists are asked to have a clear focus or thesis before drafting a final work.

The downside to critiquing creative writing is that a teacher might be drawn to what appeals to him, and could misjudge a work simply because it is not to his reading tastes. Schwartz admits that this happened to her when she critiqued a fellow, although younger, student's work, which she said Banks' reacted well to: "It shows how careful you need to be when reading outside of one's tastes. If this were my student, I would have given him bad feedback because of my preference for more emotionally serious work" (198). And I feel this is true for many creative writing professors; some disdain a certain genre, or commercial writing, and this can greatlly affect a promising student's ego and confidence.

Also, if students find out what kind of writing you prefer, they might try to write that way just for a good grade, rather than concentrating on the creative process. For instance, last semester many of my students found out i have a penchant for comedy; soon they were all trying to be humorous, even after I told them I liked serious work as well. A colleague of mine likes sex in writing, and I was told that he required all of his students to write stories with sex in them; I can imagine how uncomfortable that might be for someone who doesn't like that type of writing at all.

Composition, no matter how we emphasize as educators that the process can be creative, can still feel like we need to follow some form: "The choice of short, simple sentences to avoid the danger of run-ons, and the lifeless, five-paragraph themes that give up voice to insert a thesis statement are by-products of what happens when the desire to follow rules overpowers natural expression" (199). I know that I try hard to get my students to NOT insert a thesis statement into their compositions right away, but they've been taught this so much that's it's hard to wean them off the five-paragraph form. And I worry, when I teach them not to do this, if it will make their projects in other classes suffer a final grade because other professors are used to, and even like, this form. It's easy to grade and understand, but lacks creativity.

The study of both composition and creative writing has its benefits: "One final surprise was the impact of fiction and poetry writing on my writing in general. Writing in one role definitely influeneced my expression in other roles. Several poems became more conversational, with longer line lengths, as a result of the fiction writing. A few stories, on the other hand, became more lyrical, with richer imagery, as a result of writing poetry. Some of these innovations worked, some not; but either way, using new forms, experimenting with new genres, expanded my repetoire and confidence for expression; I took more risks, tried out more new options -- both consciously and intuitively -- than I had in years" (203).

So I think students need exposure to many types of genres if they want to become a successful writer. Sometimes it has its drawbacks for me -- I once had an article rejected from a collection because it was too "creative" although the research had clearly been done -- and I feel this was because the academic judging it had no exposure to how the different types of writing styles can meld to turn out a greater piece of writing. Even in this book, I have to say it's been tons more useful for me simply because its tone has been more creative than academic; I don't have to sort through a bunch of jargon to get to the gist of each essay.

St. John, David. Teaching Poetry Writing Workshopos for Undergraduates. Creative Writing in America.

"It is crucial that the students sense their teacher's excitement and involvement not only with their writing but also with his or her own writing as well. In addition, it seems to me important that the students understand that their teacher's knowledge and love of poetry and literature includes a wide range of literary periods, not simply that of contemporary poetry" (189). I feel St. John's statement can include all writing classes -- I feel that often I am a successful writing teacher simply because I love to write so much. I've had success as a multi-genre teacher -- in journalism, marketing, professional and technical writing, non-fiction, fiction, and even a bit in screenplays and poetry -- simply because I love to write it all, or at least read it, to some extent.

Last semester I began teaching a multi-genre class in "traditional" genres of creative writing: poetry, fiction, and screenlays. I was a bit unnerved because my experience goes less to poetry and screenplays as it does fiction, although I like all the genres. I even took a graduate-level poetry class at the same time I was teaching the undergraduate intro to creative writing one so that I felt better-versed in teaching the poetry genre. And while I am sufficient in the genre to teach an intro course, I don't feel I am the best poetry teacher because I don't write poetry as much as I do other genres, and am not exposed to as much poetry in different time periods.

St. John recommends exposing undergraduate students to Yeats, "whose intimate, conversational tone and persuasive formal integrity make him am odel one can fall back upon for years. A solid foundation in Yeats enables students to make increasingly successful forays into their own personal subject matter without sacrificing a sense of poetry's necessary music and composure" (190). He also points to Eliot because he "provides students with a sense of scope and ambition that young writers seem to need and toward which they gravitate ... the obvious antidote to the rarity and grandeur inspired by an overconsumption of Eliot is a straight draught of William Carlos Williams, whose particularity is, for many students, positively illuminating. The last of the majuor twentieth century poets I initially suggest is Wallace Stevens, whose elegant melodies and iambic influences hit close to home with many, though certainly not all, young writers" (190). I can't criticize St. John's choices because I imagine he knows far more about these poets than I do, but I'm thankful for the advice here, as now I can look up some of this poetry to offer to my own students.

Kranes, David. Playing Within Plays. Creative Writing in America.

Krause points out that students might have a natural inclination towards being playwrights because "their lives are theatre. They are trying out various roles. They wear any number of masks. They dress in a range of costumes. They have remarkably unspoiled "ears" for the recording and playing back of real dialogue. Their world is intensely active and physical. They are closer, in general, to the 'music' of their lives -- the cadences and rhythms which are so important to the writing of plays" (181).

This rings true to me for two reasons. First, I agree that students might be less spoiled and attuned to political correctness; as academics, we're so sensitive to making sure that we don't mock an accent that we might have trouble writing one, as we feel we are being stereotypical. Yet sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason: A lot of people in a certain group talk or act in a certain way. Students are less attuned to this, though, and so might write more believable characters simply because they are not aware that it might not be politically correct to do so.

I also agree with the above statement simply because Kranes is attuned to what makes a play work well: its emphasis on the visual, for sound, and for the physical action.

He mentions other points that previous posts have commented on, such as writing such plays can be "cathartic" (181) because it helps students realize what is going on in heir own lives -- or, that creative writing is often based on some dissonance or scenario that the writer himself or herself is facing. "Involving young writers in playwriting can be a way of tapping the behavior they are inescapably in and of helping them focus their 'scripts,' their 'roles,' their 'plots.' The experience can do what ht best of theatre has always done: By framing and shaping a particular action (or 'acting out') the action can be clarified, seen, understood" (181-182). In other words, by putting the students' own scenarios on paper through the guise of creative writing, they might better understand their own personal situations.

Holinger, William. Teaching Dialogue. Creative Writing in America.

I pretty much agree with everything Holinger says in this brief chapter, so I'm just going to highlight the main points I think he makes. Everything here is a direct quotation:

...I realized that reading good dialogue was one of the great pleasures I got out of stories and novels. When I turn the page of a work of fiction and come upon a page of dialogue, I'm excited. I especially look forward to reading that page ... (Direct dialogue is) condensed narrative. Direct because it's 'real': There's no narrator between the action and the reader. Because written dialogue on the page represents an exact report ofwhat happened, we take dialogue as fact, so dialogue carries an authority that straight narrative lacks, no matter how convincing the narrator might be ... dialogue in fiction is a form of written language that is meant to represent spoken language (175).

One way to help students conceptualize what dialogue is and to learn how to write it is to send them out to listen to and record real conversation ... Their analysis of a wr itten version of soken conversation will be illuminating ...

A writer I know said that she often just puts paper in the tyewriter and writes down what she hears various voices in her head say ...

Read through your manuscript a number of times, reading the dialogue of only one character at a time. Revise for consistency and distinctiveness of each character's voice. In the process, give each character an idiosyncratic phrase or two in order to achieve more readily identifiable characters, and more characterization too (Remember Jay Gatsby, old sport?) (178-179).

Abel, Robert H. One Writer's Apprenticeship. Creative Writing in America.

Here Abel wrestles with whether creative writing even belongs in academe: "Formal academic writing may not be necessary for the writer who can and does explore the world and the world of ideas out of a powerful personal curiosity. And it may even be true that if a writer is too immersed in the theories and methods of a particular academic discipline, the door to artistic discipline may be shut" (169). This is a hypothesis with which I struggle on occasion: sometimes I feel my Ph.D. work, or even the atmosphere created by pursuing a doctoral degree in something as "formal" as rhetoric/composition, can affect my creative writing, both my pursuit and drive for it.

Abel points out that pursuing other academic fields does not necessarily mean that a student will not become a creative writer: "Study in pre-medicine did not hamper the creativity of John Irving or Walker Percy, starting out as an engineering student did not cap the creative well of Norman Mailer, and serious study in anthropology did not crush Peter Matthiessen or Saul Bellow" (169). In fact, I think studying or gaining life experience outside of creative writing can lend itself to good writing; too many of us write characters who are writers or academics because they are what we know. If we got out more and experienced life outside of academe, we could probablly write more empathetic, relatable characters for our readers.

"A writer has to leaern and to keep learning. Whether or not a college is the best place to begin this lifelong activity is the question" (169). And I believe this is true. You can learn craft and technique in school, but if you have no life experience of which to write, you won't be a good writer. LIkewise, if you have a lot of experience but don't know how to correctly express it, you won't be a good writer either.

Ude, Wayne. Teaching Point of View. Creative Writing in America.

This chapter simply shows a lesson that Ude gives his students to teach them point of view. The lesson is fine and I'll document here that I might want to go back to this chapter when I teach POV in the future; however, I don't have much to comment on as far as theory and pedagogy goes. Ude does define the different points of view well, though:

First person central: The narrator uses "I" to refer to him- or herself as a character and is also the central character in the work, i.e. Catcher in the Rye.

First person peripheral: The narrator stlll uses "I" and is a character, but not the central character, i.e. Sonny's Blues.

Third person limited: The narrator is not a character in the story and tells the story using "he" or "she" rather than "I," but limiits him- or herself only to whgat one character in the story could know. i.e., Eudora Welty's A Worn Path.

Third person shifting: the narrator is not a character, uses "he" and "she," and presents only what is known to characters in the story, but shifts from character to character, i.e. Dinesen's Sorrow-Acre: (This is what I'm trying to do now in the novel I'm working on.)

Editorial Omniscient: The narrator is not a character, is not limited to what characters might know, and is also free to comment on action, move around in space and time, move from character to character, i.e. William Faulkner's Barn Burning.

Neutral Omniscient: Maintains all the freedoms of editorial omniscience except the freedom to comment, i.e. Shirley Jackson's The Lottery.

Objective or Effaced Narrator: attempts to be scenic and dramatic so that there seems to be no narrator present to interpose him- or herself between the reader and the material, and who rarely or never goes into character's minds, and then only shallowly, i.e. Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants."

Stream-of-Consciousness: Seems to be no narrator; the reader seems to be listening in on the character's mind (138).

Schwartz, Sheila. The Dynamics of Character. Creative Writing in America.

Here Schwartz focuses on one craft aspect of creative writing: creating character. She says, "Where do characters come from in fiction? Do they come from exercises such as 'The Most Unforgettable Person I've Ever Known,' or 'The Person I Most Admire'? I believe that they do not, that there is no transference from abstract exercises such as these to the development of rounded multidimensional characters in a work of fiction. That is not the way I write, and that is not he way I teach my students to write" (123). I believe I know where she is going with this: that fictional characters are indeed fictional, and not just thinly veiled disguises of people we already know. Yet she does admit later in the chapter that her characters are probably somewhat based on people she's met, people with whom she's clashed or created a problem for her, to some extent. She focuses on the experience of those clashes instead of the people involved:

"Dorothea Brande, in her classic work on writing, Becoming a Writer, states:

'It is commonplace that every writer must turn to himself to find most of his material ... There is just one contribution which every one of us can make; we can give into the common pool of experience some comprehension of the world as it looks to each of us. There is one sense in which everyone is unique. No one else was born of your p arents, at jut that time of just that country's history; no one underwent just your experiences...'(footnote 1).

"In my opinion, all fictional writing stems from emotion; from the need and desire to communicate, fro mthe need and desire to exorcise old wounds, to redress old grievances, to bring clarity to unresolved events of the past. Once the writer has found a situation based on one of these needs, the development of hte character can begin. This philosophy is the core of the method that I employ, both as an author of fiction and a teacher of writing (123-124).

"(Schwarz's book) Growing Up Guilty is filled with these mementos. It is based on two major wounds that I have long since consigned to memory. Both of these wounds are what Joyce Carol Oates call 'that obscure but vulnerable, and, once lost, precious life that [the writer]lived before becoming a writer' (footnote 2) "(124).

I don't think Schwartz is actually describing characterization here; she's describing plot and theme. This is the major fault I find with this chapter; although I think she does a good job of describing how to come up with a theme for your work, but doesn't show how it necessarily pertains to creating characters.

"And now back to the summer of Growing Up Guilty. When I sat down each day to write, 26 years later (after her childhood camping experiences), I had not clear characters in mind. But as I worked, a character emerged, a wonderful woman named Millie: radical, poor, generous, intelligent, optimistic, and a little naive" (125).

These are characteristic traits, not stemming from dissonance, as might theme, and I'll bet Schwartz loosely based her character on herself or someone she knew. She claims to have no characters in mind as she wrote her work, but how did she come up with these traits?

I know that many of my characters share some traits with me to begin with, and them begin to have their own "personalities" as I realize more who they are. But my characters can often start as based on someone I know or knew: me, my husband, my friends, former co-workers, old boyfriends, etc. I once interviewed Jennifer Weiner, best-selling writer of women's lit books such as "Good in Bed," and she said the boyfriend in her first book was also at first loosely based on an ex, but then he realized himself more as the book progressed and she realized what he needed to do.

Schwartz later admits the same works for her: "...I was unhappy at camp and Helen was cruel to me and this is hte way the world looked to me at that time. This perception is expressed through Susan, the stubborn, feisty, honest, irreverent heroine of the book.

"Is Susan me? Well, yes and no." Exactly. So I don't think doing exercises such as "Who is the Most Interesting Person You Know?" is completely a waste of time, if only it gets students thinking about the blacks and whites of a person and realizes not to create steretypes or caricatures when characters are realized on the page. A character will be both good and bad, an empathic being with whom the reader can relate because they know people like them. And that's based on real people, to some extent.

Although this chapter tends to often wander away from characterization, I do like what Schwartz says about workshopping: "With teaching, as with my own writing, I have students begin with something they want to say, some thing that is uniquely theirs. For this purpose, free writing and journal writing are indispensable. At each class session, before I teach whatever lesson I have planned for the evening, we read one or more journal entries to each other. The amount read depends on the time and the number of students in the class. If class registration exceeds eight or ten students, I divide the class into small groups for the initial reading. While they work in small groups, I confer with individuals. Then, when the groups have finished, I ask for a few volunteers to read their work to the entire class. Volunteers must be willing to accept comments from class members outside of their own small group and from me as well. As they comment and listen, s tudents begin to gain insight into their own work" (131).

Exactly. I love the idea of workshopping, both in composition and creative writing classes, and think it works best in small communities of writers, where the students do not feel overwhelmed and also have more opportunity to share and have feedback on their own work. They also learn not to look to just me for the "right" answers about their writing but also to write for a community, creating writing that is understood and appreciated by a community rather than just an audience of one (me).

Bradley, Marion Zimmer. Getting Started: Planning and Plotting the Novel. Creative Writing in America.

Zimmer Bradley starts with the same advice most of the authors of these chapters have given: If you want to be a creative writer, you simply have to do it. She advises always moving forward: "I never work with old manuscripts: I have (students) start a new one, using the techniques they're learning. The first exercise is to write a first sentence that will lead to a story which will hook the editor and be rejection-proof. The old manuscript? If it were any good it would have sold. Put it away, and if it's a good story, use it later when you've learned what is wrong with it" (115). In other words, most of the learning of writing is in continuing to try with new material. Revision is important, but you can't keep tooling with a work that wasn't that strong to begin with -- you have to move forward, with your new knowledge of craft techniques, and make the next work better.

Unlike other writers, Zimmer Bradley is a huge proponent of planning: "getting the work, essentiall, all done at once, so I only had to sit down and write it. I did the same thing with The Mists of Avalon; people say they were astonished that it took me a mere eight months to write after I had finished the research, but basically, the hard part was alredy done -- the actual work of putting it on paper should be the fun part" (115-116). This is so much what I do in my composition classes -- this is how I've been TRAINED to teach composition -- but I'm surprised to see it stated here. Again, it shows that skills learned in either type of writing can be transferred if it works for the writer.

"...you can, of course, skip it. You can just start writing, with no idea where you are going, or wh, and some day you'll have a novel. You can do it that way -- if you have a well-trained subconscious which does all that work for you. But it's easier to learn how to do it consciously.

"This is the way all too many writers do their work. Why not? You can skip all this part -- and it will eventually be done by the subconscious. This works, usually, if you don't mind writer's block, waiting a year or two while your subconscious grapples with something else, or having your deepest darkest secrets become obvious in your novels. But why not do it the easy way? Plan it all out ahead" (116).

I see both the good and the bad in this. I admit that there have been stories and even a novel that I've never finished because I just didn't know how to, and perhaps a plan would have helped that. But I worry that the work would not have progressed naturally and sounded stilted. Even in the novel I'm writing now, I don't know what its actual conclusion will be. Chapters seem to reveal themselves to me as I go, though, and I do find doing some craft exercises or sketches of scenes on paper does seem to help when I type the chapters out, and gives me some direction. So planning is helping me, sort of!

Murray, Donald M. Unlearning to Write. Creative Writing in America.

Ha! Here's another author whose book I've used in a class. Namely, Writing to Deadline, which I used with an advanced journalism student.

Anyway, "Unlearning to Write" is quite important to me, because it names many of the differences between composition and teaching writing. Murray states that students who sign up for a fiction class "are usually experienced writers -- too experienced. They have done well at introductory writing courses and literature courses. Many are skillful writers of nonfiction ... The problem is not motivation; the problem is that the students have learned to write. They bring with them knowledge which may be true for some of the writing they have done but which makes the writing of fiction difficult. The better educated the student, the harder it is to return to the natural, magical art of narrative -- the mtoehr of all forms of significant discourse" (103).

Well! Being a former journalist and marketing writer, and seeing firsthand how my fiction writing was both hindered and helped by learning other genres of writing first, I heartily agree. It was so difficult, for example, to learn to imply my message instead of stating it clearly in fiction, to create characters and plot to demonstrate my theme rather than making sure my reader knew it by "concluding" it at the end. In fact, I have a very talented writer that I'm doing an undergraduate independent study with myself who struggles with this.

What Murray states, that it's interesting for an old writer to deconstruct their work and see how it works in a new genre, but for students who are holding onto "truths" about writing composition or in another genre, creative writing can be frustrating and confusing. One concern is that "composition" writers "believe in the precdence of theme. They have the misconception that idea always precedes story" (104). For me, that means, that the focus of their work is emphasized over the narration of it.

Another anomaly is that fiction can have no real starting point, while composition, although it involves planning and focus and organization, usually has some clear direction before the actual work is begun. "Students have been taught to write thesis statements, sentences that contain the conclusion that will be reached afte the writing is done. (Creative) writers write to explore, to discover, to know. The (creative) writer has to keep the idea open so there is room for the story to happen" (105).

The emphasis of (creative) in this paragraph is added by me; yet, even as I consider this paragraph again, I have to say that even in my academic articles, sometimes I don't even know where I'm going. For instance, I wrote a chapter last year on Oprah's book club, and although I had emphases and research to get it going, I was surprised by how I chose to end it. So I don't know how true this point rings ... although perhaps I just wasn't prepared to write the article as I should have been, or was more comfortable, with my creative writing background, to just write the darn thing and see where it went.

Another point Murray makes is that creative writers might strive for surprise in their work, while compositionists know where they're headed and state it clearly ahead of time. He cites several successful writers who state that they write in order to find things out, and then states that "students who seek literary fame have often been taught literature in such a way that they do not understand that the writer was conducting an experiment in meaning; the writer usually finds the theme after reading with surprise what has been written" (106). Again I have to agree, Every time I start a work of fiction I might have some scenes in mind, but I have no idea where it's going; the journey is to discover where it's going. Sometimes I read my work and am surprised by it; I've forgotten the details that came to me when I was just "letting go." However, in my journalism I had a pretty good idea as to what shape the work would take before I started. Perhaps it was just because the works were shorter, for the most part, though.

Winthrop, Elizabeth. Writing for All Ages. Creative Writing in America.

Winthrop points to several correlations between creative writing and composition that I think is important to emphasize here:

"William Matthews said once, 'Writers are not born nor made, but written.' I believe that absolutely. The best way to learn to write well is to do it all the time.

"I must have learned this lesson firsthand because I was born into a writing family. Both my uncle and my father worked as journalists in Washington, D.C. Every afternoon when I got home from school, the first sound I heard was the distant banging of my father's old Underwood keys. He interviewed people, he read books and magazines and newspapers, he scribbled notes in his small notebook, but most of all, he wrote. Every day. From my father, I learned lessons about the simplicity of language and the importance of clear writing, but most of all, I learned about perseverance and endurance, about sticking with it" (97).

This is an important point to both creative writing and composition, I've found. In my composition classes, I prepare a planning lesson for every class, each of which should help shape and develop a final product. In my creative writing classes I have the students keep journals, sometimes in which we work in class and sometimes in which they work independently, recording thoughts and images that might work in later writings. Sometimes I use journals in my composition classes. I just try to keep them writing, and they seem to "naturally" improve on their own.

Winthrop writes for several age groups, and speaks of some important considerations for audience, which can cross also to composition: "People also ask me why I write for so many different audiences, and in a way, the answer is the same. Each kind of book I write exercises a different one of those muscles. The language I use, the plot I create, the characters I give birth to all have to be different depending on the audience I am writing for. Just like an athlete who puts in a better performance because she has stretched out her shoulders as well as her hamstrings, I am a better writer, I believe, if I have stretched out all my writing muscles, so I write for all ages" (98). What is important here is that she considers what her audience needs -- what I call "reader positioning" in my composition classes, and offers information to them that is pertinent and interesting to them. She says in creative writing, that can change her pacing, her character development, how much emphasis she puts on the plotting, and her uses of language.

Also, she speaks of visual rhetoric, which she feels has a great impact on her younger audiences: "...I've learned to give half the book away to the artist. After all, the artist is the master of the visuals and I gratefully hand that job over so I can concentrate on the language." She speaks here of realizing that some audiences need visuals and empathize with them at least as much as the words that accompany them.

Minot, Stephen. How a Writer Reads. Creative Writing in America.

I was excited to read this chapter simply because I use Minot's book "Three Genres" in an introductory creative writing class I teach at Eckerd. Here Minot emphasizes John Macdonald's earlier point, that the best writers, "the only students who belong in advanced underraduate or greaduate creative writing courses are those who have been compuslive and omnivorous readers all their lives" (Macdonald 89).

Minot says "the motive for writing fiction or poetry is part artistic and part therapeutic. When a student's need for thereapy outweights a fascination withthe art form, there is no need to read what others have written. The act of writing -- often without revision -- becomes an end in itself. Therapeutic writing has its function, but teachers of writing are neither trained to deal with it nor paid for the hours of consultation required" (89). This strikes a chord with me, for I wonder if this is why creative writing classes so quickly become intimate. We are sharing a part of ourselves through our writing, and as Carlson earlier stated, it is difficult to separate the reader from his work when we critique.

"Omnivorous readering is certainly the best possible preparation for a student writer. It counters the notion that writing fiction or poetry is a purely personal or private act like daydreaming. More positively, it places a student in the context of a literary heritage" (89). In my classroom, I also emphasize the difference between writing for self-expression and writing for others; the dfference, I say, is what you write for yourself belongs in your journal or tucked in a box under your bed once you've finished it. Writing for others requires empathy, a need to create images and situations and characters that the readers can empathize with on some level, or at leasat understand in order for the work to succeed.

MacDonald, John D. Guidelines and Exercises for Teaching Creative Writing. Creative Writing in America.

MacDonald, who has written more than 70 novels and 500 short stories (according to his biography in the back of this book), says his teaching experiences with writing are limited (83), mostly at summer conferences and, interestingly enough, a semster at New College here in Florida. This might speak once again to the tendency of colleges hiring actual practitioners of creative writing -- journalists and authors, rather than scholars of writing -- into the creative writing programs, which might be another reason why composition and creative writing are considered different entities in academia.

However, MacDonald's point is well taken: In order to be a creative writer, you must be both prolific and prepared to work. (Perhaps this is why authors make better creative writing teachers -- we know the art of it, as well as what it takes to do the actual work and have a finished product.)

MacDonald states basic statements that are thought of as common truisms of all writers: That you must read a lot in order to be a good writer, in order to find out what's been written before, what's cliched, what history we have in political, social, philosophical, economic and scientific thought, mental images of different settings, and basic understandings of artful sentence structures (83-84). This will help with a writer's need to create reader empathy -- more than relating a writer's thoughts and intentions, (s)he must also relate it in a way that is understandable and relatable to the reader, so the message is both conveyed and meaningful.

Some exercises MacDonald does that I thought interesting include:

1. Point of view: Create 10 different characters who have witnessed a car accident at a familiar intersection. Now, tell the story of the accident from a first-person account of each character's point of view, including what was happening in the character's life before and after the accident happened. This can help readers understand that writing is more than just "beautiful self-expression," and begins to detach them from ego-image writing and instead focuses them on a world of character, or different voices, or different rhythms of speech (85).

2. Dialogue: Make two strangers have a conversation with each other. They must reveal who they are, what they think, what they believe, how they live, through conversation. The writer can make the students get into a "hot dispute about a matter that the student does not feel strongly about." This helps students understand that a "story is something happening to somebody" (85).

3. Demand production: MacDonald recommended five thousand words of fiction per week as a "meager minimum." He believes the teacher does not have to read it all, but can select students at random to read specified portions of their work for class, for open criticism by all. The students will learn more about production and writing than by anything the instructor critiques on the page, MacDonald believes (85-86).

Carlson, Ron. Assignment. Creative Writing in America.

In this short chapter I gleaned just a few nuggets of information, mainly that some students come into creative writing classes expecting them to be not rigorous. Here Carlson advises starting students off by immediately assignment a 1,000-word story for the next week, showing them that finishing the work is the most important thing about writing (80). And I liked his comments about being a creative writing instructor: "There are some special moments teaching writing, some moments that are warmer than others. making an assignment is a warm moment and asking s tudents to pass copies of their stories around is a warm moment, a moment of risk. Writing suggestions on student stories is good for me, but I think iti s cooler than any of the links in the chain. The hottest moments come, of course, between the writer and the paper, when the writer lets go and launches into a story and bears down through the story, even the soft p arts, adn then types the last word. A lot happens right there that is beyond the teacher's admonition, beyond regulation and suggestion, beyond final, analtycial definition. The heat of creation -- it is not always a comfortable place, but it is that place which we are talking about when we talk about writing, and I know hat my role as teacher is to send students there, not simply to have the fun of talking about having written.

"Writing is a creative not a reactive activity; and the purpose of class discussion should be to repair old or to gather new equipment for the next story. We are talking about the next story at all times, and when the discussion becomes most mired in the story before us, it becomes many times least useful. Process, not product -- the next story. The next story" (80-81).

Here Carlson puts his finger on the creative writing professor's need to be able to inspire student creativity, not to just explain the process and craft of it. He again points to writing as an art, something that can be felt as hot or cold. He also speaks of his students' tendencies to want to personalize the work and attach it to the person who wrote it (81), but reminds the reader that "the stories speak for themselves" (82). Yet this reminds us that students can take their creative writing more personally than other types of composition, as it seems to be connected to something more from the heart rather than a brain activity.

Jauss, David. "Articles of Faith." Creative Writing in America.

This article starts out with a statement that might quite differentiate the teachings of creative and composition: "Teaching fiction writing is in at least one way like writing fiction, for both arts (and I do claim for teaching the honorific "art") require a willing suspension -- not of disbelief but of beliefs" (63). This shows one of the disparities between composition and creative writing. I've often found that composition professors believe that the writing process can be explained and analyzed in several ways. Creative writers, however, are willing to believe that there is no one process, but rather the writing can be an art, something that you believe in as much as you will to happen. If we push the process in just one way, "the danger is not that we'll impose our aesthetics on our students -- that's inevitable and even, to an extent, desirable -- but that we won't provide them room to develop their own ... The best students will sift through the advice I offer and take only what serves their aims; the worst will attempt to write what they falsely think I want" (63).

I do feel that I am more directive in my composition classes, especially the first-year composition and technical/professional writing classes, as there can be forms and techniques that are helpful to those genres. However, I find that in my creative and expository writing classes a light touch is best, as I don't want students to write for a specific academic or professional aim, but for their own enlightenment. It seems more OK for them to fail at creative writing, to be more experimental, as they are writing more to find voice and style as expression.

Also touched upon here is the creative writing teacher's dependence on books, not textbooks, but novels and short stories, to teach the process of creation. "To learn to write well, you must read widely and deeply. Occasionally, a student will say, 'I don't read because I don't want to be influenced.' My answer? 'You should try to be influenced by as many great writers as possible.' "

I find that, in composition classes, my students are thrilled to be given a few examples of the lessons we are trying to accomplsh, be they expressive, persuasive, or technical/professional documents. Apparently this is not always the case in their composition classes, as we depend more on "lessons" than showing a finished product. However, it does seem that creative writing classes constantly depend on examples of other writing to show craft. At Goddard, I'm required to read a novel a week and to analyze it for a craft element; after a year of this, I have to admit that the books I read always inspire me in some way, if not the style than a detail, at least. As Jauss states, "Reading won't help you much unless you learn how to read like a writer. You must look at a book the way a carpenter looks at a house someone else built, examining the details in order to see how it was made. A scholar reads the product; a writer, the process" (64). This is where the studies of literature and creative writing vary; too often I've been in a literature class where someone is trying to make too much of the symbolism of a tree, and I'm thinking, "Uh, that was just setting."

Another statement made here goes back to the Freud I read earlier: "To adapt a comment that Philip Dacey, who was speaking about poetry, once made, 'Fiction writing is too important to be taken seriously.' Let me clarify this paradox with another: as Friedrich Nietzsche said, 'Man's maturity' consists in recapturing 'the seriousness he had as a child at play' (footnote 1). This, I think, is especially true of a writer, for writing is not work but serious play" (64). Again, creative writers are allowed to look at their writing as more than a necessary evil, as students can in composition classes; we love the writing and want to do it, even fail at it, because we know we do not *have* to write; we just must. I liked this fact: "Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who tells of using up five hundred pieces of paper in the process of writing a fifteen-page story, is a good examle of a writer engaged in serious play" (footnote 2, 65).

Also, creative writers are given more leeway to doubt themselves, while in composition we seem to prioritize strategies to help the communication process (although revision is still emphasized). "The best attitude toward writing is what Keats described as 'negative capability' -- the ability to persis despite uncertainty and doubt' (footnote 3). You must make friends with doubt. It is the imagination's greatest ally, for it forces you to consider possibilities -- different word choices, rhythms, character traits, events, and so forth -- you would ne ver consider if you moved too abruptly to closure and certainly. Although we often associate genius with confidence and certainty, great writers are almost always those whose doubts about themselves and their art are extreme" (65).

Also, working with an outline is often discouraged in creative writing, while they seem essential to organization and focusing in composition. "Outlines are helpful only insofar as you consider them something as tentative as any o ther part of the creative process ... If you don't revise, or even abandon, your outline at some point in the composition, you're not really writing, and all you can hope for is the literary equivalent ofa connect-the-dots picture" (65).

Finally, Jauss names another differentiation between composition and creative writing: In composition, the focus, thesis, points, are stated clearly and succinctly, so that the reader can understand them. However, in creative writing "what you leave out of a story is as important tothe story's success as what you put in, for good fiction derives much of its e ffect from careful omission ... In Hemingway's 'Hills Like White Elephants,' for example, what hte charactes don't say is more important than what they do say, and the story's drama arises out of the confict between their implied thoughts and their narrated words" (71).

Finally, too many composition classes emphasize putting the focus/thesis statement of the work close to the first paragraph of the work; I have always resisted this because if felt like I was getting bonked over the head with it. This might be due to my creative writing background: "Ernest Gaines once said in a speech that every story should begin with a man standing in the middle of a freeway during rush hour; that way, he either had to move or the story was over. All too often, students' stories begin passively, with a character remembering the events of recent days, weeks, or even years. This is a too-convenient way to introudce exposition and doesn't involve the reader sufficiently. Put your characters into a situation requiring action" (72). I can find myself at odds with other composition instructors over this, but I ask my composition students to ease into their thesis statements by showing a clear example of it, often from their own experience to show their authority and interest in it, and to snag the reader with a bit of storytelling.

1. Neitzsche, Friedrich. [1885] Beyong Good and Evil. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co, 1955.

2. Simons, Marlise. "Love and Age: A Talk with Garcia Marquez." New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1985: 1, 18-19.

3. Bush, Douglas, ed. Selected Poems and Letters, by John Keats. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959.

Garrett, George. "The Future of Creative Writing Programs." Creative Writing in America.

This chapter mostly speaks as to the possible history of creative writing throughout American history. I've noted some of the more interesting information below, which might be useful later on to show how creative writing and composition are more entertwined than we allow to acknowledge in academia, and why "creative" writers might feel displaced in academia now.

Garrett states that there is misinformation "masquerading as assumed history, as the story of creative writing in America" (47). He speaks of a talk giving by novelist and poet John Williams at the first-ever meeting of the Associated Writing Programs, who read from a sixteenth-century teachers' handbook. The standard "classical composition" education had Latin poetry and prose as one of its key elements, which continued as the classics were the "heart and guts of education" (48). So bringing these elements into the teaching of writing did not begin with creative writing programs; creative writing programs are reviving or renewing the practice. He also points to several composition courses taught in Princeton in the 1940s and 1950s that required students to write poems or stories as part of the curriculum.

Garrett states that no one actually studied modern or contemporary literature in American colleges and universities until after World War II. Strikes happened in colleges so post-war soldiers could read the work of their contemporaries (49). Much more is made in this chapter of the history of literature, and of "Old Guard" movements to categorize work into canons.

What I found most interesting in this chapter is that Garrett mentions that most working writers did not make appearances into academia until the late 1950s; academia, in other words, was not considered a vocation for writers, with the exception of a few notable exceptions such as Robert Frost. Rather, writers such as Faulkner and Fitzgerald wrote for the movies for a living, and as employees, not as writers-in-residence (52). "Faulkner was an old man and already had the Nobel Prize when the University of Virginia discovered he was already living in town, anyway, and found an inexpensive place for him on the staff."

So those who studied and taught writing, and those who practiced it for a living, might have been considered very different entities on college campuses, which could be why they are considered disparate programs now. Even now there seems to be a push to teach "academic" writing in composition classes, rather than writing as a way of life or as a vocation.

Moxley, Joseph. "Tearing Down the Walls: Engaging the Imagination." Creative Writing in America.

So, oh my gosh, Joe. You so wrote my dissertation opening here. *sigh* And I thought I was being original ...

Anyway, obviously loved this chapter. It is at the heart of what I plan to center my dissertation: that students need to engage in "the creative process. Engaging students' imaginations requires an interdisciplinary approach, one which brings together creative writing, literature, criticism, and composition" (25). I've long felt that these lines drawn between the disciplines within the English department are only a matter of taste, but that you can't differentiate between them if you want to be a multi-genred writer.

"Our students -- who need help seeing connections among ideas, events, books, and traditions -- are told they should take literature courses to read, expository and technical writing courses to write nonfiction, fiction writing workshops to write fiction, poetry workshops to write poetry, speech courses to make speeches, critical thinking courses to think, research methods courses to interview people or survey attitudes, and psychology courses to study behavior in a systematic way" (25) -- yes, it can cause students to feel as though these disciplines might not be interrelated. Of course, you can't emphasize all of these skills in just one class, there's not enough time, and there are some elements of writing and thinking that might be emphasized more in say, a research class than a fiction workshop. However, after taking many classes in all of these subjects, it took until my master's degree, my third degree in writing, to begin seeing the connections. It was all separated in coursework -- and in my mind, separate skills as well. As you stated, "Our zeal for specialization and analysis has confounded our ability to perceive useful parallels between creative writing, expository writing, and literature. For example, David Smith reminds us that the term 'creative,' when applied solely to fiction, drama, or poetry, is largely a misnomer: '...all writing that has interest, value, passion, durability, and vision is necessarily creative' (footnote 1). Whether composing monthly feasibility studies, poetry, screenplays, or the great American novel, writers are engaged in a natural, organic process of forming meaning" (26).

This is what I've tried to emphasize in the expository writing class I teach at USF. By offering them both composition AND craft lessons, and a multitude of genres from which to choose as their work takes form, the students begin to see what the writing process is actually about. My students freewrite in journals, prewrite, plan, draft, workshop, revise ... each step involves considering a new craft or composition technique, and eventually genre selection. I've only taught the class once so far, but look forward to teaching it again in the fall, as it has been one of my most successful courses.

This chapter mentions the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to writing, bringing literary and critical study into its proper relationwith writing. "While many creative writing teachers and artists have tended to enshrine and mystify the creative process, composition theorists have been charting common patterns of how writers generate and refine material by studying the planning, prewriting, revising, and editing practices of professional and student writers. These studies have greatly enhanced our understanding of how the generative nature of language guides writers; how wriitng promotes thinking and learning; how writers draw on unconscious images, the right hemisphere of the brain, felt sense, personal experiences, and literature to develop material" (27). I think what is most important here is to emphasize how writing can be both "broken down" (my emphasis) by composition theorists, shown how a piece of writing comes together, yet there be given room by creative writing practitioners to just let it flow when it's working to see where the writing goes. Even my best prewriting and planning work doesn't always allow for where my work eventually ends up; sometimes I'm surprised by what ends up on the page, especially in my fiction work.

Perhaps this is why "as a culture, we tend to cloak the creative process in a mantle of mysticism. Artists are considered by many to be weird, supernatural beings who are living on the edge of sanity, who must live in dark garrets in order to create meaningful work. For example, Allan Bloom contends, 'A man who can generate visions of a cosmos and ideals by which to live is a genius, a demonic being' (footnote 2).

"...The price of our lack of pedagogical and theoretical inquiry is isolation and divestment: many students don't enroll in writing courses because they've been trained to think they're neither creative nor gifted. Still others avoid writing (and literature) courses because they perceive English and writing to be an esoteric discipline, an artistic (or even magical) activity dependent solely on divine inspiration" (28).

I think this is true, but it is equally true that compositionists that hold too tightly to conventional (grammar) rules can be just as disruptive to students. I have many fine writing students who think they can't write well just because they're unsure where to place the comma. So, again, the mix of creative and compositional approaches work best in a writing classroom, no matter what the genre emphasis. Or, as it is stated later in this chapter, "Many students clearly need to learn how to shut off the editor and let the material flow -- that is, to brainstorm and freewrite" (31).

A few comments I wish to record not necessarily for my annotative analysis here, but for possible use in the future:

"Because of the difficulties inexperienced writers have getting started, composition theorists have proposed several ways to teach students to gather and analyze information, such as Rohman's prewriting techniques; Young, Beckers, and Pike's tagmemic heuristic; Burke's dramatic pentad; Flower and Hayes's problem-solving strategies; and the journalists's questions -- who? what? where? why? when? how?" (32-33). This passage mentions reading Erika Lindemann's A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, second edition, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, for more information.

"In this age of utilitarianism, many creative writing programs have courageously resisted courses in commercial fiction. And though I agree that we must do much more than provide vocational training and that we must provide a strong, rigorous background in the humanitieis, I also believe that we should introduce s tudents to the expectations of popular genres such as horror, suspense, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and children's literature ... I think we need to broaden the base of 'academic literature'" (36).

1. Smith, David. "Notes on Responsibility and the Teaching of Creative Writing." AWP Newsletter, May 1981: 1-3, 7.

2. Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.