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.