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.