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.