Cantrell, Mary. Teaching and Evaluation: Why Bother? Leahy, Anna, Ed. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom.

Cantrell says that "unlike professors in any other discipline, (creative writing professors) seem eager to relinquish our authority in the classroom" (65). We don't like the podium, we use our first names in class, we create circles of desks to share the authority ... yet few of us truly want a classroom in which we do not embrace, to some extent, roles of authority" (65). If we aren't needed in the classroom, indeed, "why bother?". We have the experience to talk about craft and revision, and to help lead the students in their understanding of the writing process. "If a professor completely relinquishes authority, if the class becomes primarily a writers' therapy group designed to encourage writing by providing a nodding audience, if students are not held accountable for having learned or produced anything, if no guidance is offered, then why offer college credit for creative writing courses?

"Moreover, our own sense of integrity dictates that we set some parameters and that students acknowledge our authority to some extent. We do, after all, hold degrees that reflect, if not expertise, at least experience" (66). We can offer methods to help students to become better with their criticism, while still having a supportive workshop.

Cantrell examines some of the creative writing teachers' history that might have led us to our existing pedagogy. She points out that many creative writing programs began "in the wake of the Beat Generation and various civil rights movements, (so) writers often disdained working too closely with traditional scholars and academicians" 1. and we can still feel rebellious against traditional academic measures, such as grading. "We must balance our responsibility to the institution, which prescribes a degree of authority in the classroom, with our commitment to questioning authority. We may feel hypocritical -- question authority, but not mine -- or simply reluctant to impose specific standards on students..." (67).

Cantrell also examines our discomfort with often being placed in "traditional" English departments, simply because of the old standard that others might hold English teachers to: being masters of conventions and diagramming sentences, rather than the process of writing. I believe this is something not only creative writing professors worry about, but even many composition professors, who have students resist writing simply because they had a former teacher who told them they couldn't write well because they hadn't yet mastered the comma.

Vandermeulen, Carl. The Double Bind and Stumbling Blocks: A Case Study as an Argument for Authority-conscious Pedagogy. Power and Identity ...

Vandermeulen is yet another professor who has a shared background in both creative writing and composition. He says he shares Wendy Bishop's position that "learning to write involves a change in the person, in the way the person sees, thinks, feels, reads, even in the person's identity, not just in how she or he writes and revises" (49). It is difficult for a teacher who invests in this philosophy, then, to exert authority in the classroom because we don't feel comfortable ranking "by means of a grade" a student's ability to become not just a writer, but also an artist and practitioner of art.

"Much of the recent history of composition theory can be understood as a deliberate limiting of the teacher's authority in order to create a safe place in which students can develop their own authority as authors" (49-50). Teachers can help to move along this premise by waiting to assign grades until revision is done, and also by offering student writers an opportunity to write a "memo" addressing where the work came from, where they think it is going, and what guidance they might need from the teacher -- which will address the process of writing as much as the work itself. In workshops, Vandermeulen encourages using a technique Peter Elbow defines as a "descriptive response: pointing to particulars of detail or style that catch (the students') attention, summarizing, saying what is 'almost said' in the piece, and saying what, for them, is the center of gravity. Elbow's idea is that responders should read with the writer at first, saving reading against for final drafts" (50). This allows the teacher to share authority with the students, and gives them a comfort zone in which they can begin to understand what works -- and what might not work -- in a piece of writing, making them better critics, and also helps to support and praise the student whose work is being critiqued.

The pedagogy can have its faults. For instance, even if a teacher tries to diminish the importance of grades, students still find them important (51). Trying to diminish our own authority as teachers seems to contradict our need to assign grades. Also, the student will look to us for guidance -- there is a reason we are in front of the classroom -- and they can become confused as to how much stock to put into our comments if we are forever stepping on ourselves to diminish our authority.

Also, because often creative writing comes based on an emotional response to a writer's situation, Vandermeulen says he sometimes finds himself in a "double bind between empathetic understanding and academic standards" (56). A critique of a student work can be taken to heart, sometimes too much to heart, and it can be misinterpreted by a student who feels his work has been taken apart by a teacher who strives to be considered as an equal in the classroom.

Miller, Evie Yoder. Reinventing Writing Classrooms: The Combination of Creating and Composing. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom.

Miller writes a chapter that speaks deeply to my heart: the consideration of the differences and intersections in teaching creative writing and composition. Often the disparity between the two can be blamed on the department where the two modes are usually housed: the English department. "Creative writing is often considered less intellectual, more instinctual, and thus given a place on the fringe of English studies. Historically, both creative writing and composition have been assigned positions below literature and criticism. Perhaps because neither wants to be the 'lowliest,' composition and creative writing have fought to distinguish themselves as different types of writing, thus discouraging the transfer of skills from one to the other. Contrary to prevalent thought, composition is not the so-called other to creative writing, nor vice versa. We can design English courses to lessen these tensions and increase collegiality. Rather than fighting to be different, both so-called camps can learn from the other.

"While composition is often more informational and seemingly academic in its purpose, and while creative writing is often more imaginative, the two kinds of writing are more similar than different. Both composition and creative writing involve creating and composing. Both are grounded in some degree of reality, and both involve some use of the imagination. Both kinds of writing include the subjectivity of the writer" (40-41).

These important paragraphs align perfectly with what I've always suspected: Creative Writing and Composition should go hand-in-hand. Compositionists shouldn't approach writing so stiffly, with conventions and MLA style firmly in hand, or students will decide that writing is boring and stiff and has no practical purpose outside of academia. Creative writers should realize that the process is not simply a lightning bolt of inspiration, but also requires analyzing and revision and a consideration of the process that goes into creating a work.

Yoder, too, finds that her teaching involves what she learned as a teaching assistant of composition, and also as a student of creative writing. "What's of primary importance is that students learn to be confident in their own writing, that they hear the authority of their own experiences and voices. When they can find for themselves the appropriate words and shape to fit the rhetorical situation, then they will have demonstrated the most important authority of the teacher: the ability to pass on knowledge. Writing classrooms are for students' advancement, not for teachers' egos. I'm not creating younger versions of myself but helping students experience a broader range of writing possibilities" (43).

Royster, Brent. Inspiration, Creativity, and Crisis: The Romantic Myth of the Writer Meets the Contemporary Classroom. Power and Identity ...

Royster posits that the popular journals for creative writers, i.e. The Writer's Chronicle and Poets and Writers, can confuse creative writing students because the journals emphasize product and also the creative process as a "natural talent" -- which could imply that creative writing cannot be taught, because it is already inherent. "On the one hand, there exists an emphasis upon the writer as professional, as artist; on the other hand, there's guidance and encouragement for the writer as student. The first narrative concerns being, while the second describes becoming" (26). For an uncertain or "novice writer" a creative writing class might seem useless, according to Royster, because they were not born with the "talent" to immediately produce and publish works.

Romantic ideals of inspiration, such as the notion that Jack Kerouac's On the Road only took a matter of weeks to write, can further confuse the writer who might feel that their work is completed upon the first draft, simply born of inspiration. Putting too much emphasis on the product, rather than the process of writing, can hurt the novice writer who will be less apt to experiment with new forms if (s)he is too harshly judged in the workshop. "...we lose sight of what should be the real goal of workshops, or student communities of writers who share and critique each other's work: our aim is to foster more dedicated writers. Compositionists will recognize this conflict from the process-not-product debate begun in the late seventies, a debate which still affects contemporary writing pedagogy" (27).

Many workshops emphasize that a student not speak while their work is being workshopped ... rightly so, so that the writer does not defend their work before it is time. Royster points out, however, that this can be detrimental for the student writer. "A process-oriented workshop ... assumes that writing is not a one-way performance, but rather a reciprocal engagement with audiences and selves; in other words, the process itself is a text" (28). Perhaps the writer should be given the opportunity to discuss the process of creation, as long (as previous chapters have pointed out) as the writer does not become confused that the process is not the same as the emotional impact, and that the work is not "complete" simply because the author was able to work out an emotional concern while writing.

According to LLoyd Gray (1), the workshop method "is faulty and needs modification" because it focuses too much on the shortcomings of a work, rather than celebrates its achievements. Workshop members should be reminded to first point out the good parts of the work before turning to revision -- and they shouldn't be allowed to skip too quickly to the latter.

"The workshop, then, is a hybrid classroom. The work of the class is the daily practice of writing, and the shared process of that practice. The shop, on the other hand, represents the daily critique that validates (or invalidates) the writer's work ...

"...Simply put, a product-centered pedagogy stifles growth. Such a system places too much emphasis upon subjective agency, too much emphasis upon particular, validated modes of writing, while devaluing other valid, though unfashionable, styles and voices" (34-35).

1. Gray, M.L. "Method and Madness in the Creative Writing Workshop." English Journal 89:1 (1999): 17-19.

Leahy, Anna. Who Cares -- and How: The Value and Cost of Nurturing. Leahy, Anna, Ed. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom.

Leahy begins the chapter by agreeing with "writer-teachers like Robin Hemley and bell hooks wholeheartedly when they assert that pedagogy depends, in part, on nurturing" (13).Leahy quotes hooks, who said we must nurture and respect the souls of our students in order to provide an environment in which they can learn. However, we have to be careful to nurture, yet still provide an environment where they turn into better writers -- which means criticism.

"As Hemley rightly notes, praise makes students want to write more. However, focused criticism and guidance can make the student want to write better" (14). So there has to be enough praise that the writer does not become discouraged; however, all works should be treated as unfinished pieces, those that can get better through revision.

So the teacher must be willing to praise -- but to also be the authority, when necessary, and not "just" one of the workshop members.

Kuhl, Nancy. Personal Therapeutic Writing vs. Literary Writing. Leahy, Anna, Ed. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom.

Kuhl links the (perhaps erroneous) notion that creative writing is also therapeutic for the writer -- or that the writing should be considered successful simply if the writer achieves some sort of therapy from it. Kuhn states, "I do not disagree or take issue with the idea that writing can help one work through difficult personal problems, or even with the idea that good literary writing can rise out of exploratory personal writing ... private journal and diary writing, however, differs dramatically from literary writing. While I am glad that many find comfort and insight through the writing process, solace and self-discovery cannot be the goals of a productive literary creative writing workshop" (4).

The difference is guiding students to pay attention to the craft of the work, rather than merely the emotion it might evoke. "The workshop method emphasizes the role of revision in good writing largely by assuming that participants are still actively working on the pieces they present to the group. A workshop assumes that writers will consider, and perhaps incorporate, criticism and comments from their peers as they write, rewrite, work, and rework a piece; otherwise, what would be the point of hearing the feedback?" (5). In other words, the writer should be more concerned with the impact the work has on the audience, or readers, rather than the writer's personal experience in creating it.

Leahy, Anna, Ed. Foreword. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2005.

Full citation:

Leahy, Anna, Ed. Foreword. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2005.

The foreword lays the groundwork for the book, "which asserts that authority-conscious pedagogy can and should shape our field in general and should guide our individual decisions about how we define ourselves and how we teach the subject in today's classrooms" (x). Background is offered about the beginnings of the fiction workshop: the Iowa Writers' Workshop, established in 1936, "14 years after the institution deemed creative work acceptable as a graduate thesis," and even earlier forms of the workshop, including one when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow accepted a professorship in 1829 until he could make enough from his writing to support himself (xi).

Elbow, Peter. "The Music of Form." College Composition and Communication. 57:4 (June 2006): 620-666.

Elbow relates writing to art forms, showing the correlations and differences between experiencing each kind of work. For instance, someone who experiences a visual piece of art can see it all at once; however, a reader of an art, or work, is likened to an ant on a canvas, taking in it bit by bit, but not being able to see the whole piece at once. "When we read a text, we are like the ant. The text is laid out in space across multiple pages, but we can only read one small part of it at a time" (621). The writer is obligated, then, to bring the reader through the work through an artistic organization that makes the reader want to stay with the entire piece, as a musician draws a listener through a piece.

Elbow draws a parallel between writing and music -- how does a musician keep an audience, and likewise a writer? "... the answer is the same one that applies to music. Successful writers lead us on a journey to satisfaction by way of expectations, frustrations, half-satisfactions, and temporary satisfactions: a well-planned sequence of yearnings and reliefs, itches and scratches" (626). The form of the writing should be more exciting, then, than a traditional five-paragraph essay, which gives away its crescendo by announcing its intention at the beginning of the work.

"In short, our very understanding of what organization means -- with its implicit spatial metaphor -- seems better suited to describing the organization of objects in space than the organization of events in time. Ifwe want to do better justice to the form of temporal events, we need more attention to the problem of written language as buried in time -- and the potentialities for binding time ...

...But writing is not music. Writing offers various resources to helpreaders compensate for its embeddedness in time -- resources largely unavailable in music. Writing centers on a semantic dimension (verbal meaning) that we don't usually find in the abstract, nonsemantic medium of time" (628).

The reader cannot escape the time of the work. Elbow likens time to both the narrative and also the cohesion or motion of the work. "I'm interested in what we might call dynamic cohesion -- (and) dynamic coherence where we're pulled from element to element ... where the parts of the essay don't just sit together because they are semantically linked, rather, we feel them pulled together with a kind of magnetic or centripetal force. Dynamic cohension and dynamice coherence create the music of form.

"Suppose we've made clear thesis statements and maps of organization, but readers are tired and bored or in a bad mood? if we can pull readers through and give them pleasure and satisfaction from reading, they are more likely to carry on and even to be more sympathetic to the ideas we are trying to sell. Consider the typical problem of textbooks: they are impressively well organized in all these signposting ways (along with the best graphics that money can buy). Yet they often put readers to sleep" (633).

This seems, to me, to be another example between the differences in the way writing is emphasized between composition and creative writing -- in the latter, we are looking for the rhythm of the piece just as much as we are looking for the natural order of the thoughts.

Schneider, Pat. "Introduction: Writing With Others, and The Principles of a Healthy Workshop." Writing Alone and With Others.

Writers do not always benefit from solitary work -- writing can be lonely work. "Most writers benefit from communication with other writers. Writing can be a lonely endeavor, much of the work must be done in solitude. However, too much solitude -- or too much conversation with people who do not write, and too little with those who do -- can lead to depression and despair" (177).

Writing in a group has other benefits: you learn the craft by seeing what works (and doesn't work) in other writers' works, and it can help you take risks in your work. Also, workshopping helps you publish and network (177-9).

Schneider re-establishes the "essential affirmations" of a good workshop:

1. Everyone has a strong, unique voice,
2. Everyone is born with creative genius,
3. Writing as an art form belongs to all people, regardless of economic class or educational level,
4. The teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer's original voice or artistic self-esteem, and
5. A writer is someone who writes (186).

So, basically, no one in a workshop should be disparaged, which hurts the main purpose of a workshop: to learn from and encourage each other.

Schneider, Pat. "The Ethical Questions: Spirituality, Privacy, and Politics." Writing Alone and With Others. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

This chapter addresses what creative writing professors might forget about when they concentrate solely on craft: the consequence of writing. "Whether we write as an act of personal discovery, as form of prayer in the sense of the deepest cry and search of our spirits, or as a means of having a voice in the world, writing can be a fundamental act of the human spirit" (157). The writing will have more than craft concerns for the beginning (or even advanced) writer; he or she will have also put something of themselves into the writing, from which it might be difficult to separate when a critique is offered.

The consequence is also upon those affected by the writing. When we write we do not only reveal a part of ourselves that we might consider vulnerable, but we might also reveal some material about other people's lives. "Privacy for the writer is a personal question, but it is also an ethical question ... Everyone's boundaries are his or her own; what would be intolerable self-revelation to one person is of no consequence to another. I have more than one friend who writes in journals in times of great stress and then destroys them. I know the danger in keeping a journal; someone may know who I really am ...

"I know that my writing has drawn people to me, and it has pushed people away. i know that the 'me' revealed on my pages is not always the 'me' that is seen across the table at the local deli. i know that some of my former friends can't deal with the more complicated 'me' they meet on my pages. I can't help that. From the time I was ten years old and wrote my first poem, writing has been the way that I survive, and it has been my art form" (159-160).

Because I was initially a newspaper journalist, I know all too well the consequence of writing about others. In fact, at my college we constantly struggle with community members who become part of our news on a small campus -- those who believe we're writing "sensationally" or that we'll "ruin them" if we write about a news issue that faces our campus. Writing makes the issue at hand more real for them, of more consequence -- as though no one was actually talking about the issue until we wrote about it (which isn't true; we generally get our news because our community is talking about it).

But even in non-fiction, we might need to decide how comfortable we are in revealing our "sources" or the people in our lives we choose to write about. I've currently a student who will still change the names of her "characters" in her non-fiction; apparently it gives her a comfort zone, even though I told her that non-fiction must always be true. Schneider says that she has received letters from people who read her books and draw exception that they must write the truth. (For those who can't, my suggestion would be that they can imbed their truth into fiction, disguising the people they know and the situations they face.)

However, the writer must find their comfort zone in what they want to reveal. Schneider says she doesn't write about her adult children because she thinks their lives are now their own, as opposed to when she was raising them. Other times, she will ask for permission to write about other people's lives. I don't ask; I figure if someone has come into my life (with the exception of students, who should receive privacy from me as they learn), they've become part of me, and I am free to write about my experiences, no matter who they include. If i didn't include the people who affect me in my writing, I wouldn't be revealing my truths -- and my writing wouldn't be as strong.

Schneider, Pat. "The Form Your Writing Takes." Writing Alone and With Others. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Schneider encourages writers to not choose just one form of writing: fiction OR poetry OR any other form. But writers should be aware which genre might best suit their work. For example, if the music of the words being used seems most important, poetry might be the way to go. Works strongly autobiographical in nature might best be translated (changed) into fiction. This chapter offers several exercises to help students find their form.

Schneider, Pat. "Growing As A Writer." Writing Alone and With Others. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

This chapter points out the importance of finding a teacher who will encourage your writing and help to shape it, rather than creating clones of themselves. Schneider believes some of the characteristics of a good teacher include:

1. one who helps you find your own voice;
2. one who points out your strengths as a writer, as well as some of the weaknesses you could improve upon;
3. one that acknowledges that his/her judgment or assessment of your writing is subjective;
4. one who is able to let a student go, when the time comes (107).

The true test of a "good" writing teacher is one who leaves you inspired to write (108).

This is an important part of my pedagogy. I know other instructors who feel that the writing student must suffer for their craft, but I think that beginning writers should be mostly encouraged, with gentle prodding towards better works. I also know that not all genres of writing are to my liking, but i consider the craft of the work and what is working in terms of characterization, or details/development, or organization -- something is probably going well in a student work.