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).