On Teaching Creative Writing

I once (three days ago) famously (well, seven people responded, and only three of them were me) tweeted, "I don't mean to sound preachy, but why would one take a creative writing class if one hates to read and write?"

The question, I admit, sounds preachy. It looks facile. It seems as though I'm pissing and moaning about a lack of effort on the part of some of my students. And that's all probably true, but something more important than that is at stake for me. I, ultimately, don't have time to worry about how much effort my students put into their studies, their careers, or their lives. On the other hand, the general lack of commitment shown by many students who take creative writing courses, ultimately, devalues the entire process of teaching creative writing.

But, here, let me tell you the story.

The catalyst for this post was my collecting student reading and writing journals last week for a midterm update. The reading and writing journals, I believe, are the most important processes in the course. I have written the following on this blog before; I have said it again and again in the company of many writers; I make the same claims about practicing writing that I make about practicing running and practicing math: if you want to improve your creative writing, you have to develop a sustained, consistent effort. I've said it so often, I have, at times, believed I made up the phrase "sustained, consistent effort." It's in my syllabus. It's on the assignment sheet for both journals. 50% of your grade, my syllabus tells us, will be "the sustained, consistent effort you put into your reading and writing journals."

So I collected both sets of journals last week and found that a full half of the class was not only not halfway through the completion of their journals, but some had only written two or three writing-journal entries out of a possible thirty. Some had less than ten percent of the minimum reading-journal requirement completed.

Some students included apologetic notes, "I'm sorry. I know this journal isn't where it needs to be. I'll work harder." To whom, I always wonder, are they apologizing? Certainly not me. They have not hurt my feelings. They have not let me down. I have four kids, a spouse, two parents, some pets, several friends, and my own thousand words a day to put on paper -- I have better things to do than be let down by students. For me, grading is strictly business, nothing personal. I tell them, "I'm the Michael Corleone of grading." I will help any student with any problem, academic or personal, to whatever extent that I can. "Come to my office hours," I tell them, "if I can't help you, I'll find someone who can." But I am not going to be sad about a student's lack of interest, intensity, or commitment.

Well, then, this seems like a non-issue, Jackson. If you don't care, and they don't care, then . . . what?

Just this: there seems to be a great sweeping belief that just signing up for creative writing classes, and just showing up from time to time, and just talking about what one likes or does not like about a piece of writing is enough to pass the course.

But such students are not going to pass my course. I tell them on the first day of class: "If you think you can just show up and talk about what you like or don't like about a story and pass this class, you're wrong." It's in my syllabus: "We are not here to talk about what you like or don't like about stories." Your reading journals are a place to experiment with what you are learning through your reading -- through imitation, celebration, and engagement. Your writing journals are the place where you will sit down every day and give the muse access to your pen. Students who don't do the work in my course, fail my course. I tell them this, and, each term, some of them are surprised by low grades. They then say awful things about me, and that's too bad, I think, for everybody concerned, because it's hard to get a letter of recommendation from a worthless piece of shit, but it's their prerogative.

The question has larger ramifications.

The best creative writing instructors* in the country, I believe are under constant scrutiny: "Can you actually teach creative writing?" They are asked by students, administration, parents of students, colleagues, other writers, each other, themselves: "Is it even possible to teach creative writing?" The easy answer is: "Of course." And, for me, that's the truest answer. But, again, I point to an ancient Greek whose name I can never remember, who once said, "Every question possesses a power that does not lie in the answer."

*Let me take a moment to point out that I am not suggesting that I'm in this crowd of great cw instructors. I have my moments, but, ultimately, have a lot to learn about teaching. I will, however, remind you that I just compared myself to Michael Corleone.

Anis Shivani is the most recent writer I know of to garner a great deal of press for writing a scathing** piece about teaching creative writing. He writes:

Creative writing is a subset of therapy, with the same essential modalities -- except, like everything else in our culture, it comes in a stripped, dumbed down version that partakes little of the rigors of psychotherapy. More appropriately, we might call it the Oprahfied mindset that penetrates workshop. Life lessons and living a more authentic life are always just beneath the surface of any workshop discussion.

** I think Shivani would agree his piece is scathing. I think he means for it to be scathing. But I am not writing this in an attempt to refute the creative writing naysayers, only to point out that they get a lot of attention (some of it earned), and that attention (often unwarranted) hurts creative writing instructors. It hurts the whole field.

That said: I have heard of this kind of creative writing course, where writing is synonymous with therapy. I have imagined this kind of creative writing course. I have feared this kind of creative writing course. But it has never been my experience. I have rather been taught by great teachers and writers to create a space for myself to access the muse. I have been taught to learn from what I read and to practice craft and to consider perspective and to weigh options and to think about the ways in which my own writing might fit into writing throughout history. I have been taught to value, above all else as a creative writer, reading and writing. It is not easy. Learning creative writing, I believe, is a constant lesson. It takes constant practice. I don't imagine Melville saying, "Well, I guess that's all I need. I'll write Moby Dick now." But writing is not therapy. I have never written about my feelings. I have never been psychoanalyzed by a peer or an instructor. I am not sure, exactly, what Shivani means by "the Oprahfied mindset that penetrates workshop," but I'm pretty sure that's never happened to me.

Rather, I believe, we can teach creative writing. It was taught to me. I have seen it taught to others. I will teach it to anybody who wants to learn. Still, the power of this question lies in the asking, rather than the answering. I can't recall hearing or reading anybody ever ask: "Yeah, but, can anybody really teach history?" or physics or astronomy -- three subjects that seem infinitely less teachable to me. I mean, can anybody seriously imagine teaching history? What the hell would that look like? I can imagine encouraging somebody to read a book. I can imagine grading somebody on how many dates and places and events she remembers. I can even imagine suggesting to somebody that history books are always written by the winners. But teaching somebody to weigh conflicting reports of a factual event; teaching somebody to search through artifacts and determine which one is most accurate, most true (who would say that? most true? what's that); teaching somebody to understand the ramifications of The Magna Carta*** on contemporary American civil liberties . . . forget about it: can anybody really do that?

*** Turns out, it's not, in fact, spelled Magna Carter. Thank you, wikipedia.

For two years, as an undergraduate I studied secondary math education. I meant to be a middle school math teacher. I wanted to teach math because I was awesome at it, and I wanted to teach sixth, seventh, eighth grade, because I wanted to help kids through some rough years. But can one really teach math? In my experience, it's no easier than teaching creative writing. I can draw numbers and symbols and apples and arrows on the chalkboard for forty minutes a day; I can encourage students to practice at home; I can collect and grade homeworks and quizzes; I can test students on their retention. But getting them to understand math. Not a chance.

I think, in fact, we need to change the question. I think, when we say, "Can you even teach creative writing?", maybe what we mean is, "Can you evaluate creative writing?"**** I think that's a much less insulting question with a much more meaningful, if infinitely more complicated, answer. For the purposes of the University system, of MFAs and Ph.D.s in creative writing, I think the notion of evaluation is much more important, even if the individual answer is only relevant to a particular program, a particular school, or a particular instructor.

For me, for the Introduction to Creative Writing Course that I'm teaching, I am not evaluating the quality of students' creative work. I grade the quality of their self-analysis and the thoroughness of their peer responses, but the 50% of their grade that is their creative practice, I only grade their sustained, consistent effort.

I also make professional comments on a single work of fiction each quarter, and offer to them on a daily basis that if they would like to meet with me in my office to discuss any aspect of writing (theirs or somebody else's), I would be happy to do so.

**** In fact, the even better question might be, "Should we evaluate creative writing? And by whose standards? And what kind of magical criteria?" But those questions, I think, have much more to do with whether or not we're getting into Heaven than whether or not we're getting tenure.

[Meanwhile, I just thought I should note, given my belief in the power of questions, that I have changed my initial (perhaps rhetorical) question to: "Why would anybody who refuses to read and/or write take a creative writing course?" The hating is optional.]

Fiction, the Healing Process Continues

Part of the process of learning to write again is studying craft again. Or is it studying craft for the first time? I'm not sure how to qualify this, so I'll just tell the story. Because I'm teaching creative writing this quarter, and because I taught it last quarter, I've been reading books about writing fiction. The two text books for the class are Writing Fiction (7th ed) by Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey French and Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose. Both wonderful books from which I am learning more than I can express, more than I can teach, more than I'll ever know I'm learning.

But here's what I mean by "studying craft for the first time": I never read Burroway's book before. Nor had I read Prose's. I've never read Writing down the Bones, Bird by Bird, Stephen King's On Writing, The Art of Fiction by John Gardner . . . the list goes on. I read most of Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern as an undergrad, and I've done a great job of forgetting a large portion of that text (I, of course, mean that in a good way), and I read an occasional craft essay by Carlos Fuentes, Andrea Barret, Rick Bass, Lord Byron, but by and large my ideas about craft came to me through reading Moby Dick, Satanic Verses, Darconville's Cat. I learned to write, largely, the same way I learned to play soccer . . . except I learned to play soccer by watching it on television, but you get the point.

Which might be part of what I love about Reading Like a Writer . . . Prose suggests that we attempt to unlearn what we know about reading, and, in a sense, learn to love reading again, learn to savor it. I've never been a fan of speed reading, never been a fan of skimming, never been a fan of reading the first and last paragraphs of a short story or just the last act. I have never read a Cliff's Notes or a Sparknotes: I've always wanted to, I've just never found the time for it. I've always read, as far as I can remember, every word. It's a slow process, and I'm a slow reader. My students always think I'm kidding when I describe how many minutes per page a book takes me. (For instance, Writing Fiction is a five-minute per page kind of book. Infinite Jest for another instance took close to 6000 minutes to read.) Francine Prose celebrates this kind of reading . . . in fact, more intensely: she suggests reading classic texts in a language you barely know. Now that's slow, savory, something I hope to do . . . someday.

I have often wished I could read faster. But never while I'm immersed in a great book. I never once, while reading Sometimes a Great Notion thought, "I can't wait til I'm done with this monster."

As for Writing Fiction, Burroway has gathered a best-of writers talking about writing. She continually quotes Dorothy Allison, Flannery O'Connor, Anton Chekhov, and maybe a hundred other disparate and talented writers. And this is what I mean about "studying the craft again:" This text reinforces a lot of the ideas about writing that I've learned from my amazing cast of mentors, my shockingly talented groups of peers, and from my own autodidactic pursuit of craft lessons.

Burroway quotes Octavia Butler: "Forget Inspiration. habit is more dependable. habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice." The most important element of any writing life, I believe, is a sustained, consistent effort. I like talking to folks who say that they're always writing, no matter what they're doing, even if they're sitting around smoking a joint or bad-mouthing Republicans or playing golf. I think that's fantastic, and I think it's largely true (that writers are always writing), but if a writer doesn't get on her ass every day and slap some keys, she isn't going to produce anything -- she'll lead the paradoxical life of a writer not writing. Let me preface this (after the fact) by saying I'm definitely wrong about this. Some folks can smoke a can of opium, sit in a bathtub for an hour, and write "Kubla Khan" any day of the week. Some folks can write in their sleep or while they're driving or while they're watching the Superbowl. I can't. I think most folks can't. And, even if they can, I think we're all better served by the sustained, consistent effort, by persistence in practice, by sitting on our asses and cranking out words.

Another hugely exciting experience I'm having in reading Writing Fiction is the writerly dialogue the work is opening up in my head. Burroway quotes John Gardner:

. . . the needless filtering of the image through some observing consciousness. The amateur writes: "Turning, she noticed two snakes fighting in among the rocks." Compare: "She turned. In among the rocks, two snakes were fighting . . ." Generally speaking--though no laws are absolute in fiction---vividness urges that almost every occurrence of such phrases as "she noticed" and "she saw" be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing seen.

Is this what it all comes down to? The distinction between "she noticed two snakes fighting" and "two snakes were fighting" feels like the least of details, like noticing a dusty shelf in a condemned building (while I approve of the metaphor, when I'm completely healed, I'll create an analogy with a positive connotation, rather than suggesting that good writing is like a condemned building . . . though, when I say it that way, I like it all the more). I mean is it that big of an issue? I actually asked myself that question as though I were asking John Gardner himself. And, as if John Gardner were speaking through me*, I thought, "It is not only that big of an issue. It's the only issue. A good story, a good piece of fiction is consciousness -- we are accessing another's consciousness. We are seeing through another's eyes (we are, in fact, using all of her senses, which is why sensuous detail is so stinking important), and registering another's thoughts." I for one have never looked at two snakes fighting and thought, "I turn, only to notice two snakes fighting among the rocks." No, I have never thought that at all. I might say that, but I'll be damned if I'm going to narrate the action in my head, I think to myself as I continue typing and consider what I have learned today.

Also, I say I haven't read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird or Stephen King's On Writing, but that's only half true. I started both books recently and both are helping me to rebuild my writing self. Thank you, fiction writers who have paved this road to recovery. I always imagined that I would read the books someday to help me improve my writing, to help me improve my teaching, to help me pass an exam or land a job, but I never would have guessed I'd be reading these texts as a way to help my psyche heal.




*Yep. I'm suggesting that I'm channeling, not only one of the best fiction writing books of all time, but also, a book I just acknowledged I've never read. It might make you feel better that earlier today on a different blog, I very clearly compared myself to Cool Hand Luke.

Another First Step

In an attempt to find my way back into a sustained and consistent effort, I've picked up two long-stale blogs and dedicated myself to posting more regularly on them. In addition, I've started five new ones and dedicated myself to them as well. A lot of what happens on them (this sentence for instance) is junk, throwaway trash. But that's part of the point, I'm certain.

When I was first writing, it was the writing, the act of writing, the different way of thinking that writing inspires -- it was all of that: the reason I wrote. The world was there only for my words. As time went on, all kinds of things happened. Applying to grad school, submitting for publication, submitting to grad workshops, applying to Ph.D., dabbling in theory, building my cv -- writing became about everything else, everything but writing. The rest of the world was the only thing that mattered about the words.

I am a person of extremes, I know this, so the fact that I am trying to maintain six blogs doesn't surprise me much at all -- I know it's what I need to do right now. When I'm not cranking away at the keyboard, I know it's a huge mistake. The blogs are boring. The writing is pukey. I suck. But when I'm writing, this moment, this sentence, everything is right. I need to be doing this right now.

Plus, I believe in 21st-century literacies. I believe in this project and its medium. I was taught to priviledge Steinbeck and Alexie and Melville and Hempel (and the truth is, I still do), but there are some damn fine bloggers out there, too.

In the meantime, I started writing a spy novel last week. I'm reworking old essays and my steel-mill novel, and maybe, when the time is right, I'll send that business out into the world as well.

Beginning a Sustained, Consistent Writing

I was comparing writing woes with Jaswinder lately -- that we never seem to have enough time to just sit down and write, that we don't seem to get enough recognition, that recognition never seems to be as fulfilling as simply sitting down to write, but still a little recognition would be nice.

This came up during this past quarter while I was teaching a creative writing (fiction introduction) course. The main project for the course was to keep a journal. The idea behind the journal was to perform a sustained, consistent writing. Writers, I believe, should sit down everyday and crank out words, not hellbent on creating a new and equally beautiful Sometimes a Great Notion, but to exercise, much the same as a professional athlete would her body, one's unconscious.

Days after Jaswinder and I spoke about our writing woes, I opened some moving boxes my parents had dropped brought to me recently. I found my college journals, notebooks, and binders for English classes, biology and earth science, Calculus140, Polysci 197, Theatre 203, et al., as well as my personal journals, my drunken notebooks, binders full of laminated papertowels, cigarette packs torn into queer crucifixes and stapled to three-hole-punched cardboard.

It was at that moment that I realized the one thing that I was doing constantly, the thing I backed off during my MFA and the thing I abandoned altogether as a Ph.D. candidate . . . I realized that whatever else I was doing in my life, I was always, also, already writing. I wrote about the subjects for the classes, fictionalized physics, wrote off topic, created worlds in which I was the biology teacher and Dr. M_______ was madly in love with me. I wrote three-line plays and three-page haikus. I started and abandoned novels. I wrote awful things about myself and generous things about exgirlfriends.

At some point, that all fell away. I blame myself, certainly, and at some point, it seemed counterintuitive to begin journaling again. I was a master of fine arts. I was a Ph.D. candidate. I was an adult with children and a mortgage. I had more excuses than I had time to list them.

But I was convinced that I had to start over. I know it was the write decision. So I started running my pen across some pages. Lousy things happened. I wrote about the couch I was sitting on. I wrote about how tall my kids were and how lonely a person might get on a desert island. I wrote about waking up and realizing everything was all a dream. I wrote dreams. I wrote more about the couch, some about the television, a touch about the future of humanity. All boring stuff. All awfully written. All terribly embarrassing. I loved every word.