Filed under: Final Papers
The Disappearance of Creative Writing
In his book, Peter Elbow teaches the student how to write without a teacher. But, uh, what about the rest of us? Sure, I can relate to the concepts of Elbow now as a near-college graduate, but only because I was introduced to them by a teacher. Writing with a teacher seems to be the more difficult task for most writers out there. How is it possible for students to feel comfortable creating something expressive when they have been under the influence of teachers who teach nothing but academic writing? The biggest hindrance to student writers is the focus on academic over creative writing, and this starts early. Note: Early does not mean year-one of an undergraduate education. Early means childhood.
When we are young, we are given few rules. “Write a story about an elephant!” This amount of imagination and creativity is awe-inspiring. I know few adults who would be as thrilled and as able as an eight-year-old to create such a tale. It is my belief that many of the problems writers face when developing their writing, whether it be finding their voice or tapping into their emotional outlet, stems from lack of practice. I was twelve years old the first time I diagramed a sentence, and from there on out, very little of my academic writing could be considered “creative” or even of the “out of the box” idea. Curriculums have become so obsessed with producing college-ready academics that creativity is pushed out of the classroom and onto the stage or into the art studio. Even inside the English class, teachers often say, “make up a small skit” instead of “write a short story.”
And even when teachers do find ways to encourage students to find expression through writing with voice exercises like freewriting, it is most often in an elementary context; by the time high school comes around when students are more equipped at expressing these ideas, the outlet has disappeared, or rather reformed in extracurricular activities. While musicians at my high school had chorus, band, orchestra, theater, and even an annual Battle of the Bands, writers had three, more narrow options: Creative Writing, the class (which was never feasible to take since no one could afford to “waste” electives on things other than AP Spanish or AP Psychology), the Yearbook (which really dealt more with layout, photos, and superlatives than writing creatively), and the Newspaper (which, enjoyable as it was, did not really allow for the elephant story). Our school’s literary magazine was impressive, but drastically unread despite heavy promotion, and one infamous case of major plagiarism soured many students from trusting it as a reliable source of poetry and fiction.
Students need an outlet for personal and creative writing that isn’t their diary. Creative writing provides a forum for students to explore personal issues or interests in a substantial way that validates the importance of these issues or interests. When teachers do not encourage this type of creativity, it tells students that creative writing is secret, heavy, and inappropriate for academic people. These may seem like generalized claims with no evidence, but it’s true! According to most English Literature classes, creative writing can be studied, but not replicated. Unless you’re writing Silas Marner or Great Expectations, the creative aspect is not nearly as important as the academic one. Students are forced to “earn the right” to write creatively, which for most people might never happen. By the time they have earned the right, many have lost interest and lack the actual training to be able to channel their creative self. This needs to start earlier.
Bartholomae says, “There is no writing that is writing without teachers.” If this is true, then bring teachers into the discussion of academic versus personal, creative writing. The two are not mutually exclusive. I promise, any student can write a memoir or a fictional story at the same time as a research paper and not mold the two together.
Bathlomoae quotes many teachers with saying, “I want to empower my students.” “I want to give my students ownership of their work.” Sure, maybe professors are able to do this, but outside of college, what teacher is he talking about? From my experience, many teachers — or rather, curriculums, since teachers are slaves to them — acknowledge creative writing as important, but deny students the actual time to create it. Understanding how something is made furthers comprehension of the topic. Students who love listening to music are encouraged to make music, and few musicians self-identify as only a maker or only a listener – they are both. So why are readers less encouraged to write creatively? My best friend since first grade reads at least two novels during a normal week, and up to ten during weeks that she is on vacation or lacking in projects. Yet last semester, during her senior year of college, she would break into cold sweats before each Creative Writing class. How have the interests become so separate? Because writing is lost for many students by the time they reach puberty. Specifically, teachers hinder the experience through several standard devices.
Page limits have taught students that quantity is of greater importance than quality. Anyone who wants to refute this should think back to the four-page paper you were assigned in ninth grade. It doesn’t matter how much your teacher might have liked it — if you had turned in one-page of writing, you would have failed. And any student knows the secrets of changing fonts, margins, and spacing to stretch out their essay that feels complete but is half a page short. Yes, of course, page number requirements are crucial in assessing effort and completion. But this focus on numbers takes away the focus on words.
Traditional education in the United States has brought with it sentence-diagramming, grammar sentences for students to correct, and extensive homework exercises focusing on vocabulary and mechanics. These are great (well, “great” is probably debatable) ways to teach students academic writing, so why not use these to adapt to creative writing? Assign a homework exercise that teaches vocabulary and allows the student to elaborate on a topic of his or her choice. Teachers can use traditional methods of teaching academic writing to incorporate creative writing into the learning process.
One of the best attempts at breaking away from academic writing comes from the countless math and science teachers who assign papers in their classrooms with the disclaimer, “…but this isn’t an English class so I won’t be grading you on grammar, mechanics, or spelling.” In theory, this frees writing from the confines of rules and tradition; it shows students that writing does not have to be regulatory in every context. Unfortunately, in practice, this tactic seems to promote the notion that writing outside of English class is not important or valid, so therefore must not be taken too seriously. But this subtle action does show students that writing exists in a real form outside of the English classroom.
Bartholomae says we need to highlight the classroom as a real space, not an “idealized utopian space.” How does expressive equate to utopian? Self-expression is by no means (necessarily) idealized, nor is it false or not real. It is a huge misconception that creative writing lacks in actual substance. It is this mentality that causes students to classify creative writing as “weak” and academic writing as “strong,” and no American student wants to be considered “weak.”
But ultimately the debate of academic versus creative writing is a silly one. Like any two-sided dilemma, the answer is both. Academic writing teaches students organization, grammar, and rhetoric. There is a lot to be said for any curriculum that can teach this to students. But creative writing carries a lot as well. Non-academic writing encourages self-discovery, word experimentation, and creative risk-taking. Why not take five minutes out of every class for students to freewrite? “Write about an elephant…who is fifteen and just got dumped by her boyfriend.” Bring the student to the forefront. If students are being forced to write creatively for ten minutes every day for twelve years of schooling, the emphasis on the importance of this type of expression would drastically change. Not only would students become less intimidated by their personal interaction with words, but they might be more willing to accept academic writing if they know they also have an outlet for creative writing. The structure and discipline of academic writing are not bad things – we just all think they are because we’re tired of it! Creative writing has a place in academia – teachers just need to trust it.
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