Craft Notes
How The Hell Do We Teach Creative Writing?
I taught a fiction workshop over the summer, I’m currently teaching an introductory fiction class this semester and next semester I will be teaching a graduate workshop. Teaching fiction has been fantastic and by far the most professionally satisfying experience I’ve ever had. I normally teach professional and technical communication so recently I’ve been consumed by the question, “How the hell do we teach creative writing?” It’s so hard to know how to do all of this right.
A great many writers succeed without having ever taken a writing class and there are intangibles that cannot be taught but I am still interested in what we can do where creative writing pedagogy is concerned. How do we best reach and help students in the creative writing classroom? How do we teach students about the elements of creative writing and then how do we teach them to experiment with these elements? I want to assemble a series of guest posts on this subject so I am opening the discussion here because many of us are either teachers or students of creative writing or once were students of creative writing. Anything is possible. I would love to see reflections on what works, what doesn’t work, great classroom experiences or those that were not so great, how to teach creative writing and the introductory, intermediate, advanced, and graduate levels, reading lists with explanations why those texts are being used, instruction on the professional aspects of being a writer, teaching different forms, poetics, and more.
If you’d be interested in writing a guest post, from either the teacher or student perspective, about some aspect of creative writing pedagogy, please get in touch (roxane at htmlgiant.com) so we can talk more.
Hey, Roxane. I can write a response to this, share some of my ideas on this subject.
Have you read Mark McGurl’s THE PROGRAM ERA (Harvard UP, 2009)? I just read it for my grad program. You might find it relevant.
More anon,
Adam
I have read McGurl’s book. It is quite interesting but I will say I’m focused more on specific, practical approaches than theoretical discussions about teaching creative writing and the utility thereof. I look forward to your response.
I think there are some practical applications that can be drawn from the McGurl. But I’ll focus my response more on actual pedagogy that I’ve actually used in the classroom.
Definitely, definitely.
A few things I believe and my experience has helped me to understand that you can teach (and learn) re: writing… the importance of developing your own writing practice, and the techniques necessary for developing and sustaining such a practice. Such techniques are not confined to writing per se; there are also reading skills (I think “skills” is a little pretentious, but I hesitate to use the term “habits,” even though it feels more immediately appropriate) one needs to acquire. Nuts and bolts? You need to know they are freely rattling around in the toolbox, but you can’t necessarily apply them to each and every instance of writing. Such tools aren’t just implements. They are instruments in the most musical sense of the term. i.e., they are media as well, and they transform whatever expression is “passed through” them. Also, ideas aren’t everything, nor is meaning / significance. Sometimes, we just have to write for the sake of experiencing, and as fully as possible, what it is to be writing.
You can’t! An anyone who does teach it should be ashamed of themself.
I’m not sure to what extent any of it is teachable, even outside of the ‘intangibles’.
I more or less think CW teachers at their best are rich and varied facilitators, working as a mechanism of constraint / discipline on two simple fronts: make the kids read (a lot), make the kids write (a lot, but not as much as they read).
This means being a good teacher of how to make spaghetti so the kids can then go throw it against a wall to see what sticks. So many problems seem to stem in teachers who feel the need to spend overmuch time in the way.
Setting out some platters and being open to good discussions about ways one ‘might’ approach either front is great, but that ‘might’ so often becomes a ‘should’ no matter how much the teacher wants genuinely to be unbiased aesthetically; it’s impossible, but minimizing your foot print is a responsibility I wish more teachers embraced.
I love your questions, your wonderings. I share them, as a teacher of creative writing. Is teaching in this context maybe about “creating optimal circumstances?” Curating an experience? Making time for practice? Teaching (through sharing failures, which are of course, not necessarily failures, but steps towards potential success) endurance? Patience? Given sixteen weeks, do I make a project of teaching something I might call writerly “sustainability?” I don’t know for sure.
Certainly, I know that I help (undergrad) poetry writing students by encouraging and requiring them to read contemporary poetry, which most (not all) of them have not done before. Ever. (Not to diss classical poetry — rather, to acknowledge that students encounter it in other places in our curriculum.) And I suppose the reading could lead to a broadened sense of possibilities for the young writer. Of course, no one needs my permission, or even my curation, to read a bunch of contemporary poetry. And yet.
In lower-level courses, I focus on helping students generate new material by trying new writing strategies — with the hopes that I can reward young writers for doing new things, approaching writing differently — whether that means writing a poem that is NOT about themselves (a radical departure for many of them), or making human, interior conflict (as opposed to kidnapping or home invasion or “crazy road trip”) the driving force of a story. I guess I see my role as a kind of coach — I should get to know where the students are (by reading a lot of their writing and talking to them and listening to them), and guide them to/through opportunities to do things that wouldn’t have occurred to them if they hadn’t signed up. And also, I think it’s my job to foster lots of conversation in class, to take advantage of the energies and aesthetic variety represented by those who sign up/show up. This means sharing work aloud, talking about the readings, helping (forcing) students to ask each other questions, etc.
I can easily put together the list of craft/technique elements I find fairly easy to teach/model. I write assignments tailored to those techniques. But what’s more interesting to me, more troublesome, is the question of what I have to offer (what my students and I have to offer one another, in the social/intellectual space of the classroom) that is distinct from, say, a really good book (or website) focusing on craft and technique.
Oops. Didn’t mean to write/ramble so much. And, yes, I love both the parentheses and the slash. One more thing: I’m interested in learning more about how creative writing (and art, and dance?) teachers make use of imitation — which seems kind of old fashioned pedagogically, but which, for me, was so effective (still is I suppose) as a growing/learning writer. I look forward to reading more comments & the guest posts you mention. :-)
this book is useful: http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2010-fall/poets-teaching.htm
How do you teach creative writing? 1) Don’t do it like the vast majority of MFA teachers, as in an approach where far too many students leave and write the same, producing exposition in exactly the same manner. 2) If workshopping, stress that both you and the fellow students should not dissuade anyone from writing exactly in their own preferred way and that their fellow students don’t have the breadth of background to evaluate…in fact, fuck workshopping…it just kills the creative qualities. 3) Other than certain fundamentals, make it clear that there are several ways to do things and exactly no exact rules to follow. 4) Make your teaching more about inspiring creativity and less about harnessing it…i.e. don’t kill the individual for the capacity of how you think a writer should write. 5) If they read a how-to book by William Gardner, also include one by William Gass…or if they read an example paragraph/book by Hemingway, include one by the likes of Gaddis or Puig or Saramago or Kundera. 6) Essentially, do nothing to induce homogeneity.
Agree, Ryan.
I think one of the major dilemmas in creative writing pedagogy today is the prevalence of well-meaning yet heavy-handed teachers. This is not to suggest that a teacher can’t mark-up an MS heavily, but too often, this is in fact the extent of the instruction–line-by-line editing. “Fixing.” CW teachers are responsible for helping their students think, see, and–yes–live like artists. I firmly believe this and also fully expect people in today’s uber-cynical, too-hip-to-feel climate to take me to task for such beliefs, but oh well. The importance of inspiration is too often overlooked and everything is reduced to “the text” and editing.
Maybe I was lucky as an undergrad, but my first mentor, a man who was well-read in the classics as he was in contemporary literature, spent as much time discussing his love of language, books, and the life of an artist as he did our poems and stories. He told us upfront that talent isn’t as important as obsession and persistence, that anyone can learn “craft,” but the writers who stick have an unstoppable ambition and desire to be heard–they have something to say; they want to walk the line between what’s been done before and making something new. They also aren’t all that interested in “fitting in” (an interesting topic to explore in another post, especially today, with the mass socialization of writers online that is borderline anti-intellectual and more like a large, back-patting fraternity). Anyway, I can’t remember anything I wrote that semester, but I can remember his anecdotes and his ability to discuss a range of writers and works and place them in an historical and aesthetic context that related to us, even as 19,20 year olds. I left his class not wanting to publish a book before 25 and seek validation on Twitter or Facebook (even though social media to that extent didn’t exist at the time), but instead, wanting to read as much as possible, take my time, and cultivate a sustainable, long-term ambition and unique voice–to be in a deep conversation with tradition and the present and write work that might actually change the world. Imagine that?
So, I would say that anyone who wants to teach CW should actively seek to balance textual critique with larger matters of inspiration, morality/ethics–yep, I said it (though I do not subscribe to J. Gardner’s polemics)–and that too often today, the former comes at the expense of the latter.
Also, avoid words like pedagogy.
I like Michael Martone’s approach. I wish I had it on hand, but hopefully, a Bama grad will read my reply to your post and post The Martone Method…
He’s pretty outspoken about the problem’s with the traditional workshop approach.
*Problems
I only have my own (ongoing) MFA experience to go on, but it amazes me how little homogeneity I’ve seen relative to how much people worry about it.
Each of my classmates who are writing what I recognize as a variant of “workshop” fiction was writing it before they got here. Now, after a year or two or three of intense writing and instruction, they’re writing better “workshop” fiction, inasmuch as the instruction has helped them develop their own style like it’s helped me develop mine.
If there’s a homogeneity problem it’s happening not at the grad school level, where anyone good enough to get in has been developing their own technique for years, but much earlier in the writers’ lives, maybe on the publishing or marketing or reading end. (Or on the selection side, in a program different from my own.)
The problem I have with this common argument is that it often assumes that what students submit to workshop is what they really want to write. Also, you qualify your assessment with the term, “workshop fiction.”
Workshop fiction is by its very nature “homogeneous” relative to fiction:
*It almost always eschews genre.
*It favors the short story, even down to matters of length and word counts.
*It favors individual stories without considering how those stories might be part of something larger (re: like a story cycle).
Just because you can locate some variety within these tightly-constructed confines, doesn’t mean that homogeneity isn’t still an issue in most workshops.
What’s the Martone Method?
As a complete non-expert, just someone who was on the student end of a couple of creative writing electives in college, the best thing anyone taught me was how to read better. I kind of ignored the how-to material—don’t tell my professors, but I have a still-in-the-wrapper copy of David Ball’s Backwards and Forwards in my room. But I gained a lot from learning to read plays like a writer (as opposed to reading for pleasure / for an analytic essay / for staging).
Also, I’ve got kinda mixed feelings on writerly advice, but my favorites are:
Read with the eyes of a thief. (Or maybe better: your mom was right. You are what you eat).
If you get stuck, lower your standards and keep going.
I’m not sure I follow—what I’m saying is that what I recognize to be “workshop fiction” in these conversations is written by very few members of the workshop I’m in, not that within the category workshop fiction we’re writing a number of different kinds of stories.
I don’t want to speak too highly of a program I’m a little disappointed in (mostly funding-wise), but there’s been genre and novel excerpts and all kinds of fiction so far, and relatively few stories about middle-aged writers with relationship problems or burying their grandparents etc. If workshop fiction has another wider definition than “boring university-sponsored-journal lit fiction” I’m just not sure how useful it is as a term. If people aren’t writing what they truly want to write in my workshop it’s irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion inasmuch as my point is the writing that’s there is wildly heterogenous. That’s only an anecdote, but I’m only speaking anecdotally.
If your program incorporates genre and the novel, then it’s the exception, not the norm. Consider yourself lucky (funding issues always suck, so you have my sympathies there).
You write:
“If workshop fiction has another wider definition than “boring university-sponsored-journal lit fiction” I’m just not sure how useful it is as a term.”
I agree that people often use the term as shorthand to describe a multitude of writing, but the parameters of the traditional, Iowa method have definitely influenced publishing, and I’ve never understood why so many people get defensive when this undeniable reality is pointed out. It would seem to me that people who care about the longterm sustainability of MFA programs–now that they’re established and accepted within academia (mostly, that is)–would want to acknowledge this problem and do something about it, rather than pretend like it doesn’t exist and that everything in Rome is great. Whenever we have these discussions here, someone comes along and points to some exception, as if it were the norm, when 99% of workshops are super traditional and straight out of the cornfields of Iowa.
I’d say that it took me a few years of teaching creative writing before I really hit my groove. I think the biggest things to teach are: 1) How to live your whole life as a writer – from eavesdropping on the subway to taking time to be bored, imagine, and write every single day. 2) That there are many ways to write and you can do anything if you can get away with it – I like to make sure my syllabus includes some classics, International fiction, experimental stuff, flash fiction, the opening chapters of good novels, young new writers, the early stuff from established writers next to their more celebrated work, etc. 3) That short stories aren’t the same forms as movies or TV (these seem to be the primary way most new writing students seem to experience modern narrative art outside of the classroom). 4) Every single craft tool I teach needs to be balanced with an example that the opposite can also work just fine.
The best book I’ve found for writing classes is “The Method and the Madness” by Alice LaPlante. It’s truly a well-balanced craft book (it’s a good sign that she says you need to show, not tell but there are times when telling is more compelling and a better fit for that moment in the story), and has a lot of great stories in it already so you maybe don’t need to make your students buy an anthology too.
I also like to have my students read a bit of “What It Is” by Lynda Barry. She has this whole philosophy of using your body to write and talks a lot about how most of us lost our drive to create the second we stopped being kids. We all used to draw and write stories in our own voices naturally and easily; what happens to us that that sort of imaginative drive not only stops, but becomes scary?
Method and Madness is amazing–I agree. I’ve yet to come across a better creative writing “textbook.”
I’m not defensive at all about the MFA in general, and I’m not especially concerned about the long-term sustainability of the programs; honestly there are probably too many of them, and inasmuch as they’ve made “literary fiction” more insular and less reader-focused they’re a bad thing.
I’m only saying that my particular workshop has done nothing to stifle creativity or establish a workshop tone in the fashion I was warned about (and worried about before arriving), and that people who worry so much about that should consider looking at other root causes for the homogeneity they perceive. I think the MFA programs are often rounded up as the usual suspects when more complex issues at work, which does everyone a disservice.
Loved reading your reply — found it uplifting (there, I said it!) as a teacher. I’m interested in your choice of the word “mentor.” I’ve long been interested in the differences between a teacher and a mentor (not that they are mutually exclusive states of being). Do you think he _tried_ to mentor you (or was aware of the degree that he was a mentor to you), or was it just a lucky match? Do you remember if others who were his students felt mentored by him? I guess I’m just curious about how those kinds of relationships evolve, outside of, inside of (and in spite of) formal classrooms or workshops.
I teach now myself, and I like that you pointed out my use of “mentor” because it’s actually a distinction that means a great deal to me. Most students who took his class considered him a “mentor” (in other words, I don’t think he picked me to be one of his favorite students, though I was admittedly more serious than the average student and sought him out after class and during office hours).
It’s hard to say (for me, at least) how such relationships evolve because I do think that the best teachers can be provide meaningful mentoring within the workshop that will impact students for the rest of their lives even if the students never see or talk to the teacher ever again.
I think the only requirement for a mentor is that he or she show a clear and passionate desire for student success beyond the actual three or four month semester. There are many workshop teachers who are not mentors because they have tunnel vision, and the students sense this.
“and that people who worry so much about that should consider looking at other root causes for the homogeneity they perceive.”
MFA programs have exploded in recent years–their growth in just 15-20 years is astronomical, to the point where most published short story writers in America have MFA degrees or, at the very least, some amount of post-graduate education in creative writing. Even many informal community workshops take their cue from the traditional Iowa model that was founded by an upper-class Yale grad and led for years by a manwith very rigid (and some might say, classist, tastes). What “root causes” would you suggest we look at the rival the influence of institutionally-supported MFA programs?
Thanks for the Method and Madness recommendation. I am using a textbook I am really not loving this semester and am definitely looking for better options.
I have to say that this was not my experience at all. I recognize this may happen in most programs, but it was not the way things were done at Nebraska where I was actively encouraged to explore genre fiction and fully supported in writing a collection of linked stories.
Thanks for that recommendation. It looks interesting.
Nebraska’s English dept. has always been open-minded and progressive, so I’m not surprised.
Imitation was critical for me when I was in school Old-fashioned doesn’t necessarily mean ineffective. I think it’s a valuable way of working with young writers. This question of what we, as teachers, have to offer is an interesting one because that’s the element of teaching that can hardly be quantified or explained.
It’s a great, great program. I had no idea that every program wasn’t as awesome as UNLs until I met more writers.
Morality/ethics in what sense? I’m curious.
I understand the POV that it might not be teachable but I’m looking beyond that dilemma. The reality is that we are teaching creative writing or at least, MWF at 10 in the morning, I sit in a class that is billed as creative writing and I want to do it well and many other teachers are in the same boat of trying to make sense of how to do it well.
Yes, I really wanted to attend UNL’s PhD program, but they seem to have funding issues (at least when I applied). I got a real sense of interdisciplinar-ity when researching the program. I also liked the grad director at the time, who unfortunately took his own life a few years ago.
I attended in 99-01 and was fortunate enough to be funded. The only reason I didn’t stay for the PhD is because other schools made better offers. I worked with amazing teachers and got to work on a great journal and learned so much about editing and developing relationships with writers and managing a magazine during my time there. You would have been very happy there given many of the things I’ve seen you talk about here.
Mainly, a return to the now old-fashioned idea that literature should serve some sort of purpose beyond itself. What’s interesting is that the idea, on the surface, seems rather old-fashioned and conservative, yet is one that is often expressed by writers from marginalized backgrounds and/or marginalized experiences like myself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmEOylWMdi8
I hope you consider writing something about this and where this seems to be primarily located because that location is interesting. “It taught me what I didn’t want to be.” Great link. Thanks.
Thanks. I’ve touched upon it before in a blog post, but only as part of a larger discussion about MFA programs. I do plan to write about in greater depth, but I’m trying to navigate my set of concerns carefully these days in public because I’m on the job market this year. Unfortunately, there are people out there who think you’re a traitor or something if you criticize a system you are part of.
I actually think the most potent part of the video comes later, between the 3:00-6:00 mark.
Yes. I watched the whole thing and appreciated everything Cisneros had to say.
These is fightin’ words surely, but I sincerely wish many many others did not look to publish before the age of 25, much less 30. Any still around and writing by that age, particularly 30, would be those that had been cultivating their work over a sustained decade, and finally might have something to say.
Well, I’m not saying that there is some magical age upon which someone finally has something to say, but it does seem like the internet has increased the pressure to publish amongst writers in their early to mid-20’s (more publications=more slots, more chatter about who is publishing where and when, etc.). When I was that age in the late 90’s, there was no Duotrope–there was that doorstopper called The Writer’s Market you bought once a year at Barnes & Noble and the Best New American Voices Anthology.
Of course it can be taught. In no other art form do you hear any claims so bold, that the techniques cannot be taught. How many professional musicians never had lessons, how many painters never took a class or had a fellow artist take them under their wing?
There are a myriad of techniques related to prose fiction and there’s no telling how many will be encountered over the course of the semester from the writers in any given workshop.
I see the homogeneity argument as a kind of myth. The writing in the workshop is no more homogenous than that of mainstream publishing, which, if you look more closely, only appears homogenous. A university English program may encourage a particular canon of literature that could appear to be mainstream, but the writers in the program themselves, may accept reject those influences and / or find many other ways to fly.
Something you don’t hear much, is that the teacher is really just a bonus. If they have a personality that encourages creativity, or if they are a living example of rigorous and original work, this is a pretty big deal in and of itself, whether or not they take the time to really give each writer individual attention.
I believe one-on-one work is the fastest way to pick up the most tips, but it’s not really practical, and the writers will learn just as much from each other.
The structure of the workshop creates a kind of peer pressure and unspoken competitiveness that I believe benefits the work and encourages the growth of the artist. As young writers you want to impress the teacher, sure, but you also want the validation of the acceptance of your work by your peers. And you also want to be a better writer than your peers at the same time that you want your peers to wow you and to also be the best they can be. You seek the comradeship of writers you respect, who you feel are also pulling their weight, and you can forge lifelong bonds with writers who will be your best first readers.
As a pro you will have to constantly step it up to get the work recognized and the workshop encourages this same sense of artistic pressure on a smaller scale. It’s something that sticks with you long after you’ve stopped taking workshops. You’ve learned to raise the bar for yourself higher than you would have on your own. But you’ve also been given more tools and a sense of yourself as artist to rise to the challenge with increasing confidence.
[…] am trying to start a conversation about teaching creative […]
This was not my experience at Naropa either, which in many ways was always consciously pushing against the norm . . . however, they still depended too much on the round-robin classroom critique, at ;east more than one would expect. However the students were encouraged and allowed to write from a wild range of angles. I would hope that is still the case.
And I’m so glad Roxane you’ve brought this up, as I am two years into teaching undergrad CW and have been somewhat charged with reinvigorating/reinventing the fiction writing concentration where I teach, which has been an amazing opportunity not unlike stumbling around a familiar house in the dark. I’ll try to put some of my thoughts/impressions together today.
I’m interested in seeing what people have to say about teaching CW. I don’t feel like my MFA taught me very much about writing. Hopefully others came away with a less negative pov.
I’ve been a student in a university-run creative writing continuing education program for the last three years, so the world of MFA programs is quite foreign to me. But I’ll comment anyway. My teacher hasn’t inspired creativity in me or taught me good work habits. What he has done is taught me to engage in critical analysis of my own work. As a writer, I find it very easy to fall into a delusional state because I know what I want my writing to say and I just don’t see how anyone with half a brain can’t grasp it too. Workshopping and reading assignments and other methods employed by my teacher are very slowing helping me to lose those delusions and develop an internal filter that allows my writing to reflect me but also tell a story. So if I were a teacher, I would ask myself: Is everything I am doing driving these lost souls toward a state of critical self-analysis no matter what traditional or nontraditional direction they care to take with their writing?
When you say, “The structure of the workshop creates a kind of peer pressure and unspoken competitiveness that I believe benefits the work and encourages the growth of the artist,” you are simply too pie in the sky for words, but I’ll try. Most young people at that age (even the budding geniuses that they all are, of course) are affected tremendously by peer pressure of the group. Also, very few at that age are well read enough to even adequately offer feedback of any sort. I strenuously disagree with you and put forth that, generally speaking, workshipping hinders the work and discourages the growth of the artist. And, your saying that workshop writing is no more homogenous that USA publishing industry writing is exactly the point, isn’t it?
I took my first workshop class when I was in grad school, but I was not in the MFA program – I was in a literature track. There were about 14 (maybe 15) of us in the class, and I think there were only three of us who weren’t MFA. So my experience is limited. What I remember from that class is that most of the MFA students didn’t need to be told that they could “break rules” or that there was more than one way to do things. But you have to know how to build the wall before you can knock it down, so to speak, and a lot of the writing in that workshop was sloppy because they didn’t have a good basic foundation to start from. They didn’t seem to understand that there was more to it than pretty words or shocking subjects. Part of that, I believe, came from not being particularly well-read. They had studied writing, but not “story.”
My teacher did a great activity in class, and although it seemed very high-school to me at the time, it was helpful for me and very illuminating for some of the others in the workshop. We got to choose a short story, and then we created a visual representation of the structure of the story. (Not the content.) To demonstrate, she used the story “Emergency” and put a radio on the table and turned it on every time a new challenge was introduced into the narrative. The story I chose had a pretty clear three-act structure, so I created a little diorama of rooms and moved action figures through them to show the structure. I was surprised at how many of my classmates were unsuccessful at this, and also at how many of them didn’t appear to understand that stories weren’t just a string of scenes until this activity. In any case, it has stuck with me, and I’ve used a modified high-school appropriate version teaching my own classes.
You didn’t say if you were teaching creative writing majors of MFAs only, so on the assumption that you aren’t, I have this advice – please don’t shortchange the abilities of the students in your classes who are in other programs. In this same class (which overall was a positive experience), I was in the room when one of the MFAs asked the teacher how we were being graded because he was worrying about getting a C, and she told him not to worry about it because she couldn’t grade the way she normally does since there were non-MFAs in the class. She didn’t mean it personally, but it still pissed me off. I wouldn’t have taken the course if I wasn’t up for it, so I resented the implication that I made the class somehow illegitimate. It was the worst “A” I ever got.
Hi April. That visualization exercise sounds interesting. I don’t teach in an MFA program. We have an MA with a creative writing emphasis and students in the grad class are creative writing, composition, or literary studies students. Our undergrad students come from a range of majors and frankly, I don’t really know what most students are majoring in because it doesn’t come up. I expect the same level of work from everyone.
What does it mean to be young and in a writing workshop? Young as a writer, young as an intellectual, or young as a human being? There’s always writers with a good span of age and experience.
And the pressure of the workshop isn’t your typical peer pressure. These are readers and writers assembled in a small room, which is pretty rare. if a writer doesn’t see the value of that, if they don’t think they have something to gain from that insight – it seems to me the ones who don’t want to engage with the workshop are the “budding geniuses.” You want to be a writer but don’t want to be critiqued? Having your work critiqued is damaging or something? I’m not talking about hazing or ego-battles, I’m talking about a wake-up call to reader’s very high expectations. Isn’t a writer much better off for getting a sense of this? These are adults we’re talking about. Adults who have decided they want to make art. So be fucking fearless and don’t be afraid of the crowd. Show us something worthwhile. Dig deep.
If they can walk the walk they are well-read and can offer splendid critiques. If their desire to make art isn’t matched with some competence, this is only damaging if they aren’t patient and honest with themselves about what it takes. And you can say whatever you want about “the system” but the writing workshop affords more freedom and responsibility to its participants than just about any other educational experience.
If that pressure
Sure, there’s plenty to be gained from insight and being critiqued. You’re missing my issue with workshipping. Where we differ is that I believe: 1) Far too many of those teaching are not doing anything other than perpetuating technically solid but uninspired writing (for lack of a better description). 2) Far too many of the fellow students provide only “insight” and “critique” that is ultimately harmful for individualism.
Can you imagine what the fellow students of Joyce, Woolf, Beckett, H. Miller, Burroughs, Kundera, etc. would have had to say if those writers were workshopping in their formative years? I suspect that we might only know of a few of them. If workshops are what you claim, why is the state of modern USA writing so embarrassingly weak? But again, you are in the bubble, so you have to continue puffing the bubble up.
” it seems to me the ones who don’t want to engage with the workshop are the “budding geniuses.” You want to be a writer but don’t want to be critiqued? Having your work critiqued is damaging or something? I’m not talking about hazing or ego-battles, I’m talking about a wake-up call to reader’s very high expectations”
_____________
I have to say that I’ve grown tired of this notion that critique in and of itself is inherently good, that one of the benefits of a workshop for a writer is learning how to develop a tough skin.
When “becoming tougher” becomes some sort of stated outcome of the workshop, there are problems, not because students need to be coddled and told they are precious geniuses, but because the purpose of a workshop is for the writer to receive critique that actually fits what he or she has submitted, when too often, “critique” simply turns into the critic criticizing an aesthetic that’s different from his own; even well-meaning students do this too often, mainly because they’re young and inexperienced, which is why I think “workshops” should be delayed for at least one semester for undergrads.
I’d also argue that there aren’t many rebellious geniuses in workshops because such writers are normalized and forced to conform rather quickly. Writers turning in half-assed, heartless work that’s “not them” is a much greater problem in workshops–much greater. For years, I harbored the insidious belief that the topics I truly wanted to write about were not acceptable, and yes, I blame this on the workshop and the way it conditioned me to self-censor; it’s sort of like sociological studies on race, disability, class where the bias is so strong that the marginalized person begins to self-stigmatize himself and lose confidence and self-esteem in the process. The famed “inner-critic” that the traditional workshop teaches us–the supposed filter–is often quite damaging, esp. for writers from non-traditional backgrounds. I’ve seen it over and over again.
And I do think most students want criticism–even the ones who are a little full of themselves. They want to get better and improve; what they don’t want is someone who clearly doesn’t care about their work to sit across from them in a circle and offer criticism that isn’t serving what they’ve submitted–and teachers leading the workshop often do nothing about this, or they encourage it.
I’m completely disillusioned with this model. I’m actually happy that as a TA, I don’t have to teach any CW this fall and spring, just lit (I’ve taught CW the last two years, fall and spring). I am going to do some serious soul searching over the next year about how to proceed, because I’m not sure I can stick with this model longterm. I guess the only solution is for teachers to find a way to make fun of the model and call it out for what it is while working within it. The best teachers usually find a way to do this.
OK, now I’m really confused.
I can’t teach you to be Virginia Woolf, but I guarantee she learned a lot from the people in her circle. She was surrounded by writers.
The workshop is an educational experience. Any critique leveled at it could easily be aimed at any other discipline. No one is saying we need to stop teaching foreign languages but those teachers are often overbearing and the teaching methods vary from non-existent to strict in the extreme. Am I generalizing about the experience of learning foreign languages in the academy? Is it any different from generalizing about the MFA experience?
If I were to assume, like you, that my students are too young and inexperienced to be well-read, intelligent, and articulate – well, that really would be damaging, wouldn’t it?
And since you see me as representing the institution where I happen to work, let me tell you, unless you are in a well-supported creative writing program / department, not too many people really give a shit about you. In the U research activity is where it’s at, so any fiction writer, poet, or God forbid, playwright, is going to already come from a position well-outside the academy. Nobody is going to keep these young writers from seeking out books that get them excited, or writing the work they want to write, except themselves. I consider it a privilege to be able to teach creative writing, but I work my ass off in order to be able to do so. Writing programs can suck in a lot of ways, but in principle it’s a very good thing.
This does sound disappointing. I agree that developing the tough skin probably shouldn’t be a stated goal of the program. There can be bad ego stuff. I was attacked by other writers repeatedly, sometimes viscously. I don’t really see that as all that helpful to the writing. There are nicer ways to say the work didn’t do much for you.
But then here I am, a little wounded because some asshole took a shit on my book at a literary magazine, and I at least have ways of making sense of that, because I had been through it before. Tough skin is the by-product of being a writer.
I know, it’s already clichee idea, but:
Learn creative writing – and do something completely different. This is the key.
I’m sorry, but if you’re not in favor of people giving their honest opinions as readers, you’re in favor of coddling. I want to know what people really think. Also, I’m mature enough to judge on a case-by-case basis whether to take someone’s comment with a grain/teaspoon/bucket of salt. One teacher told me, halfway through the semester, “You haven’t found your play.” She believed I was strong enough for the struggle ahead. She’s still my favorite mentor.
The other problem is that sometimes it’s difficult to separate questions of aesthetic from questions of quality. My point of view is always mine, and always subjective. If I don’t like my classmate’s play because it has no discernable story and characters make melodramatic confessions without having “earned” them through her properly setting up their motivations, is this just because “my aesthetic” is different from “her aesthetic”? Am I allowed to say anything negative about her play?This is one example from a workshop where we were not really allowed to negatively critique work. The class also had several “budding genius” personality types. In the end, I think the lack of critique hurt people. The class culminated in a public reading of all the plays, with a great cast of local actors. During several of the “budding genius” plays, the audience was laughing at them (in a bad way), shifting in their seats, whispering to each other, and was clearly inattentive.
I’m surprised how much negative feedback this comment has garnered.
I think there’s a myth that people who oppose “the workshop system” like to cling to, that genius grows in solitude, and that contact with others will poison it. Maybe this idea can be traced back to the Romantics.
The problem is that most geniuses didn’t actually work that way. Most artists belonged to some sort of circle. That’s why most cultural output that we value today came from certain places in certain times.
I’m still not sure how I feel about the fact that we’ve formalized the literary circle, brought it into the university (where it is sometimes treated like an extraneous appendage or an interesting housepet), and started using admissions committees and high tuition as gatekeepers. But that is a separate question from whether or not critique benefits the artist, on which I am in solid agreement.
not true. my writing improved tremendously upon experiencing a creative writing workshop
“themself”? Basic English, at least, can be taught.
I’m in favor of people giving their honest opinions, and I’m perplexed why you seem to conflate “readers” with “critics in a writing workshop.” The two aren’t necessarily the same, or interchangeable. I’m afraid you’ve misread or misunderstood my post, as I demand the best out of my students, not as a “reader,” but as an open-minded “critic.” There’s a difference. Nowhere in my post do I advocate criticism that isn’t “negative.”
Oh, I definitely I agree. Thanks for the response!
“The other problem is that sometimes it’s difficult to separate questions of aesthetic from questions of quality. My point of view is always mine, and always subjective. If I don’t like my classmate’s play because it has no discernable story and characters make melodramatic confessions without having “earned” them through her properly setting up their motivations, is this just because “my aesthetic” is different from “her aesthetic”? Am I allowed to say anything negative about her play?”
_____________
Yes, it’s difficult, but it’s the critic’s job to try his or her best to offer criticism that applies to the context of the text and move beyond what he or she “likes” or “dislikes.”
In a fiction workshop, it’s not the job of a workshop to replicate a hypothetical audience of published work because the work under discussion is assumed to be an early draft, otherwise, why workshop it? That’s why it’s called a workshop.
I’m wondering what other programs you think of as falling within this category of exception…? I’m thinking about applying this fall very seriously but I don’t want to wind up somewhere that’s going to belittle me for the genre elements of what I write…
Also, would you tell Nabokov that he should “show, not tell,” even though “Lolita’s” aesthetic depends significantly on “telling”? It’s difficult to answer your question out-of-context because there are probably effective plays with “no discernable story and melodramatic characters.”
Perhaps I am confused on both counts, but…
1) Are you conflating the Bloomsbury Group with any given group of MFA students? If so, you can’t be serious.
2) If you mean by, “unless you are in a well-supported creative writing program / department, not too many people really give a shit about you,” what I think you mean, then you have just confirmed the incestuous back-patting qualities of the system that frankly ought to disgust anyone who cares about literature. This mindset is ruining writing in this country.
If I am just thick-headed and misreading, then please clarify. Otherwise, I’ll assume that you have just confirmed every one of my points.
2) I am feeling a bit defensive because you see me as part of a nefarious system. I was only saying that creative writing, even when it’s in the system, is mostly outside the system. The system argument is whack. Each workshop is a mostly autonomous creature and the discussion is most often democratic. To attack writing programs as “ruining writing in this country” – (?) – I just don’t see it that way.
1) the writing salon is a model that has undoubtedly influenced writing workshops. You seem to want it both ways. You are opposed to the institutionalization of writing, yet, your examples are all right there in the middle, the darlings of the academy. Everyone in the Bloomsbury group went to university and was very well educated. Had there been writing programs, or even English departments, there’s a pretty strong chance they all would have studied there too.
The reason there hasn’t been another Bloomsbury Group is that it is no longer the beginning of the 20th Century. Not that there aren’t brilliant writers anymore but ‘genius’ may be a thing of the past, a construct of Modernism. There have been some powerhouse workshops, though, where several writers who would later become famous were there together.
I think the difference in opinion, at least between me and you/John (and what the two of you seem to be unable to grasp), is that I (and many others) am all for constructive criticism and critique. It’s just that I only see criticism/critique of benefit if it comes from someone who knows more than I do and is open-minded. Also, my empirically-backed experience is (as a non-MFAer) that if I have half a dozen different people read a manuscript critically, all of the MFAers (even from different programs) will comment in exactly the same way (show, don’t tell, scene-work, etc.), make a few good points, totally miss any sense of depth, and be very gatekeeper-ish aesthetically as far as what’s good and what isn’t…but, the non-MFAers (who are mostly literary readers or at least a non-MFA writer) are far more thoughtful, open-minded, and less kneejerk of what always qualifies as aesthetically appropriate. This explains my steadfastness on the issue…it appears fairly strongly to me that the criticism/critique taking place throughout MFA programs ultimately serves to keep as many as possible in the box. This may not be the desired result, but is the fruit produced. This fruit is also born out by most USA modern published writing. Or, you could just read what someone actually from the system has to say, though surely most of you already have: http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/2008/08/really-long-post-about-mfa-programs-aka.html
[…] by Roxane over at HTMLGIANT she posed the question How the Hell do We Teach Creative Writing? I have opinions about this but […]
Svatava, pardon if I’m incorrect, but assuming from your name you are Czech, do you feel MFA workshops would improve the writing of Bohumil Hrabal and Kundera, to name a few?
“Everyone in the Bloomsbury group went to university and was very well educated. Had there been writing programs, or even English departments, there’s a pretty strong chance they all would have studied there too.”
There is a difference between being educated and being indoctrinated as a writer. “Pretty strong chance” doesn’t cut it because there weren’t and they didn’t. It’s as much as an extension for me to say that if Woolf had gotten an MFA presently, she’d instead be writing like Egan or Franzen…might be true, but I’m not speculating, you are.
And, again…I think the system has good intentions but bears weak fruit.
Probably not, because he did it so darn well. As did the single-voice narrator in Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which gave me chills when I finished reading it the other day. Nor would I tell Italo Calvino that Invisible Cities should contain a narrative. Sarah Kane’s plays contain melodramatic characters, but also some discernable story, and a world full of fantastic poetry and metaphor.
But that’s exactly why I think the separation of my personal reaction and my critical reaction is so difficult. In her case, I was trying to give feedback that fit the aesthetic aspirations of the play—it was about the emotional relationships between three people in an ordinary setting surrounding some extreme behaviors, so I thought that invoking the school of psychological realism was probably appropriate.
I’ve actually not read that one, though I followed the Mark McGurl/Elif Batuman debate. The name of that blog is fabulous, BTW.
I also have to confess (as my original comments on this post reveal, though they’re lost somewhere down the thread) that I’m not really an MFA person. I’m a prospective MFA person, but really, I just got out of college and will probably wait 5+ years before applying. My rose-tinted glasses for MFA programs are mostly extrapolation from having had good experiences in university-based writing workshops. The workshops probably followed typical American workshop methodology, but they were not filled with “MFA people,” who for all I know might be from a different phylum.
All I know is that the workshop and critique process did help me grow as a writer. Overall, I had classmates who were smart, well-read (sometimes to a fault), and perceptive. It helped me hear what my writing sounded like in other people’s heads. Also, sometimes the process of getting critiques on your work outside of workshops is a slower and more difficult process (read: I owe two friends critiques on a bunch of short stories and a play, and I’m about three months late. Oops. I am a terrible, terrible friend.)
I guess I had always assumed (or hoped) that the workshops in MFA programs would continue to be like this.
I’ve actually not read that one, though I followed the Mark McGurl/Elif Batuman debate. The name of that blog is fabulous, BTW.
I also have to confess (as my original comments on this post reveal, though they’re lost somewhere down the thread) that I’m not really an MFA person. I’m a prospective MFA person, but really, I just got out of college and will probably wait 5+ years before applying. My rose-tinted glasses for MFA programs are mostly extrapolation from having had good experiences in university-based writing workshops. The workshops probably followed typical American workshop methodology, but they were not filled with “MFA people,” who for all I know might be from a different phylum.
All I know is that the workshop and critique process did help me grow as a writer. Overall, I had classmates who were smart, well-read (sometimes to a fault), and perceptive. It helped me hear what my writing sounded like in other people’s heads. Also, sometimes the process of getting critiques on your work outside of workshops is a slower and more difficult process (read: I owe two friends critiques on a bunch of short stories and a play, and I’m about three months late. Oops. I am a terrible, terrible friend.)
I guess I had always assumed (or hoped) that the workshops in MFA programs would continue to be like this.
I’ve actually not read that one, though I followed the Mark McGurl/Elif Batuman debate. The name of that blog is fabulous, BTW.
I also have to confess (as my original comments on this post reveal, though they’re lost somewhere down the thread) that I’m not really an MFA person. I’m a prospective MFA person, but really, I just got out of college and will probably wait 5+ years before applying. My rose-tinted glasses for MFA programs are mostly extrapolation from having had good experiences in university-based writing workshops. The workshops probably followed typical American workshop methodology, but they were not filled with “MFA people,” who for all I know might be from a different phylum.
All I know is that the workshop and critique process did help me grow as a writer. Overall, I had classmates who were smart, well-read (sometimes to a fault), and perceptive. It helped me hear what my writing sounded like in other people’s heads. Also, sometimes the process of getting critiques on your work outside of workshops is a slower and more difficult process (read: I owe two friends critiques on a bunch of short stories and a play, and I’m about three months late. Oops. I am a terrible, terrible friend.)
I guess I had always assumed (or hoped) that the workshops in MFA programs would continue to be like this.
I believe you–like I said, it’s difficult for me to assess without having read her work myself.
Vlastně, nejsem češka, ale jmenuji se Svatava C. jenom na internetu. To je literarní vtip.
Actually, I’m not Czech, Svatava C. is a pseudonym I just use on the internet. It’s a literary joke based on “The Story of King Candaules” by Jiří Kratochvil. If I don’t go the MFA route, I could probably get an education in good writing by studying Czech-English translation. I currently speak some Czech and will be improving it, immersion-style.
Bohumil Hrabal I would absolutely not change. I think that sometimes there’s a conception that workshopping a piece is like ironing a shirt (maybe because that’s often what happens). But from what I’ve heard about Hrabal’s writing/revision process, he would take the shirt, crumple it up, stomp on it, maybe spill beer on it, and this also in the service of making it a better shirt.
What I’m trying to say is, just because something has a rough feel doesn’t mean it has to be workshopped into smoothness, and just because something has a polished feel doesn’t mean it isn’t deeply flawed as a piece of art.
My feelings about Milan Kundera are more complicated. When I first read TULOB in high school, I loved it. When I read it for a second time after taking some playwriting workshops, I hated it for its compulsion to spell every bit of theme out, for the way the author-narrator stepped out onto the proscenium every fifteen minutes to quote Nietzsche and demonstrate his contempt for his audience. Yes, I know this is my workshop-bred prejudices showing, what of it. When I read that it-book of the year, Freedom, I realized that TULOB contributed in a lot of ways the way I understood every instance of shit, kitsch, freedom, and obligation in that book, and so I grudgingly admitted to liking it again. I also really enjoyed The Joke, which has a very different narrative style from TULOB, split between four very distinct narrators.
It should be noted that Milan Kundera attended FAMU in the screenwriting department and later returned to teach, which makes him the Czech equivalent of someone steeped in the MFA system.
Dobry den. And thanks for your thoughtful post. I would imagine that Hrabal spilled a lot of beer on the shirt. You got my point, certainly, that Hrabal’s individualism and Kundera’s drumming home theme until the drumhead breaks both (in my mind) demonstrate characteristics that would be workshopped clean and stricken in the US. I should have figured you’d know that Kundera attended school for writing and find the flaw in that example, although I’d take a writing curriculum at the Charles University over anywhere in this country. Joshua Cohen spent some time in Prague, if I remember correctly.
Dobry den. And thanks for your thoughtful post. I would imagine that Hrabal spilled a lot of beer on the shirt. You got my point, certainly, that Hrabal’s individualism and Kundera’s drumming home theme until the drumhead breaks both (in my mind) demonstrate characteristics that would be workshopped clean and stricken in the US. I should have figured you’d know that Kundera attended school for writing and find the flaw in that example, although I’d take a writing curriculum at the Charles University over anywhere in this country. Joshua Cohen spent some time in Prague, if I remember correctly.
As for how MFA programs might have changed Hrabal or Kundera…Kundera already strikes me as being pretty MFA-friendly. He has a highly polished style that’s also cheekily meta-literary. I’d be interested in hearing from some of the MFA people about how that world actually perceives him.
I think Hrabal would have gotten praise on his use of an unreliable narrator, the self-contained/self-referential structure of I Served the King of England, and the visual richness of his scenes (he’s been adapted to film very successfully, as you probably know). He might have gotten flak for the rough and run-on quality of his writing, but it’s just as likely that the Faulkner-loving crowd would have told him to go with it.
In other words, I don’t think either of them would have been “broken” by an MFA program. The FAMU institute where Kundera got his education was also the incubator of all the great writers and directors of the Czech New Wave, none of whom (I think) felt particularly embarrassed* that they had gotten a formal education in their craft.
*There’a a pride thing that I can’t quite articulate that seems to go with the anti-MFA movement, as though one is a “realer” writer if one didn’t “have to” go to an MFA program to “be taught how” to write. I don’t get the sense that this is the attitude Europeans have toward their arts academies. Then again, they haven’t had the proliferation of MFA programs that we have, so schools like FAMU tend to be few, tuition-free, and hella hard to get into.
I’m not up on the McGurl/Batuman fuss. Although it is a pain, yes, to get people to read your work, I heartily recommend that you do so with every well-read non-writing student person you can. And, you could do no worse than translating Josef Slejhar’s works (Kure melancholik, etc.) into English at long last. I plead for that.
And maybe there is a way to separate visceral response from critical response—just because it’s difficult for me doesn’t mean that other people can’t do it well.
I haven’t gone back to Lolita in a while, but it seems like it would be hard to argue that Nabokov is telling rather than showing; rather, he is revealing the speciousness of this opposition, that it is like the shapes in Flatland trying to describe a sphere who drops in on them, i.e. using two-dimensional language to describe something with more dimensions than that language grasps.
“Show, don’t tell,” is so limiting though–because the phrase implies that telling is somehow bad and lesser than showing. I’m stealing this from LaPlante’s “Method and Madness” (off the top of my head), but “telling” is just another word for “narration,” and showing, “dramatization.” The phrase is often misapplied by teachers who really mean to tell students to make their telling [narration] more interesting, like Nabokov’s in ‘Lolita.’
Narration can obviously contain specific details and sensory language yet still not be considered dramatization.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you deserve to hear the truth–most programs are not welcoming of genre or even work with “genre elements” (though that’s sort of hard to define). However, if you do your research carefully, I’m sure you can find some good fits for your work–you’ll just have to be more careful than the average applicant.
Alabama houses the Fairy Tale Review and has Kellie Wells and Michael Martone on its faculty; both seem pretty open-minded.
Yes, I think I grasp the distinction as you are (or LaPlante is) defining it. I think typically when the mantra is recited it means what you are suggesting, that the narration simply isn’t interesting, or isn’t subtle. In fact, it’s that the telling isn’t showing enough, if that makes sense–enough blindness, self-delusion, penetrating insight, and generally some combination of these. Obviously Humbert wouldn’t fall into this deficiency. I will have to take a look at that LaPlante book based on the numerous nods it’s getting here.
I think
it’s important to remember that creative writing is not only offered to funded
MFA students in America. In all this talk about “MFA programs,” people often forget that there are more undergrad CW
majors in American than MFA students, and that CW is now a staple across
undergrad curriculums in today’s English departments. ost American colleges
and universities today offer undergrad coursework in CW, so while the funded
MFA student might survive his or her workshop experience, the 18 or 19 year old
kid who is already going against his parents’ wishes (“you should’ve
majored in business) might indeed be unnecessarily broken by a bad teacher. In many
cases, the funded MFA student already has the luxury of knowing that at least
someone out there believes in him or her, which is not always the case with the
18 or 19 year-old sophomore CW major at Flyover State U.
Geeze, I hate how anything pasted from MS word into Disqus ends up looking like total shit. Sorry for the formatting.
[…] This is a response to Roxane’s recent post, “How the Hell Do We Teach Creative Writing?” […]
Ellen Gilchrist has a wonderful book on the subject, she is teaching creative writing in Arkansas. She in turn learned from Eudora Welty at Milsaps in Jackson, MS. My friend Luke Lampton the Editor of a local newspaper and the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Assoc. Learned from Welty as well, and Willie Morris, Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy. Foote and Percy had as young men made the pilgrimage to Oxford to visit with Faulkner. My point being that excellence in writing begets excellence in writing. The concept of teacher as role model is an old one but one that has value.
[…] here. Thoughts? Should this all be in one post, or should the literary roundup be its own thing? Roxane Gay – How the Hell Do We Teach Creative Writing? and in response, AD Jameson – Teaching Creative […]