Thoughts on creative writing classes

[xiphias]

So, matociquala posted about how she flunked Creative Writing twice, once in high school and once in college. And papersky mentioned that she also did badly in her Creative Writing classes.

I think they ought to track down their Creative Writing teachers, wave their collective awards and book contracts at he teachers, and gloat shamelessly, but they both have too much class for that. Well, papersky has too much class for that, anyway.

Anyway, I was thinking about MY creative writing classes in high school, and how badly they let me down. See, my classes were good. And I did well in them. And they taught me useful things.

Clearly, that's why I'm not a professional writer.

I'm really embarrassed that I can't remember my creative writing teacher's name right now -- I remember her face and her personality perfectly well, and her name will come to me some time after I hit post. Hell, I remember her lessons. And use them. She was really, really good, and loved what she did. I do remember my other favorite English teacher's name: Arthur Foisy, who, I just discovered upon going to my high school's website, is now a house dean.

The Creative Writing class was offered to seniors, and was split fifty-fifty between students who were honors-track and looking for an interesting elective-type class, and seniors who had flunked English at least once and needed to pass an extra English class to graduate. You needed to pass four years of English to get your diploma. Most folks did this by taking the normal four years of English, but, if you flunked one, or, for that matter, wanted to graduate in three years instead of four, you needed to double up. Your two main choices for doubling up were Creative Writing and Journalism.

This split helped both the CW and the Journalism classes immensely. Frankly, there weren't that many classes where honors/AP students and folks who flunked English WOULD learn together, and the dichotomy helped.

If I write essays competently, it's her fault. Hers and Mr. Foisy's, really.

Lucile Burt -- that's her name.

They both love literature and poetry -- reading it and creating it -- although Mr. Foisy preferred reading and criticism, and Ms. Burt preferred creating it.

But, see, they believed that EVERYONE could write and create, and probably should. And you didn't have to write and create for publication. I mean, you COULD publish, and that was fantastic if you did. But even if you never had any intention to publish anything, you'd still benefit from learning how to put a story, an essay, and a poem together, and from learning how to take them apart again.

I never had any intention to publish anything. Still don't.

Lis, for that matter, majored in Creative Writing in college, and did well at it. And earned an "A" in her high school class.

And, after college, she didn't write a word of fiction for ten years. Now she's started writing fanfic, but, again, she has no intention of going pro.

So, clearly -- if you want to be a successful professional author, you have to flunk Creative Writing.

Comments

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that most such art classes don't necessarily correlate to future professional successes.

I did well in all of my writing classes except the fiction writing class I took, because I discovered that I couldn't come up with a sustainable idea that would carry anything longer than a poem.

Then the poetry just kind of went away one day and never came back. Never did publish anything.

Whereas I always did indifferently in the art classes I had in highschool, and I've actually sold drawings and jewelry, so there you go.

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

I think you may have heard about how I got a horrible math education basecly up until college when I decided that I was damn well going to get into the thing that was hardest for me (that was part of the reaosn anyway). So I think that may have something to do with it as well. I got published as a poet when I was in HS. So I also majored in math to try to take my poetry places it had never been. I am still trying to figure out if I succeeded in this endevor.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Andy Duncan is amazing. He has a degree in Creative Writing, and yet he can write creatively.

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it's hard to "teach."

The people who learn the most are the ones who push themselves... who take all the risks, and do things the wrong way around. Like, suppose you have an assignment about how it's always important to be gramatically correct, or that words like "very" and "really" don't heighten the effect of an adjective, but deaden it.

The kid who's really learning about the proper use of grammatical correctness is the kid who uses "ain't" in dialog to give the imaginary speaker a more distinctive voice and character.

The kid who's really learning about the second one is the one who writes an essay about how (some) schoolwork deadens interest in the subject; and who underscores the point by "deadening" the voice of the essay's narrator by overusing words like "very" and "really."

These are also not the kids who are getting A's. Taking a lot of risks means making a lot of mistakes, and, usually, those mistakes translate into bad grades. But in the end you learn how not to make mistakes, and you'll end up a better writer.

The same holds true for the other kinds of writing done in High School. I mean, how many of us are professional book critics or essayists or debaters?

Kiralee

[papersky.livejournal.com]

To be specific, the person I was bitching about was an ordinary English teacher to whom I foolishly showed a story I was writing at the time.

I've never taken a Creative Writing class, and never been to a school that offered any and by the time I was old enough to do so in evening classes if I'd wanted to, I was already too traumatized to want to.