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This is in response to some discussion between ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ithiliana and cathexys over in ithiliana's journal. There are several posts from earlier this week.
Workshopping in comp has been a great success or an astounding failure. Likeithiliana said, comp students have to be there, unlike the majority of creative writing students. At my one school, my officemate (who teaches creative writing) petitioned the university to make her class a W class. W = writing intensive. All students need to have one W course before graduating. So what she intended as a reward for her students who did the work for a W course resulted in people talking the class to fulfill an obligation, and that did make a difference in students' motivation to craft stories.
The workshopping worked best for me when combined with mandatory group journaling online. Students started hanging out online, responding to each other's posts like we do in LJ; then they started coming to class early to discuss papers. Even though the class was an obligation, they felt invested in and obligated to their groupmates to participate.
One thing that I like about approaching comp as a writer is that students have the sense that I'm in it with them. That I'm grappling with the same processes they are in my own writing. By talking about challenges I face in researching, synthesizing, composing, formatting, etc., they're often relieved, because they too believe that papers come in a flash of inspiration from above rather than through the tedious and unglamorous process of revision. In fact, last semester, a student who thought she deserved an A in my class instead of an A- told me that she deserved better than her classmates because they went to the writing center and had a tutor help them with their work and she did hers alone.
I'll admit when I was younger, I was probably a lot like her. Umm, that would be respect to the flash of inspiration thinking. But the more fiction I write, the more I revise, and the more I revise my creative writing, the more I revise my critical writing.
A few months back I was talking to my officemate and also I think toithiliana about approaching creative and critical writing differently. My initial reaction was that my processes were entirely different. Though I realize now that isn't true at all. The earliest stories I wrote had detailed plot outlines and character sketches. I had notes about themes and symbols. This was rather like how I wrote papers: I drew up a blueprint and then created from it.
The problem was that didn't work for fiction. Sure, I wrote based on my notes, but the stories I wrote were dreadful. They looked like stories; if dissected, one could find the elements of story in them, but they were soulless. Empty. In a way, I was starting stories as if I was a critic looking back and analyzing what was there. I began with the end very firmly in mind.
Then I read Stephen King's On Writing and had an epiphany. When King talked about writing being like archeology and excavating character and story as he went along, the metaphor just resonated in me. I threw away reams of notes and let the story grow up around the characters more organically. I began uncovering what I needed to know as I was writing. Having all that possibility waiting to be realized was liberating for me. Of course, it meant a commitment to revisions and a letting go of the lightning strike of genius ideal.
That, in turn, has affected the way I write nonfiction. Instead of writing to argue, I write to answer and grapple with questions, and then at the end, I look back over what I've discovered and ask how it all fits together or how it is significant. I discover what I have to say by saying it.
ithiliana and cathexys over in ithiliana's journal. There are several posts from earlier this week.Workshopping in comp has been a great success or an astounding failure. Like
ithiliana said, comp students have to be there, unlike the majority of creative writing students. At my one school, my officemate (who teaches creative writing) petitioned the university to make her class a W class. W = writing intensive. All students need to have one W course before graduating. So what she intended as a reward for her students who did the work for a W course resulted in people talking the class to fulfill an obligation, and that did make a difference in students' motivation to craft stories.The workshopping worked best for me when combined with mandatory group journaling online. Students started hanging out online, responding to each other's posts like we do in LJ; then they started coming to class early to discuss papers. Even though the class was an obligation, they felt invested in and obligated to their groupmates to participate.
One thing that I like about approaching comp as a writer is that students have the sense that I'm in it with them. That I'm grappling with the same processes they are in my own writing. By talking about challenges I face in researching, synthesizing, composing, formatting, etc., they're often relieved, because they too believe that papers come in a flash of inspiration from above rather than through the tedious and unglamorous process of revision. In fact, last semester, a student who thought she deserved an A in my class instead of an A- told me that she deserved better than her classmates because they went to the writing center and had a tutor help them with their work and she did hers alone.
I'll admit when I was younger, I was probably a lot like her. Umm, that would be respect to the flash of inspiration thinking. But the more fiction I write, the more I revise, and the more I revise my creative writing, the more I revise my critical writing.
A few months back I was talking to my officemate and also I think to
ithiliana about approaching creative and critical writing differently. My initial reaction was that my processes were entirely different. Though I realize now that isn't true at all. The earliest stories I wrote had detailed plot outlines and character sketches. I had notes about themes and symbols. This was rather like how I wrote papers: I drew up a blueprint and then created from it.The problem was that didn't work for fiction. Sure, I wrote based on my notes, but the stories I wrote were dreadful. They looked like stories; if dissected, one could find the elements of story in them, but they were soulless. Empty. In a way, I was starting stories as if I was a critic looking back and analyzing what was there. I began with the end very firmly in mind.
Then I read Stephen King's On Writing and had an epiphany. When King talked about writing being like archeology and excavating character and story as he went along, the metaphor just resonated in me. I threw away reams of notes and let the story grow up around the characters more organically. I began uncovering what I needed to know as I was writing. Having all that possibility waiting to be realized was liberating for me. Of course, it meant a commitment to revisions and a letting go of the lightning strike of genius ideal.
That, in turn, has affected the way I write nonfiction. Instead of writing to argue, I write to answer and grapple with questions, and then at the end, I look back over what I've discovered and ask how it all fits together or how it is significant. I discover what I have to say by saying it.
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From:
no subject
your post was really interesting, and i liked your description of the group journaling...ithiliana, i'm not sure if you spoke with our mutual odd acquaintance about that, but when i met him, he presented on online inclusions in the comp classroom...fascinating stuff...i love the lj idea, b/c they're doing it anyway...why not use that...
[OT: i made a buffy reference today in class and not a *single* person had ever seen buffy...i told them they watched too little tv *g*]
your description of your creative writing resonated very strongly with me...i guess i really thought on some unconscious level that it *was* inspiration and creative genius rather than craft, ability, and hard work...and i can totally see us academics writing ass backwards...then again, i actually do like the university novel *g*
From:
no subject
But after the resulting file is saved and proper offerings left for the gods of art and inspiration, your still left with the raw diamonds (diamonds if you're lucky; quartz if you're not) that need to be cut and faceted and polished to bring out their lustre and fire.
To be honest, I'm nervous about posting in virgule--though I read it all the time and I'm enjoying the discussion. I'm so theory-impaired I'm afraid I won't have much to say.
Although you do have several posts there that I've been meaning to answer...
From:
no subject
virgule...please come out and play...esp. if you answer to older posts practically noone will see except the person you're talking to...then again, if you like high profile you could always *post* and relieve ithiliana and myself there a little *g*