~swing batter batter...

The reading our class did for this week’s blog discussion came from Released Into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing by Wendy Bishop in which we read the first three chapters. I have to say there was so much material that my brain is now saturated, and I am dripping knowledge, about teaching creative writing workshops and classes, all over my desk.

Chapter one talks about the expectations of creative writing classes, the teachers, and the students and how these expectations have developed through the years. One of the students discussed, John, talks about his experience in a high school creative writing class. In this class he had a teacher who focused not only on the text, but also on allowing the students the freedom to write responses using creative writing techniques (4). For example, John and his friend were allowed to create a mock newspaper to show what they had learned from the text (4).

I thought back on my own experience, in my tenth grade high school creative writing class, in which we were not allowed such freedom. My classmates and I were not given the option to explore techniques that interested us. Instead, we were told what and how to write. I can see a huge difference in my abilities as a writer now verses then. I tend to agree with Bishop’s research that the writing classroom should be a place where writers of all levels should be guided to discover their strengths and weaknesses, a place were the teacher is just as much a student as the students (1-14).

Chapter two was a bit harder to summarize, but the one point that grabbed my attention, above all the other information, was the idea of asking your students to define or explain what their writing process is like. The four that Bishop brings up is actually from Barbara Tomlinson: ‘writing is cooking’, ‘writing is mining’, ‘writing is gardening’, and ‘writing is hunting or fishing’ (24).

This list got me to thinking about my own method of writing, and I decided that right now mine would be ‘writing is playing softball/baseball’. Every fundamental element that I practice on a daily basis, such as plot, characterizations, world building, scene development, and the mechanics like grammar, sentence structure, and point of view, come into play when I put pen to paper. The elements that I practice, study about, and practice some more, help me to hit the ball, run the bases, and eventually score. Just like my husband and I tell our kids. If you want to get better at something, you have to put in the work, time, and practice to reach your goal.

Chapter three talks about the different types of class modes on page 44. What I found interesting as I read about these, was that every creative writing class I have taken in college has had some variation of these built into their structure. A creative writing teacher does not only have to use one type. They can mix it up based on how their classes responded to each mode. I like this because it allows freedom of choice. Without the freedom to customize the class structure, you run the risk of losing some of your students.

I am probably a bit bias, about the last point I would like to make, but I feel it is important. I noticed throughout the reading that references were made about students going to their college Writing Centers. I feel that this is an important step in the writing process that seems to be overlooked by writers of all levels. We not only need to workshop our pieces with our peers in class, but we have peers in the Writing Center, fellow Creative Writing/Writing Majors and Minors, who can help us develop our material before it ever gets to the classroom workshop.