Nervous About Teaching Creative Writing.

Tonight I’m teaching my first Creative Writing class at our local community college. It’s a continuing education program so I won’t be grading papers or scoring tests. It’s purely for people who are interesting in learning about being better writers.

I’m a bit nervous because, while I’ve taught a couple of college courses in the past and given writing workshops, I’ve never taught a course on Creative Writing.

To be sure, I can offer advice on the mechanics of writing. How you can go about developing characters that are interesting and memorable. I can show ways to create a protagonist who is relatable. I can talk about how you should “show” rather than “tell”. I can offer my thoughts on plot structure and even a few tricks about plot twists.

We can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of narrative viewpoint and how to write believable dialogue.

I’ll suggest that they read aloud what they write. It’s a great way to “hear” what’s been rattling around in their heads and then hammered out onto their laptops.

I’ll let them know that often it’s a good idea to leave your manuscript in a drawer and walk away from it for a few days or even a week or two. Then when you’re ready to write a revision, open the drawer and you’ll have a fresh set of eyes critiquing it.

But what I’d like them to do, more than anything, is to bring in some of their works in progress and read selected passages from them aloud to the class. I’m hoping the feedback they get will help them become stronger writers.

I’ve taken creative writing classes and was scared out of my wits to read what I’d written to a room full of people. Even to this day, I can speak to an audience about my books and my thoughts on writing, but reading from my novels still makes me nervous.

But the great thing is, in a creative writing class, you’re in a room full of people who share your passion. Everyone there has a joy for writing.

So, I think I can do a good job helping them with the mechanics of writing. But can someone teach creativity?

I’ve read articles that say that it can be taught and some that say that it can’t. There are exercises that can help strengthen someone’s creativity. But as an adult (and all my students at adults), unless you are already endowed with it, is it really possible to suddenly grow creativity if you don’t already have it?

Tonight, I’m going to ask each student what they hope to get out of the class, who their favorite writers are, and tell us about their ‘work in progress’? And if they tell me they don’t have a WIP, I’m going to have to ask them, “Why the hell not?”

Now, I’ll end this blog with three quotes:

“It aint’ whatcha’ write, it’s the way atcha’ write it.”—Jack Kerouac

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”—Ernest Hemingway

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do for them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”—Dorothy Parker

More Writers on Writing, or Misery Loves Company

I'm having trouble with my work in progress. I'm always having trouble with my work in progress, whatever novel that may be and whenever I am working on it. I was moaning to myself about it recently, as I tend to do, when it occurred to me that when it comes to writing, I'm quite the whiney little creature and have been from the beginning. I think writing is difficult. The reason I think so is because I can never get my stories to turn out on the page as wonderfully as they are in my head, so I just keep whittling and trying this and trying that. Consequently I'm a slow writer, especially compared to many many of my friends and colleagues who shall remain nameless because I am eaten up with envy.

You'd think after ten books I'd have figured out that eventually I will make the appropriate choices and everything will work out. But no, I live in fear that this is the book that's going to defeat me at last. So when I get into this tiresome state of mind, it helps me to remember that far more successful authors than I have also wallowed in doubt, and yet the muses somehow triumph.

Allow me to share a few of the words of wisdom I have recently uncovered which have given me hope, perspective, and comfort about the art:

I like that no less a luminary than Thomas Mann said that, "a writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people." Right on, Brother Thomas.

My new book will be set in the 1920s, so during my research I'm continually coming across quotes by Dorothy Parker. Most of her genius quips have to do with other aspects of life than writing, (one I particularly identify with is, "I've never been a millionaire but I know I would be just darling at it.") but anyone who knows me knows that one of my writing mantras is, "I hate writing. I love having written."

Anne Lamott's book on writing, Bird by Bird, is also a lovely essay about life. But she does look at the craft of writing with an unsentimental eye when she says, "Writing is easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat." However she does give me hope when she notes that, ""big sloppy imperfect messes have value."

Another of my favorites is Somerset Maugham, who said, "The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected," which ought to give hope to anyone going through the agony of trying to get published. Rejection after rejection still doesn't mean you aren't good. Sadly if you want to know what to do about it, Maugham hits the nail on the head with, "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." So good luck.

But you finally struggle through and get the book written, you persevere through rejection and find a publisher, and after all your work and suffering your book is released into the wide world and your labor of love is out of your hands at last. And then? I'll let journalist Murray Kempton have the last word:

"A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded."