Essay topic 2: Overall description of your learning experience in LITR 3731 Creative Writing and its potential applications to your writing / teaching career.

Rachel Davis

Am I A Creative Writer?

I walked into the first day of Creative Writing this semester full of anxiety. Although I am an avid reader, and thoroughly enjoy writing, I was concerned that my flaws as a creative writer would be immediately brought to the surface under the critique of a college level professor and peers. I have never struggled to make A’s on any type of research or school oriented writing assignment. My love of words, expression, and communication seem ideal for any person interested in creative writing. My goal in taking this course, however, was to expand my writing abilities to include forms other than academic.

After learning that the class would be formatted around workshops and draft exchanges, my anxiety only heightened at the thought of my work being directly and openly scrutinized by all my peers. There is a certain comfort in the private, and usually silent, exchange of writing assignments between a teacher and their student. It’s easy to assume you will simply be another faceless author in a mass of students for any teacher who has to read and grade 50 research midterms. So, the newfound idea of sharing my writing aloud in front of everyone was unbelievably daunting. However, as the semester progressed I was pleasantly surprised and relieved as all my initial fears were washed away in the positive, productive atmosphere of our weekly sessions. As I mentioned in my previous essay, the workshop and draft exchange experiences were amazing for me as a writer and as a student. I learned to overcome my fears of public speaking, and in turn developed a newfound confidence in my abilities as a writer.

While the workshop and draft exchange interactions were my favorite part of the class, I really enjoyed learning the technique of creative writing. My previous perception of creative writing was very liberal. Somehow, I thought that the label “creative writing” was all encompassing. In other words, if someone wrote something that was not specifically for an assignment, it could be considered creative writing. Creative writing seemed, to me, to be essentially a form of personal expression, not necessarily intended for public consumption. Our discussions on the differences between popular and literary forms of poetry and fiction immediately squashed that idea. In developing the two different sides of popular and literary fiction or poetry, I was able to see how much of the world around us really is filled with examples of creative writing.

The most important thing I gained from this course is that there is a certain organization and technique to producing true, interesting creative pieces. The textbook Three Genres was crucial to developing my understanding of the technique in writing both poetry and fiction pieces. Stephen Minot did an excellent job in creating a resource for writers that explicitly and directly shows the different aspects of forming well-written poetry or fiction pieces. It was vital to the success of all students in this course to rely on the assigned readings. Every chapter or story we were assigned directly correlated, in some way, to each of our pieces, no matter how different they may have been. Using this text refined my technical skills as a writer, and I found that I could apply some of those skills outside of creative writing.

During the section on poetry, I relied on the Minot text to teach me everything I thought I knew about poetry. I’ve always enjoyed writing poetry for personal expression, but never considered some of the technical aspects of creating readable poetry. I found that chapter 7, From Lines to Stanzas, was the most useful resource for formatting poetry. I decided, based on this chapter, to attempt metered poetry instead of free-verse to give myself an extra little challenge. Plus, somehow I thought that if I started writing free-verse, my emotions would start pouring out uncontrollably and it would all get too personal to share with the class. Chapter 7 was helpful because it gave directions and outlines for writing a multitude of different types of metered poetry. The easy to understand diagrams and explanations of rhyme schemes made it much easier to develop a skeleton for the poem, which I could go back and fill in with content.

I found it interesting that chapter 8 of the text was titled Free-Verse Patterns. This totally threw me off because my previous notion of free-verse was that it was formed as the name implied, in verses free of the constraints of specified technique. However, as I worked through the chapter, I realized that while free-verse poetry does not have meter or stanza forms, there are technical issues that have to be considered when creating this type of poetry. For example, visual and auditory patterns are important to consider when writing free-verse. I never realized the impact that spacing, line indentation, or punctuation use could have upon a free-verse poem. This idea was firmed up for me when we workshopped Christina Holmes’ piece “The Witch.” I really enjoyed her use of visual patterns to emphasize certain aspects of the poem and seeing that technique for myself made me realize its power in the overall understanding of the piece.

One of my favorite parts of working through the poetry pieces in this class was seeing how brave so many of my classmates were. Many of the poems seemed very personal, but were beautifully executed as to not give too much away. Being able to sit and talk to the authors during the workshop was an added bonus, because as a reader, I was able to get an inside look at where the idea of the poem originated, the point of the poem according to the author, and often how that differed from the interpretations of the piece by myself and others in the class. In the same respect, I was always very excited to get to class during the fiction workshops. This was when I felt I could really see where each student’s imagination and motivation were at. The level of talent in our class was really exposed during the fiction piece workshops. So many people finished their story or chapter and left me craving more, more, more!

I asked to workshop my fiction piece because initially I thought it would be easier than poetry, but I found out very quickly that I was wrong. I learned that creating a fiction piece was not something that could be done overnight. This process required observation, planning, preparation, and most importantly lots of revision. It was through the Three Genres text that I realized how truly technical fiction writing can be. I found the text extremely useful in developing my fiction piece, and I relied on it more than I did when I was working through the poetry. Even though I revised my piece three times, I was never satisfied with the product, and hope to find the time to keep revising so that I can produce the best piece possible.

The overall layout and design of the chapters on fiction were very conducive to learning how to start, revise, and complete a fiction story. I really liked that Minot gave lots of examples and ideas for every aspect of the process, from coming up with ideas, to developing plot and character, to adding dialogue, and finally in revising.  Chapter 15 was full of information that I was able to apply to creating my fiction piece. For example, Minot suggests starting developing an idea for your piece by using a memory you already have, and then make major transformations to that memory in order to lead the plot down “uncharted territory.” I also really enjoyed the short stories he picked to disperse throughout the informative chapters. Each short story contained elements that were discussed in surrounding chapters, so it was beneficial to see an example of the techniques being taught in the reading. Also, each story was very entertaining in its own right, which gave my brain a nice break between chapters full of information.

When my fiction piece was workshopped, the biggest criticism I received was that I lacked dialogue and needed to incorporate it into the piece. Interestingly, that assignment we discussed from Three Genres that night dealt directly with dialogue and thoughts.  I pored over the chapter and it successfully eased my anxiety about working with dialogue. I initially though that dialogue would take away from the humor I was focusing on in the main characters thought process. However, I found that adding dialogue actually really helped my piece overall. I was able to control the flow and develop the characters more through dialogue.

The most beneficial thing I learned about dialogue from Chapter 22 in Three Genres had to do with using tags, such as “she said”, after lines of dialogue. For some reason I thought it would work better to not repeat “said” a bunch of times, and instead use synonyms that helped emphasize the tone of the sentence. However, I learned through the text that readers are so used to “he said” or “she said” that they read them almost like punctuation marks. It is when you start using descriptive synonyms that you trip the reader up, creating a piece that does not really flow. This only proves the importance of applying the reading to your work in the class.

As an adolescent, I spent hours writing all kind of poems and short stories. Working through this class made me yearn for even just a piece of the imagination I possessed as a child. Despite the wealth of technical knowledge I gained through the Three Genres text, and the number of perspectives I was opened to through the workshops, I found that my biggest struggle was letting my imagination free from the cage of academia. For example, in writing my fiction piece, I had trouble letting the plot diverge into “uncharted territory.” Subconsciously, I was trying too hard to stick to the facts of my memory instead of developing a fiction piece. Through revision I was able to break through this mold a little bit, but I still feel like a little more imagination would have taken me a long way.

This course in creative writing helped me expand my vision of what it means to be a creative writer. I learned the technical side of writing poetry and fiction, but also attempted to develop my creativity in writing. I was able to expand my perception of what “good writing” can mean, and I was lucky to be exposed to many different facets of creative writing process through the experiences of my peers. Overall, this course has taught me that I am a creative writer and anyone else who is willing to take the time to learn the craft can also enjoy the fruits of creative labor.