This is the second in the column series, “The Real Economics of the Purely Imaginary” that circles some very large, very unwieldy, and–for precisely these reasons–very tantalizing questions about knowledge, creativity, teaching, writing, and the university.
In my last post, I laid out a number of questions surrounding creative writing, the university English department, literary criticism and theory, economics, and knowledge production. In this installment, I want to talk about one of the most readily-assumed, rarely-questioned, and easily-accepted distinctions we make about kinds of writing and kinds of thinking. For me, this is the question. So for starters, riddle me this:
My friend was stuck. He was facing a deadline for a respected periodical. The piece had been hanging over his head for months. Each day that he didn’t work on it was a day he felt he’d failed somehow. But he just couldn’t work on it. He knew what he might want to say, but the words wouldn’t come. The ideas were too big to organize. Sometimes his ideas just seemed so trite. He questioned why anyone would want to read his piece at all, thought maybe he was kidding himself about his abilities or the notion that he had anything to say. What if the piece was crap, what if it ruined his career, what if they rejected it (even though they’d solicited his work)? Two days before the piece was due, he still had not started writing. “What do I do?” he asked me. I dipped into my bag of writerly tricks. “Compartmentalize,” I said. “Take the critic in your mind, put him in a room, and shut the door while you write. Accept that your first draft may be shit: that’s what drafts are for. Accept that this may not be the best piece you ever write–but it’s not the only piece you ever write. Just put your ass in a chair in front of your computer and start writing. If you don’t know what to write, put ‘I don’t know what to write’ until something else comes out. Do what my writing teacher told me: make a mess, and then clean it up. That’s essentially all you need–just get something going, and you can craft a finished piece out of it.”
Eventually my friend did it. He got his ass in a chair, he typed, he agonized over every word, he got in his own way by trying to edit as he went, he spent most of his time staring at the wall, trying to get words to materialize in his brain… but eventually he found a rhythm, got a draft done, and sent it off to the editors. They took the piece. Writer’s block overcome, drinks for all, aren’t I a good friend for helping him, la dee da dee da.
I’m nosing closer to the question: Can you tell from the story above what kind of piece my friend had to write? A news article? A critical essay? A poem? A short story? A review?
My point is that there’s no way, simply from talking about my friend’s writing process, to draw a clear distinction about what kind of writing he wanted to produce. You may have gathered that he was writing prose, but even that is not self-evident from the story. (Journals do solicit work from writers they like, and who’s to say no one has ever procrastinated on cranking it out?) He was, in fact, writing a critical essay on pedagogy for an academic (but not scholarly) journal.
Look at his process. Look at his roadblocks. They could have been culled from a “Tips for Beginning Writers” fact sheet, or any of the schlocky (and not so schlocky) creative process books out there. Anyone who’s picked up a copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, or Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway (two popular creative process books for writers) can recognize that my friend needed to Turn Off the Inner Critic, Build a Writing Practice, Make Peace With Shitty First Drafts, etc.. In fact, the advice I gave him was straight out of meetings with my own creative writing professors when I was working on an MFA. My friend entered into much the same work, engagement, brainstorming, mental judo, and alligator-wrestling with the empty (or crappily written) page that so-called creative writers tackle when they work. In fact, I hardly need to graft my friend’s story in here, because I know from writing in both creative and critical modes that the processes are just not all that different. The products may look radically different, but how we Frankenstien that product into existence is not determined by the product itself.
I just don’t think that the term “Creative Writing” means all that much. Besides provoking mental associations with 4th-grade “Write a story about a time when you were afraid” assignments, what does this term do?
For one thing, it holds layers of assumptions that could really use some unpacking. What are we talking about when we say “writing,” anyway? Are we talking about the act of making a piece of written work–a story, an article, a rant? Or are we talking about the story, article, rant itself? Or are we talking about value, use, purpose, and place of both the writing and the writer?
Lots of people–writers and scholars alike–assume that “creative writing” is some kind of hybrid of thing one and thing two, but my vote is on thing three. Heere’s why I propose we all throw our hats in a new-ish ring, and stop referring to certain kinds of writing as “creative”: the designation implies that the act of writing and the purpose of a piece are known, stable quantities, when they are not. One need only look at the multitude of conflicting ideas about writing instruction operating on college campuses across the country to see that this is so. Furthermore, the term tips certain kinds of writing and writers out of the “this work is valuable” basket and into the “this activity is self-indulgent” basket. This is ridiculous, especially when we can see that the process is often the same regardless of the product. What if my friend had been writing a story and not an article? Why would that work have been automatically less “intellectual” and more “frivolous”? For that matter, why are the many choices he made as a writer, the imagination he used to construct his article, and his flexibility with expression not creative endeavors simply because they went to produce an article? The finished product may have been critical in nature, but the process of writing it was creative all the same.
“So big deal,” you’re thinking. “So non-creative writers get writer’s block. What does this prove, and why should I care? Everyone freaks out about public speaking, too, but this doesn’t mean that public speaking is the same as acting.” Or, as another friend put it: “Why not just eat some soup and call it writing?” (Actually, I think that might be cool, and someone might already have tried it. Takers?)
I take my friend’s point. But I’m not saying that distinctions between kinds of writing should never apply. I’m not claiming that what goes on in the literature classroom and the writing classroom are exactly the same. I’m not saying that all writing is the same or that we should explode the field. If anything, I’m arguing for a more precise understanding of what writing is and how it fits into learning and knowledge production. Consider that, in many creative writing workshops, the discussion of the writing happens in a critical (non-creative) register. Workshoppers do not give feedback with poems, dances, songs, or paintings (although sometimes I wish they would). No–they (we) give feedback in critical, analytical discourse. Even if the workshop is based in a reader-response mindset, reader feedback still is far more like the discussions that take place in literature classes than anything one would think of as meditations on “creative process.” Workshoppers discuss technical elements such as point of view, focalization, temporality, pace, tone, etc.. Workshoppers make arguments about these things, and make evaluations about the success of the piece. These are critical endeavors. So how can we say that the work of creative writing is totally divorced from critical (non-creative) intellectual activity? The writer has to evaluate the feedback, decide what to use, what to discard, and how to make changes. These activities fall under the rubric of creative process–and sometimes it is a gut-level response–but weighing information and ideas, deciding on their credibility, and reevaluating one’s work are also important elements of research and peer review processes.
There are all sorts of assumptions layered into the idea that you’re either a scholar or a writer, and that if you’re a creative writer you’re not a scholar, and vice versa. Calling some kinds of writing “creative” only helps entrench these assumptions and bury the fact that they are assumptions. The result is often a sublevel of second-class citizenry within departments that already treat grad students as second-class citizens. I have heard a firsthand account of a professor who told a doctoral student who was struggling with a paper “Don’t worry. No one expects you to be able to do this. You have an MFA.” I also know of a Creative Writing program director who will not sit on exam committees for PhD students except as a fifth reader (read “fifth wheel”), even though his program grants PhDs with concentrations in Creative Writing; he says it is because he holds an MFA, not a PhD, and is therefore unqualified to sit on exam committees in a department he directs.
But what if non-creative writers-–the critics, the scholars, many of whom (in my department, at least) complain that they “can’t write,” “don’t write,” or “suck at writing”–had access to the kinds of writing instruction that “creative writers” receive? Might they not produce better work, cope better with paper and article writing, have more success finishing dissertations? (And, for anyone who thinks this isn’t an issue, I’d suggest doing a bit of research on attrition rates at PhD programs in American universities. We are having a harder and harder time educating people into the highest echelons of their fields.) When we assume that certain writers–and certain work–achieve radically different ends and are worth radically different amounts of respect and attention, we overlook the fact that writing, all kinds of writing, makes knowledge go ’round.
by Jenn Hawe
who lives, writes, and cooks in Chicago
One Response
It would be nice if people would respond by dancing.
Appreciated this a lot: “a more precise understanding of what writing is and how it fits into learning and knowledge production.”
10-4 good buddy.
Actually the Amherst Writers and Artists method, well, that’s why I like it; because it enables response in a non-critical, non-analytical way.
I studied “creative writing” and then kinda flamed out, got a job in a mailroom and started a band.
I dunno. this made sense to me. Thanks.–ct