How can we make people more productive and more creative? (p.109)
Writers are products of educational systems. (p. 110)
No one seems to agree on what the goal of good writing is anyway. (p. 111)
I pulled the above quotes from Louis Menand’s article, Show or tell should creative writing be taught, which I found to be rather a compelling discussion about writing, because it offers very thought provoking ideas as well as questions to dialogues surrounding writing.
What was particularly refreshing about this article was reading a piece that touches upon writing as a creative process. For me at least it seems like notions of creativity and imagination are often left out of academic discussions about writing…well at least those I have encounter. By discussions I mean the verbal exchanges I have witnessed and those I have been part of as well as the arguments I read about. Creativity & imagination are seldom, if ever, examined in depth. These concepts seem to be isolated to conversations about creative writing and aren’t brought up in other forms of writing such as academic prose. As products as well as producers of educational systems, how might our perceptions/conceptualization of writing be different writing was taught from the perspective of a creative writing vs. an academic, prose-based perspective? How might practices/skills from creative writing enhance how we approach writing in other settings?
Can creative writing be taught? This was the second part of Menand’s argument I found intriguing because it parallels my experiences in the visual arts as a student, a teacher, and an artist. Regardless of the area within the arts be it writing, visual, musical, can creativity be taught? I would have to agree with the statement Menand make “you can’t teach inspiration, but you can teach craft” (p. 111). I can teach someone how to: clean a paintbrush, mixed colors and color theory, stretch a canvas, apply paint in different ways, and so on. I can teach about the histories of art, philosophies of art, and critiques of art along with various artists' works, styles, ideas, and theories. But the individual immersed in doing, in creating is the one who has to find the inspiration, creativity, and imagination from whatever source(s) they come. The creative process is a highly personalized venture. The individual must transmute their ideas through their chosen media into an object, which can serves as a lens into view and understand our human experiences.
I think what makes creativity and imagination difficult, if not impossible to teach, is that they are slippery concepts. They don’t possess universal definitions. They are to some degree highly individualized and mean different things to people. They vary across time and space. They don’t have right answers requiring people to live with and navigate through ambiguities.
"You can’t teach inspiration, but you can teach craft” (p. 111). I wholeheartedly agree with this Jen. So often it seems we're talking about the craft of writing, and I think as we write, and write, and write in our daily lives, we never think that we're being creative, but we are. As I write this, I hear it in my head and I strive for what sounds interesting, or funny, or wise - it doesn't feel it, but I'm being creative. Perhaps even by acknowledging how much of our writing is creative, we can start stretching our creative muscles more and developing even further as writers.
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with you too, Roo. We need to stretch our, to quote you, creative muscles. We don't often stop to think about how creative we are in our daily lives whether in our writing or other practices like fishing or preparing a pie. There is great creative force in our daily lives. It seems that sometimes creativity is seen as this magical force that is illusive from people.
ReplyDeleteHow can we capture ambiguities in a rubric, for example? We'll be talking about that in class tomorrow.
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