I wanted to know if there were any principles or theories about tutoring creative writing, as opposed to academic writing. There aren’t many pieces of scholarship on tutoring creative writing in writing centers specifically, but there are many sources discussing how to teach creative writing and how to conduct productive creative writing workshops, which this blog post will be focusing on.
When reading about teaching creative writing, I found this interesting method: “Process theory believes that writing is a process and a writer’s choices are guided by purpose” (Martin, 12). What I found so intriguing about this quote is that in the DePaul Writing Center, we emphasize the process already. We guide the writer through brainstorming, drafting, revising, etc. So we already implement process theory, in a way. Therefore using it for helping writers with their creative work would be relatively easier than a new method for tutors, since they already have practice with it.
From an article by Gregory Light, I found that there are two different ways to teach creative writers about audience. There is detached awareness and integrated awareness. Detached awareness means that the writer does not cater their work to the audience or incorporate the reader’s perception of their work into crafting their creative writing. They write what resonates with them, believing that if it resonates with them, it will resonate with someone else. Integrated awareness is basically the opposite. When using integrated awareness for a piece of creative writing, the author uses the reader’s perception to shape their work (Light, 266).
The last source I reviewed was a reflection on the author’s experience in an MFA creative writing workshop, and her suggestions on how to improve creative writing workshops: “Normativity turns the creative writing workshop session into an exercise in gatekeeping” (Kearns, 800). The author conveys that the main issue with MFA creative writing workshops is that anyone who deviates from what is set as ‘normative’ is scrutinized and made to feel like their work must conform to what is ‘normative.’ It makes creative writing no longer about artistic expression, rather a reinforcement of a status quo. So, she suggests, that in these workshops instead, “We will deal with what’s there, on the page, not what we think should be there (…)” (Kearns, 801). When reviewing creative writing, it is our job to connect with what the writer is actually writing and help them convey the meaning they want to convey.
Sources:
- Kearns, Rosalie Morales. “Voice of Authority: Theorizing Creative Writing Pedagogy.”College Composition and Communication, Vol. 60, no. 4, 2009, pp. 790-807
- Light, Gregory. “From the Personal to the Public: Conceptions of Creative Writing in Higher Education.” Higher Education, Vol. 43, no. 2, 2002, pp. 257-276
- Martin, Connie C. Towards cohesive creative writing instruction: a curriculum artifact demonstrating how threshold concepts can create cohesion in secondary creative curriculum. Millersville University of Pennsylvania, 2021