Why I Seldom Assign "Creative" Writing

I’m occasionally asked, imploringly, by parents considering my school “if there are creative writing opportunities” in my English class. Kids ask, too.

My flippant response used to be: “All writing is creative.” And then I’d go on to admit that my colleagues in the English department do assign creative writing responses despite the emphasis on the analytical essay. I’d go on to note that there’s also a literary journal. But then, with firm but quiet conviction I’d aver that in my class I tend to shy away from conventional creative writing assignments.

I should be more forthcoming....

I’d guess that nearly every high school English teacher, in nearly every class, has at least one conventional creative writing assignment. Some of us find that a creative writing assignment can respond to texts quite effectively.

I will admit that I am more hesitant than some to assign conventional creative writing, but my misgivings about assigning it are not founded in some overriding College Preparatory ethic. So why don't I assign more? Why doesn't the whole department assign more? For my part -- and this is from someone who has written plays, short stories, and poems -- I have found the following problems:

First, creative writing, done well, is much harder, and far more time consuming, than expository writing. Done well, it requires more revisions. Yet, kids often think their creative writing is easier and better simply because they like it more.

Secondly, while I can teach how to structure a story, a play, or a poem and I can help with revisions, I am not particularly competent at helping kids recognize and create their best creative work. Nor do I have the time in the curriculum. Indeed, the kids who are gifted in creative writing find that they spend far more time on it than they expected to and sometimes don't finish.

So, thirdly, it creates assessment problems. How do I assess a student's creative work? By what criteria? When I assign creative work, I have some guidelines and perhaps a prompt or two which must be addressed, but a bad story can meet the guidelines.

Fourth, the expository essay is a good in itself, not just as a preparation for college. It is countercultural in that it compels us to slow down and sit quietly while observing and unpeeling something for an extended period of time. Multitasking interferes with it. Hurry is its enemy. It's a way of discovering what we really think and how we are capable of thinking more deeply about anything. I tell kids, "We don't write what we think; we write in order to figure out what we think." Expository writing, done well, helps us to learn how to see, discern, and express greater depths. Finally, I very much believe that an essay can be beautiful. I think of Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, Anne Fadiman's essays, Montaigne's, Richard Rorty's, John Updike on art, Jamaica Kincaid on gardening.

If a student is moved to write poems, stories, plays, etc., she will find many willing mentors in most high schools and in the community. Despite my ambivalence about assigning creative writing, I have mentored budding playwrights and two budding poets. And I’m very involved with college essays which can and should be creative and revelatory.

Yes, the expository essay "looms large” in independent schools, as JH says, but not necessarily in its "traditional form" over all four years and not merely because of college prep expectations. We believe in it because capable people can learn to open the world and their own minds with them. It's a good exercise for anyone expecting to use her intellect in text dissection in the future. It is true that some people see the world better through a conventionally creative approach, but I'm quite confident that my school does not blast that out of them. It does require that analysis be mastered, but not that the Muse be dismissed.

Kids and parents point to the unfettered freedom of creative writing. I don't believe that the best creative work is ever "unfettered." I believe that mastering any art form begins with some fettering. Even James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, Ornette Coleman, Mondrian, Pollack, Serra, et al, first had to master the more traditional techniques. Then, even after breaking past traditional boundaries, they still had some self-imposed boundaries.

So if you want more creative writing – don’t wait for a teacher to assign it.

Write.