Listen to How I Think

A brief post after a power outage on a snowy day. I’ve been thinking about the fact that teachers of creative writing often teach us something when they don’t seem to be offering much instruction at all.

When I think of all the workshops that I’ve taken, it occurs to me that what I remember most aren’t specific techniques that I learned, but how I learned to think about writing the way my teachers did.

A teacher of creative writing is someone who’s been thinking about craft much longer than his or her students have—not only thinking about it, but coming to a deeper understanding of how a piece of prose or poetry works.

Often, when I read students’ drafts, I’m thinking about how a particular type of prose—fiction or nonfiction—gets the most resonance from its form. I might be thinking about how it makes use of irony; how it moves dramatically, emotionally, intellectually; how it works with characterization and indirection; how it covertly moves to a moment where something present in the beginning, but hidden, rises to the top and resonates in a way that makes the piece unforgettable; how it utilizes detail and language and voice and tone to underscore the movement it wants to make. My job is to make my students aware of what’s present in a draft and how to think about giving it a shape that will touch a reader.

I remember sitting in a fiction workshop taught by Bill Harrison at the University of Arkansas and trying to think along with him when he talked about how stories work. It was sort of like trying to think along with a football or basketball coach, or a baseball manager, only in workshop I had access to Bill’s thoughts. I knew why he suggested the changes that he did. I learned to think about stories the way he did, and in that way I made myself a better writer.

Good writing teachers have more to offer than merely technical instruction. They invite you into their aesthetic sensibilities to show you what’s possible with a piece. They show you how a writer and an editor think. Even if later you decide their aesthetics aren’t exactly yours—even if your own thinking takes another path—learn the ones those teachers have to offer you, so you’ll know how to vary the thinking if that’s your inclination.

Often in a workshop, it’s not “how to do” that matters the most; it’s “how-to-think.”

3 Comments

  1. Britton Swingler on November 29, 2014 at 10:03 am

    I teach creative writing to elementary children where my children take occasional homeschool classes. It is my goal each year to woo with words (theirs) the children who think they hate to write, or those who do it but without joy. I borrow a phrase I found: “writing is thinking on paper,” and we delve in.

    A few weeks ago, after venturing into novel writing for the first time and grappling with the subject of POV myself, I decided to teach it to them. We darkened the room and shone flashlights into corners, lined up behind one another to see what we could see but they couldn’t, and read and morphed fairly tales (the wolf’s version of the “The Three Little Pigs” we read was superb).

    All to say that this post spoke to me–as a teacher and as a writer. Unlike the more formal classes at our school where the children are told what to write and when to turn it in (also valuable for the kids who are ready for it), my class typically generates more at home writing–stories they bring me later, or parents who send me music-t0-my-ears emails about how surprised they are that their child wrote a story on their own, created a book or can’t wait to come back to class. ‘I didn’t do that,’ I want to tell them…it was there all along inside your children, just waiting for the opportunity leap out of the typical writing box where it was held hostage.

    The kids don’t know it, but all we do in class is stomp on, rip apart, and paint said box so that no one recognizes it anymore, so that their voices becomes uniquely theirs. Ooh…and now I have an idea for them. Gotta run…I need to go collect some boxes.

  2. Britton Swingler on November 29, 2014 at 10:04 am

    I teach creative writing to elementary children where my children take occasional homeschool classes. It is my goal each year to woo with words (theirs) the children who think they hate to write, or those who do it but without joy. I borrow a phrase I found: “writing is thinking on paper,” and we delve in.

    A few weeks ago, after venturing into novel writing for the first time and grappling with the subject of POV myself, I decided to teach it to them. We darkened the room and shone flashlights into corners, lined up behind one another to see what we could see but they couldn’t, and read and morphed fairy tales (the wolf’s version of the “The Three Little Pigs” we read was superb).

    All to say that this post spoke to me–as a teacher and as a writer. Unlike the more formal classes at our school where the children are told what to write and when to turn it in (also valuable for the kids who are ready for it), my class typically generates more at home writing–stories they bring me later, or parents who send me music-t0-my-ears emails about how surprised they are that their child wrote a story on their own, created a book or can’t wait to come back to class. ‘I didn’t do that,’ I want to tell them…it was there all along inside your children, just waiting for the opportunity leap out of the typical writing box where it was held hostage.

    The kids don’t know it, but all we do in class is stomp on, rip apart, and paint said box so that no one recognizes it anymore, so that their voices becomes uniquely theirs. Ooh…and now I have an idea for them. Gotta run…I need to go collect some boxes.

    • Lee Martin on December 1, 2014 at 8:01 pm

      How wonderful, Britton! Your students are lucky to have you as their teacher. Thanks so much for reading my blog and for taking the time to leave a comment.

Leave a Comment