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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 326 879 CS 212 592 AUTHOR Bishop, Wsndy TITLE Released into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, REPORT NO ISBN-0-8141-3988-4 FUB DATE 90 NOTE 251p. AVAILABLE FROMNational Council of Teachers of English, 1111 Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801 (Stock No. 39884-3020; $12.50 members, $15.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Books (010) -- Guides - Classroom Use - Guides (For Teachers) (052) EDRS PRICE 14F01/PC11 Plus 1-ostage. DESCRIPTORS Class Activities; *Creative Writing; English Curriculum; Higher Education; Student Wi-iting Models; Teaching Methods; Undergraduate Study; Writing Improvement; 7cWriting Instruction; *Writing Processes; *Wrsting Workshops ABSTRACT After a brief review of the history of college writing instruction, this book examines the undergraduate creative writing workshop. The book attempts to reweave the currently separate strands of college-level creative writing instruction and composition instruction in the belief that' developments in these perhaps artificially separated areas can and should enrich each other. In design, the book should serve the students in the creative writing workshops to the extent that it asks their teachers to consider new ways of approaching their academic subject. Chapters in the book include: (1) "Writers in Motion"; (2) "Writers and Researchers on Writing"; (3) "Opticns in Design"; (4) "Generating Writing"; (5) "Ten Inventions and Variations": (6) "Collaborative Composing and Imitations"; (7) "Responding and Revising"; and (8) "Evaluating and Responding." (A 125-item annotated bibliography and response protocol sheets designed to help students complete creative writing critique sessions are attached.) (RS) ************************************r********************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. 2.******.************w************1.************************************ CI! COLLEGE SECTION COMMITTEE Tilly Warnock, Chair University of Wyoming Lil Brannon SUNY at Albany Doris 0. Ginn Jackson State University Brenda M. Greene Medgar Evers College, CUNY Linda H. Peterson Yale University James F. Slevin Georgetown University Joseph F. Trimmer Ball State University Art Young Clemson University James Raymond, ex officio Universay of Alabama H. Thomas McCracken, CEE Representative Youngstown State University Janet Emig, Executive Committee Liaison Rutgers University 4 Released into Language Options for Teaching Creative Writing Wendy Bishop Florida State University National Council of Teachers of English 1111 Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801 .....--I., For Morgan and Taitmy won best resonators and fearless language learners NCTE Editorial Board: Richard Abrahamson, Celia Genishi Richard Lloyd- Jones, Raymond J. Rodrigues, Brooke Workman, Charles Suhor, Chair, ex officio, Michael Spooner, ex officio Staff Editor: Robert A. Heister Cover Design: Carlton Bruett Interior Book Design: Tom Kovacs for TGK Design NCTE Stock Number: 39884-3020 ©1990 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view .:oes not imply endorsement by the Executdve Committee, the Board of Directors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bishop, Wendy. Released into language : options for teaching creative writing / Wendy Bishop. P. -Cm- Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8141-3988-4 1. English languageRhetoricStudy and teaching.2. Creative wrifingStu y and teaching.I. Title. PE1404.B551990 808'.042'0711--dc20 90-48879 CIP 0.e., Contents Acknowledgments vii introduction ix 1. Writers in Motion 1 2. Writers and Researchers on Writing 15 3. Options in Design 39 4. /Generating Writing 62 5. Ten Inventions and Variations 84 6. Collaborative Composing and Imitations 116 7. Responding and Revising 131 8. Evaluating and Responding 157 Appendix A: Response Protocol Sheets 177 Appendix-B: Teaching Creative Writing A Selected, Annotated Bibliography 183 Works Cited 217 Index 227 Author 233 7 Acknowledgments Est, Katharine Haake has talked writing and shared writing with me for eleven years. We haye experienced the ephemeral pleasures of writing conferences, maintained the lifeline of a long correspondence, and valued rare visits, filled with Scrabble and popcorn and serious talk and white wine. She has helped more than she may realize. Also, sharing ideas with Hans Ostrom always reminds me that sensitive teachers, both male and female, are providing important support to their sometimes marginalized undergraduate writing students. I need to mention Peggy Schumaker, who shared her own and her graduate students' discoveries concerning invention several years ago. Ken Waldman was especially generous in teaching me his well- conceived invention activities, and he also provided tutoring-that- mattered for my undergraduate creative writers for several years. When I conducted a seminar in creative writing pedagogy for the English department at the University of AlaskaFairbanks, the enthosiastic and professional response of M.F.A. graduate student teacher-writers in that class contributed enormously to the development of this book. I remember fondly those ahtic evenings with Steve Bailey, Scott Herzer, Carolyn Kremers, Trecie Melnick, Ellen Moore, Peg Peoples, Jill Ro- binson, and Terry Wiki "heir work and thoughts and collaboration appear often in these pages. These days, graduate teaching assistants at Florida State University are sharing the results of their own trans;:ctional creativewriting workshops, and I work with an English department faculty that provides solid support for and expertise in creative writing instruction. My own ideas have been refined within articles published by receptive journal editors. I want to thank the following editors and journals for permission to adapt or reprint material from my previous publications and those of my forme students: Suzanne Bratcher and Arizona English Bulletin, for material used in chapters 2 and 4; Charles Duke and Exercise E..change, for material in chapters 5 and 6; Ray Gonzalez and The Midnight "..amp, for material used in chapter 5; Nell Ann Pickett and Teaching English in the Two-Year College, for material in chupters 6 and 7; and Roseanne De Fabio and The English Record, vii 0- U viii Released into Language for material in chapters 7 and 8. I would also like to thank Peg Peoples, Ken Waldman, and Terence Wike for allowing me to reprcduce material from their unpublished manuscripts. I am indebted to Michael Spooner, senior editor ,or publicatlons at NCTE, who has supported Released into Language from the original proposal onward; I have greatly valued his encouragement. In addition, reviewers Charles Duke and Joseph Moxley and the members of the NCTE Editorial Board offered me insightful, challenging, and always relevant revision suggestions. Bob Heister of NCTE helped immensely with final editing and production. These individuals are responsible only for the successful results of their contributions. Most often, though, my thoughts go to my undergraduate creative writing students. Their writing appears with their permission and with my appreciation. As always, their classrooms have been crucibles for my learning. 9 Introduc don Due to the steady muvement of American writers into lifelong academic careers, today "colleges are where most of our writers can be found" (Stegner 1988, 51). Since the late 1930s, most creative writing professors have been publishing authors who teach graduate students about the world of contemporary letters. In Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) pro- grarnsand more recently in English Ph.D. programs offering creative dissertation optionsmany promising apprentice miters ilather to craft poetry, prose, or drama and share it with peer3 and with their master-writer/mentor-teacher in a workshop setting. However, it often seems that creative writers have moved into the mainstream of English departments without understanding oi rt. jiew- ing their own historyas part of a changing academic disci Aine called English studiesand without reconceptualizing graduate and under- graduate creative writing programs. Creative writing teachers are, of necessity, implicated in questions of theory and practice, primarily because they now teach large numbers of students at the undergraduate level. And these students vary widely in their needs and interests. For instance, students in elective und,:rgraduate creative writing classe:, may be more similar to students irequired composition classes than they are to the graduate students many academic writers would preter to teach. Undergraduate students may possess little knowledge of writing processes or writing products. Especially problematic, mar y of these students come from different cultu'al backgrounds than their teachers and have acquaintance with and -alue for a range of non- canonical literaturesfrom popular romance novels to oral story telling to rap poetry to religious texts to television sitcomsand enjoy those literatuNs in a variety of languages and dialects. This book examines the undergraduate creative writing workshop. To do this, I begin here