I am having trouble not writing a book on critical theory. The book keeps insisting I write it, and I think I have the smarts (I can say some things about teaching writing that won't be completely moronic), but I'm overwhelmed by the ideas. I teach writing, but I don't teach it in a conventional way. Even when I was teaching "Freshman Composition," I strayed away from the generally accepted rules about what would and wouldn't help the students write well. I am confident that the students learning to write well is the point of the class.
Three or four aspects of teaching writing haven't been discussed enough. The first is writing as an Art. Just as with drawing and playing the piano, writing is accepted throughout history as an Art. This isn't to say that writing is in conflict with science (preposterous) or craft (downright stupid). Art needs Craft, as Aristotle says, "Art and Techne." As Rollo May says in The Courage to Create, the power of a raging river depends on the river's banks, or its form. Without banks, the potential and kinetic energy of a river becomes the tranquility of a rather expansive lake.
I need a word for this kind of hollow, tinny writing (what Richard Lanham called "The Official Style"). The word mechanical is too close to grammar. Clockwork might serve the purpose. I just need a word to describe writing without heart, soul, or compassion: the kind of writing we teach too often without meaning to, either because we don't know any better (we buy into the socially constructed wall between Art and Writing), or because we're lazy (John Gardner points out in On Moral Fiction that certain types of writing are easier for professors to evaluate).
Clockwork writing also gets more funding, because it seems to work well across the disciplines. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Teaching a student to be creative works across disciplines better, involving a special kind of intelligence. Art teaches subtle associations and flexible thinking, in the sense that after a more "creative" freshman composition class, a student can later think around corners, solve problems in real time, etc.
I object to adjectives in front of the word "writing." To borrow a joke from Douglas Adams, Academic and Creative will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes. This doesn't even touch on the implications of Positive Psychology for the Creative Writing classroom, which also ties nicely in with this problem.
I propose that in the future, we talk about the big issues, the ones that matter to the students: Students come to a writing classroom to learn to write. We know how, at least on a subconscious level. We should focus on teaching them.
Three or four aspects of teaching writing haven't been discussed enough. The first is writing as an Art. Just as with drawing and playing the piano, writing is accepted throughout history as an Art. This isn't to say that writing is in conflict with science (preposterous) or craft (downright stupid). Art needs Craft, as Aristotle says, "Art and Techne." As Rollo May says in The Courage to Create, the power of a raging river depends on the river's banks, or its form. Without banks, the potential and kinetic energy of a river becomes the tranquility of a rather expansive lake.
I need a word for this kind of hollow, tinny writing (what Richard Lanham called "The Official Style"). The word mechanical is too close to grammar. Clockwork might serve the purpose. I just need a word to describe writing without heart, soul, or compassion: the kind of writing we teach too often without meaning to, either because we don't know any better (we buy into the socially constructed wall between Art and Writing), or because we're lazy (John Gardner points out in On Moral Fiction that certain types of writing are easier for professors to evaluate).
Clockwork writing also gets more funding, because it seems to work well across the disciplines. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Teaching a student to be creative works across disciplines better, involving a special kind of intelligence. Art teaches subtle associations and flexible thinking, in the sense that after a more "creative" freshman composition class, a student can later think around corners, solve problems in real time, etc.
I object to adjectives in front of the word "writing." To borrow a joke from Douglas Adams, Academic and Creative will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes. This doesn't even touch on the implications of Positive Psychology for the Creative Writing classroom, which also ties nicely in with this problem.
I propose that in the future, we talk about the big issues, the ones that matter to the students: Students come to a writing classroom to learn to write. We know how, at least on a subconscious level. We should focus on teaching them.
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