What does it take to create a Creative Writing class for undergrads?
This is a pleasurable task and one which I now embark on for the fourth time at American University. The course is called Lit 107, Creative Writing Across the Genres, and the idea is to give students exposure to the reading and writing of works in creative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction. The semester is divided roughly into thirds, one for each genre.
What will I have students read? On my syllabus, I include: (1) works so well-known and highly-praised over the years that they’re almost mandatory, as if in a compendium of the material one must have absorbed to be considered well-read; (2) works that I love, for any number of reasons, so that in preparing for class and rereading these works I might find the maximum amount of pleasure; and (3) my own creative works, some published and some not. It’s worth giving examples of what I have included in each category. As it happens, categories (1) and (2) substantially overlap.
In category (1/2), for creative non-fiction, I have students read Annie Dillard’s “Seeing” and Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter”; and in category (3) they read my essay “Door Knocking,” which relates my first house-to-house political campaigning. For poetry, students will read a small portion of Trojan Women, i.e. Hecuba’s speech over the dead body of her grandson, Astanax. Of course, they must also read Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” And, in category (3), I offer a variety of favorite poems from my own pen, notably “To the Wooded Way,” composed when I was a junior in high school, and “Neely,” an ode to my granddaughter. Finally, in fiction, there are so many good stories that it’s hard to choose, but I always use Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” James Joyce’s “The Dead,” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Although the purpose of the course is not principally to familiarize students with classics in the various genres – which is one reason I feel free to assign my own work – I can hardly not teach these. So that’s category (1/2) for fiction. From category (3), I often teach my story “Invitation Accepted,” metafiction in which the author (Bruce) enters the story to question one of the key characters.
If choosing the material to read were the only objective of the class, life would be so much easier. The challenge, however, is to motivate students to work hard on their own creative work. My purpose is to help them build and strengthen the creative cells in their brains. Unfortunately, generative AI gets in the way, and the creative ability of brains – if AI is unchecked – fades away. Students have to be motivated to want to learn, right? They have to care about the human, creative aspects of their brains, right? But how many have enrolled in the course for other reasons? How many will be there just because they needed something starting at 9:45 am on Monday and Thursdays? How many are there because the university requires that they take some course in the “creative/aesthetic mode” but otherwise couldn’t care less? How many are there under the misimpression that a course in creative writing will be easy?
What I would like to do – what every professor would like to do – is to turn those students who enter the class with a great deal of skepticism to find, much to their surprise, that the subject matter intrigues them. So my prayer is that students quickly come to care whether their creative abilities are being eaten away by modern technology, not the least of which is generative AI, and about how to prevent this damage. It’s a daunting task. Motivation must come from within. The 150 minutes per week I will share the classroom with these students, for one semester, is paltry. I can do nothing about DNA, family, friends, and other environmental factors that will mostly have predetermined their motivation. Sometimes, it’s like trying to turn the Titanic using an oar. Well, maybe I exaggerate, but only by a little.
So I need to accept that I will not be able to reach every student. That truth doesn’t absolve me from trying as hard as I can. If one were dissuaded from teaching because of its difficulty, we wouldn’t have learning and growth. Or, another way to look at it is this: if I can help one student get and stay on a creative track, I have succeeded. Tikkun Olam. There is no prescribed measure for leaving first fruits on the tree, for anyone willing to grasp.