Creative Composition: Inspiration and Techniques for Writing Instruction (New Writing Viewpoints, 12, Band 12) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783093633 ISBN 13: 9781783093632

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

For decades theorists have opined that the lines between creative writing and composition need to be lifted, yet little has been written about the pedagogical methods that allow a cohesive approach between the disciplines. This book brings together contemporary authors and well-respected creative writing instructors and theorists to explore ways creativity in composition may be encouraged in student writers. The question in this anthology is not ‘Can writing be taught?’ but ‘How can we inspire students to embrace the creative process no matter what they write?’ This book offers multiple strategies to merge the best practices of teaching writing, regardless of the genre.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Danita Berg is English Department Director at Full Sail University, Orlando, Florida. Her research interests include creative writing studies, women's voice in writing, and invention. She is also Founder and Co-Editor of Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine.
www.danitaberg.wordpress.com

Lori A. May is a writing mentor at University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is Founding Editor of Poets’ Quarterly (www.poetsquarterly.com), and her other books include The Write Crowd: Literary Citizenship & the Writing Life (Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Low-Residency MFA Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Creative Writing Students (Continuum, 2011).
www.loriamay.com

Danita Berg is English Department Director at Full Sail University, Orlando, Florida. Her research interests include creative writing studies, women's voice in writing, and invention. She is also Founder and Co-Editor of Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine. www.danitaberg.wordpress.comLori A. May is a writing mentor at University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is Founding Editor of Poets' Quarterly (www.poetsquarterly.com), and her other books include The Write Crowd: Literary Citizenship & the Writing Life (Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Low-Residency MFA Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Creative Writing Students (Continuum, 2011). www.loriamay.com

Danita Berg is English Department Director at Full Sail University, Orlando, Florida. Her research interests include creative writing studies, women's voice in writing, and invention. She is also Founder and Co-Editor of Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine.
Lori A. May is a writing mentor at University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is Founding Editor of Poets' Quarterly (www.poetsquarterly.com), and her other books include The Write Crowd: Literary Citizenship & the Writing Life (Bloomsbury, 2014) and The Low-Residency MFA Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Creative Writing Students (Continuum, 2011).

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Creative Composition

Inspiration and Techniques for Writing Instruction

By Danita Berg, Lori A. May

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2015 Danita Berg, Lori A. May and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78309-363-2

Contents

Contributors, 
Foreword, 
Introduction, 
1 On Essaying Denise Landrum-Geyer, 
2 Eat Your Spinach! Why a Blend of Personal and Academic Discourses Matter Sara Burnett, 
3 Writing by Creation, with Response, in Experience Graeme Harper, 
4 Give it a Taste: Serving Creative Writing in Small Doses Abigail G. Scheg, 
5 Wiggling Between the Forms: A Cross-Genre Approach to Writing Dustin Michael, 
6 Writing to Discover: Creative Nonfiction and Writing Across the Curriculum Andrew Bourelle, 
7 Creative Writing's Five Stages of Development: The Mind of the Creative Writer in the Composition Classroom Jonathan Bradley and Sarah Gray-Panesi, 
8 Sought-After Sophistications: Crafting a Curatorial Stance in the Creative Writing and Composition Classrooms Rochelle L. Harris and Christine Stewart-Nuñez, 
9 Audience Resurrected: Restoring Motive and Purpose to Creative Writing Michael Kula, 
10 Lending the Muse a Hand: Expanding the Role of Social Constructivism and Collaborative Writing in Creative Writing Pedagogies Rod Zink, 
11 Grammar and Creativity in Composition: An Unexpected Nexus Shawn Kerivan, 
12 Invention in Creative Writing: Explorations of the Self and the Social in Creative Genres Danita Berg, 
13 Teaching the Exploratory Essay as Pedagogy, Process and Project Sonya Huber and Ioanna Opidee, 
14 Beyond Argumentation: Toulmin's Model as a Dialogic, Processual Heuristic Debra Jacobs, 
15 Leave it to the Imagination: Service Learning as Part of an Undergraduate Creative Writing Curriculum Scott J. O'Callaghan, 
16 Show, Don't Tell: Using Graphic Narratives to Teach Descriptive Writing Tammie M. Kennedy and Tracey D. Menten, 
17 A First-Timer's Approach to Teaching in a Non-Traditional Setting Connie Langhorst, 
18 In It for the Long Haul: The Pedagogy of Perseverance Anna Leahy, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

On Essaying

Denise Landrum-Geyer

I

In The Oxford English Dictionary, 'essay' has two entries – one a noun and the other a verb. The noun definition is one often associated with academic writing: 'A composition of moderate length on any particular subject, or branch of subject ... said of a composition more or less elaborate in style, though limited in range.' I am more interested in the verb entry: 'to essay' is '[t]o put to the proof, try (a person or thing); to test the nature, excellence, fitness, etc. of; to practice (an art, etc.) by way of trial; To try by tasting; to try to do, effect, accomplish, or make (anything difficult).' In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, David Shields (2011: 9) points out the Latin antecedent to the term 'essay': 'experior, meaning "to try, test, experience, prove."' The verb definition of essay is an active process, one that values experimenting and working through ideas without necessarily arriving at a definitive conclusion. The emphasis is on doing, trying – testing – even if the attempt fails or leads down an unintended path. What would happen in our writing classrooms if we treated the word 'essay' as a verb instead of a noun? What if we encouraged student essaying?

II

I walk to and from campus almost every day, barring bad weather (which is common on the wide open plains of Oklahoma) or the necessary toting of heavy objects. As I walk the three blocks to my office, my mind often turns to teaching: on the way to campus, I think about lesson plans for the day, revising them in my mind as my iPod pumps music into my ears. On my way home at the end of the day, I reflect: what went well? What not-so-much? How will this experience feed into the next class period I have with these students? The act of walking allows me to catch my breath and work through my thoughts. I am essaying about teaching – journeying, trying, reflecting – each day. And it is that act of essaying I hope to pass on to my students, in first-year composition, creative nonfiction, peer tutoring, fundamentals of English (our basic writing course) ... really, any class they have, with me or someone else. I want my students to essay, even as they frown when they are told to create an essay.

III

The essay is a bit of a lost genre: it seems to fall somewhere between creative writing and academic writing, what Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres (1993: 152) calls a 'boundary form;' put another way, essays inhabit a space between literary and rhetorical genres, yet most of the writing assigned in college courses is labeled an 'essay' (Devitt, 2004). The word 'essay' has been co-opted by the educational establishment to describe school-based genres, most of which do not reflect the characteristics associated with essay writing outside of school walls: what most teachers call essays in the classroom are more accurately labeled as articles or themes, or at the very least a specific essay subgenre – the academic essay. But the classroom is not where essays developed as a genre; the essay is a genre that has evolved in the writing world as writers have used it for various reasons since at least the 16th century. David Shields (2011: 8) goes so far as to trace the essay's lineage from aphorisms:

When read together, these collections of sayings could be said to make a general argument on their common themes, or at least shed some light somewhere, or maybe simply obsess about a topic until a little dent has been made in the huge idea they all pondered ... Via editing and collage, the form germinated into longer, more complex, more sustained, and more sophisticated essayings.

If the genre's tradition is traced through Michel de Montaigne, who is often touted as the father of the genre, it becomes easy to see the fluidness of the form: essays often seem to incorporate aspects of other genres while they move along, focusing in particular on working through a writer's thought processes as opposed to offering the neat and tidy linear arguments often valued in academic writing (D'Agata, 2009). That being said, I realize that the Francis Bacon essay tradition, a more formal and rigid subgenre more closely akin to conventional academic writing, arose around the same time as Montaigne's Essais: according to O.B. Hardison's (1989) essay 'Binding Proteus: An essay on the essay,' Montaigne first used the word 'essai' between 1572 and 1580, while Bacon became the second person to use the term in 1597. Both Montaignian and Baconian essays have a similar interest in tracing experimental ideas; as Shields (2011: 138) puts it, 'Maybe every essay automatically is in some way experimental – not an outline traveling toward a foregone conclusion but an unmapped quest that has sprung from the word question.' The difference lies in the presentation of those ideas: Bacon's essays follow a specific, formal structure for the presentation of ideas, while Montaigne's informal and meditative musings are known for the seeming absence of structure (Lopate, 1995). Bacon composed essays; Montaigne essayed.

IV

My interest in essaying began as an undergraduate student. I enrolled in a creative nonfiction workshop with a special focus on personal essays. Though I was afraid of sharing my work with my classmates, the act of writing in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783093633
• ISBN 13: 9781783093632
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 184
• Herausgeber: Berg Danita, May Lori A.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar