 Last week I was a guest of “Writing on the Air,” on radio KOOP in Austin, hosted by Francois Pointeau. Had a very pleasant time talking about teaching in prison, creativity, dreams, and the upcoming Texas Louisiana Gulf Coast Shindig & Soiree (coming June 25 (see below) and you all really need to be there). I read a section of the story “GUTS :(” and a poem or two.
A podcast of the interview is below—please listen, if you get a chance....
 This semester I’ve been assigned to teach in an ancient building called “Animal Industries.” The name sounds creepy, and the building is in fact very creepy, and several students have told me it’s haunted. (No doubt we’ll be doing some creative writing ghost hunting here before long). But, you know, despite (or maybe because of) its creepiness, this building is also really, really cool. We’re in the second week of classes now, and I’m very happy with our location.
Look! My classroom has windows—and a clock!
Interesting, creepy, and mysterious detailing in the hallways…. Across the way, the new Liberal Arts building is under construction....
And of course you know the new building will be terribly sterile and bland, part of the ongoing devolution of the American Soul….Give me Animal Industries any day!
 When, a way long time ago, I put together my dissertation reading list, I focused on the main area of writing that interested me: the relationship between the writer and his or her region. My list was in three parts: Theories of Place, where the relationship was explicitly discussed; Regional Literatures, where the relationship was performed; and 20th Century American Memoir and Travel Narrative, where the relationship is usually performed or discussed. Few of the books are about “Creative Writing” per se, at least as it is often taught and theorized, yet all of them combine to give a picture of what I think is important in writing.
Then, a few weeks ago, a couple of grad students asked me for recommendations on writings about creative writing. My dissertation list wasn't quite what they were looking for. So I had to give it some thought....For me, creative writing breaks down into four rather broad areas:
Where It Comes From: How place influences writing and the writer.
What It Means: a more traditional critical look at writing and the production of writing.
What Produces It: looking at the “creative” part of creative writing.
How It’s Done: Looking at craft, usually from the point of view of the writer
So, here are a few books toward a creative writing reading list:
Where It Comes From
Turchi, Peter. Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer
Taun, Yu-Fi. Space and Place
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space
Lippard, Lucy. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society.
Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape
Clay, Grady. Real Places
What It Means
Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction
Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel
Weing, Siegfried. The German Novella: Two Centuries of Criticism
McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing
Lucaks, Georg. The Theory of the Novel and The Historical Novel
Wood, James. How Fiction Works
What Produces It
Pirsig, Robert. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Madsen, Patricia Ryan. Improv Wisdom
Richardson, Robert. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process
Flaherty, Alice. The Midnight Disease
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought
Andreasen, Nancy. The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius
How it’s Done
Butler, Robert Olen. From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction
Addonizio, Kim. Ordinary Genius
O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners
Shelnut, Eve. The Writing Room
Hills, Rust. Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular
Of course, this is just a list. Many, many other fine, interesting books could be on it. You could really read forever--and maybe you should.
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Photo: "The End of the Road: 1964," from the Shorpy Photo Archives. http://www.shorpy.com/node/1003?size=_original
 Last week a link with the subject line “You can’t learn to write in college” was being forwarded and re-Tweeted around the internets. Since I teach writing in college, I found this assertion to be of interest, and I followed the link and found a quote from writer Ray Bradbury."You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught."I don’t want to spend too much time dissing Bradbury here—he’s had a long and very distinguished career—but, I mean, is he kidding? No one is taking this seriously, right?
Sadly, someone probably is.
The quote reads like a excerpt from an interview, though there is no citation. (Note to my comp students: See? Citations help!). Bradbury displays no real knowledge of what goes on in a college classroom—which makes sense, because I found this quote on his Wikipedia page:"Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."
I truly and honestly admire his desire to write and his drive to communicate and his love of reading. He achieved a great deal—he’s written some fine books—despite the handicap of not going to college. But he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Let’s look at the important parts of his statement a line or so at a time:
“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t.”
Wrong. My teachers knew more than I did, and I know more than my students do. I have more experience writing and reading than my students do. No brag—I’ve been at it longer than they have, and with, generally, more dedication. I can show them things they don’t know and make it easier for them to go on and discover new things for themselves.
“They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James?”
Yikes. Henry James, for all love! Sure, everyone has prejudices, but is a teacher really going to force a student to write like Henry James? A good teacher is going to help you write more like yourself—your true self. At the same time, the student has agency: if she wants to write like Henry James, she’s going to write like Henry James, and no one can stop her. There are bad teachers, of course, and there are good teachers who are not the best teachers for a particular student, but by-and-large students benefit from the instruction they receive. I know my students do.
Still, it seems like “Can creative writing be taught?” is a question that just will not die. It’s like a virus. I was even asked the question during my dissertation defense. It occurs to me that there are three underlying questions lurking beneath the big question:
1. Can Writing be Taught?
2. Can Good Writing be Taught?
3. Can Creativity be Taught?
I have the feeling that all three questions are based on nothing more than a simple desire for muses—on the wish that some little demi-goddess will swoop down and sprinkle golden genius-dust on our shoulders, and make our creative endeavors easy and nice.
I’ve never seen a muse, though, and the answer to all three questions remains Yes.
Stuff to look for:Advice to Writers, the website that has the Bradbury quote, has other interesting quotes from writers. Some of them are helpful….Ray Bradbury’s Wikipedia page. (Yes, comp students, I just cited Wikipedia. And though it does have its place in the world, it’s still not a scholarly source).
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance has some fine articles on the importance of teaching and coaching, and on the promotion of creativity and excellence.
Mark McGurl’s The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing is an enlightening and very readable history of writing programs and how programs have influenced and shaped contemporary American literature. I cited it many times in my dissertation.
David G. Meyers’s The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880 remains an influential discussion of the history of writing programs….
Nancy Andreasen’s The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius is a good overall look at how our brains think and create. Very useful for any teacher or writer.
 A few days ago I was staying at a friend’s house and picked up her copy of George Friedman’s The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. A very interesting book, though I think I find myself in disagreement with some of his assumptions—I say think, because the book sadly lacks a works cited section or an index, and I can never be sure where Friedman’s coming from or where he’s going. What I found especially troubling was Friedman’s apparent disregard of the concept of friction—the idea that things are always pushing back against a potential actor, things ranging from the environment to basic human frailty and ineptitude. Friedman’s nation-states seem to pursue their goals in a vacuum occupied only by other nation-states pursuing their goals. (I confess I haven’t finished the book—maybe he pulls it together later).
Anyway, driving back to College Station I spent some time pondering friction and its meanings. (The Texas heat outside my car a nice example of environmental friction). I first came across the concept years ago, plodding and trudging and slogging through Carl von Clauswitz’s On War:
“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction...This tremendous friction...is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance...Moreover, every war is rich in unique episodes…The good general must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operations which this very friction makes impossible.”
Well, now. Let’s look at that for a minute. Way back years ago when I was reading On War, I was also taking a creative writing class (my first cw class ever, taught by the great Shelby Hearon). I thought I saw a connection. Still think so. Try substituting “writing” for “war” and “writer” for “general.”
“Everything in writing is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction… The good writer must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operations which this very friction makes impossible.”
Every writer knows the truth of this, I think. I knew it then, and it’s even more apparent to me now. Writing is simple—but difficult. The world works against writing: friction slows the writer down. Friction in writing can include the basic distractions of life, such as raising a child or paying the rent, or getting drunk, or cooking dinner, or grading papers. Everything that takes the writer away from the page is a form of friction. Friction also includes the very functions of writing itself—the difficulty of using language, the tyranny of the blank page.
So what’s the lubricant that can ease writerly friction? In terms of warfare, Clauswitz argues for will:
“Perseverance in the chosen course is the essential counter-weight, provided that no compelling reasons intervene to the contrary. Moreover, there is hardly a worthwhile enterprise in war whose execution does not call for infinite effort, trouble, and privation; and as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective. It is steadfastness that will earn the admiration of the world and of posterity.” Will! How very Prussian! Just sit your ass down and get to work. But perseverance in the chosen course will in fact get words on the page, no doubt about it. Writing is a worthwhile enterprise whose execution calls for infinite effort, trouble, and privation. If I remember correctly, Alice Flaherty also talks about writerly will in The Midnight Disease, one of my favorite books on writing. But I would expand on the concept of will—in fact, expand it so much I’d not call it will at all but desire. For I feel there’s something more going on in writing beyond steely determination—love, lust, some weird combination of emotions and actions, something. Desire. Properly focused, desire can get a writer through a work all the way to the last sentence and the final period.Still there’s the continuing question of how best to focus this desire. I'll ponder on this some more....
Places to look for stuff….Novelist Shelby Hearon, one of my heroes. You should read her books.George Friedman’s intelligence website, Stratfor. His book, The Next 100 Years.Clauswitz’s On War, condensed. (In this case, condensed is best).Clauswitz quotations
Alice Flaherty’s The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain. Highly recomended.
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