
Should creative writing be taught? - robg
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/06/08/090608crat_atlarge_menand?currentPage=all
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tricky
I thought this was nice and relevant to us hackers:

"I don’t think the workshops taught me too much about craft, but they did
teach me about the importance of making things, not just reading things. You
care about things that you make, and that makes it easier to care about things
that other people make. "

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dangrover
I think what's important is having an instructor who is actually a
practitioner. If you take a writing class with a mediocre instructor, or if
such a class is required, then people just worry about grades and how to turn
that B+ into an A by cracking the professor's prejudices/tastes.

There's an attribute of people that the best term I can come up for is the
"give-a-shit gene." It's the tendency to care too much about the intrinsic
quality of the work you produce, rather than its reception or where it fits
in. Like implementing great code for an employer you hate on a project that's
going to fail, or putting in all the effort on a group project in school while
others slack off just because you want to have produced something good.

This is usually more of a weakness than a strength in most situations. But to
be a good writer, you have to genuinely give a shit about it. I've found a lot
of the people I go to school with don't really give a shit about anything, so
long as they get the grades or points or whatever they're being judged on.

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tierack
As someone who received an MFA in creative writing I get nervous when this
question comes up. I'm pleased, though, that the article matches my
experience.

I think zimbabwe has a point that "the classroom rarely adds more than what
students could get in a focused extracurricular group," but finding that group
would be nearly impossible. Writing is a very solitary activity, and sharing
unfinished work is (for the vast majority) a horrifying experience. You're not
going to easily get those people together to recreate a regular (and good)
workshop.

The workshop itself was pretty widely reviled by professors and students, and
contact we had with writing departments elsewhere showed we weren't alone in
that feeling. But I agree with the final thesis of the article that "workshops
work". I'm pretty sure my stories and novel got better throughout, from
criticism I received and from the sheer amount of practice I got. I ended up
not writing after getting the degree (programming was more fun), but a few
people I graduated with have started making names for themselves, and I feel
pretty good about that. It suggests that maybe I could have if I stuck with
it.

I sometimes think that a writing workshop could be nicely transferred to
programming. It's been my experience that programmers are much more willing to
share and accept advice on unfinished projects, and the little writing games
that seem so lame to writers might translate better too.

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zimbabwe
An excellent article from a magazine known for excellent journalism and
mediocre fiction and poetry. I wasn't expecting a read this good.

I personally don't think creative writing is something that college teaching
is suited for. A few courses, maybe, but a full major in creative writing is
not only a risk, it is largely a waste of class time for the student. Since
most of a creative writing major is just plain writing, followed by critique,
the classroom rarely adds more than what students could get in a focused
extracurricular group.

~~~
gabrielroth
Ah yes, all that mediocre fiction by Philip Roth, John Updike, Alice Munro,
Grace Paley, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Vladimir Nabokov,
Donald Barthelme, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Franzen,
Zadie Smith ... it's surprising the New Yorker still publishes fiction, with a
reputation for mediocrity like that.

~~~
michael_dorfman
I was wondering the same thing. Is there any magazine that has a _better_
reputation for fiction? The New Yorker and The Atlantic have pretty much
dominated the O.Henry Awards over the past 100 years....

~~~
gabriel
The New Yorker doesn't have a good reputation for fiction, and it hasn't for a
while. However, I think its lack of reputation is more about how The New
Yorker isn't thought of as a place for fiction anymore: They only publish one
story (compared to when they used to publish many), and their reportage is
still quite good.

Sure, that one story is usually by an established writer, which is also one of
the most common complaints, but that story isn't going to be a fluff piece.

I'm OK if The New Yorker isn't the best magazine for fiction, there are plenty
of other places to find new short fiction. You just have to know where to
look.

BTW, I thought gabrielroth's comment was hilarious. A great response to a not
so intelligent comment :)

