Why Even the Worst Creative Writing Courses Are Worthwhile

And here it is again, the perennial question: “Can Creative Writing Be Taught?”  In his amusingly curmudgeonly editorial, author Anis Shivani gives us his answer.  Yes, creative writing – that awful thing college kids do in workshops where they have to be nice to each other – can be taught.  But the ability to write “literature” cannot be taught.  According to Shivani, creative writing is worthless group therapy and literature is the elusive thing of genius.

I have taken creative writing courses in the past, and what I recall from workshopping is pretty much exactly how Shivani describes it:

“It is a mild form of hazing, an officially sanctioned sadism in which students eagerly participate. The student sits quietly while his work is read in front of him, not allowed to intervene as peers shred his work or occasionally praise it. All kinds of political, gender, class, and racial subtexts pervade such peer-to-peer “critique.” Those criticizing are as ignorant of the art of writing as those whose work is being discussed. They’re picking up cues from the instructor as to what is acceptable or not acceptable.”

Yes, yes, and yes to all of the above.  Workshopping is a time for everyone sitting around the table to think to themselves about another person’s work, “my god, that story/poem is awful.”  Then, in an effort to impress the professor and not appear too critical, they inevitably come up with  one criticism and one compliment to pass on to the poor dolt whose work is under scrutiny.  Then they squirm with simultaneous anticipation and dread that their story/poem might be on the chopping block next.

Yet for all of the awfulness of workshopping and the uselessness of the instructor whose only role is to be facilitator, I think that the classroom entity that is “creative writing” still has value, and not just for the belittling therapy aspect Shivani cites.  Here are three reasons why taking creative writing is worthwhile, none of which have anything to do at all with the actual writing done in a creative writing class.

1) You get to meet your audience. (a/k/a Grow Some Balls)

Probably all writers write for an ideal audience that only exists inside their heads.  That mentality is fine for producing staggering works of genius that you produce without any intention of ever sharing it with anyone solely so you can tuck it away in a drawer and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.  But at some point, most writers realize that in order to actually be writers, they have to share their work, and that takes courage.  Creating writing classes teach just that.  They force writers to let go of their private back-patting isolationism and invite other people to look at their mess.  Even the most awful workshopping sessions do something useful in that they force writers to become somewhat desensitized to the idea their work will end up in the hands of an audience – and not the ideal one for whom they hoped.  The practice of “sharing” in creative writing definitely deserves the icky group therapy connotation it has developed, but “putting your work out there” is something anyone serious about writing needs to get used to, and if you don’t have the courage to do it in a silly little group of crappy workshopping writers, you are going to have serious problems further down the road.

2) You see firsthand how impossible it is to write something good. (a/k/a Subject Yourself to a Swift Kick in the Balls)

From my experience, the works produced in creative writing classes are generally sub par, even from the perspective of the writer herself.  Most pieces of writing are written expressly for the course, which means that it was done in order to meet deadlines.  To make matters worse, most workshopping is done with self-diagnosed “drafts.”  No one is coming to class with a polished story.  They come with half-thought-out garbage they hope doesn’t stink as much as the next person’s.  So why am I citing these things as reasons why creative writing courses are worthwhile?  Because seeing the crash-and-burn failures of everyone around them helps knock out aspiring writers’ heads that they’re special.  As insecure as many writers may be about sharing their work with others, they usually operate under the assumption they have talent for writing.  They assume that they are “good” or have the potential to become good.  Creative writing courses do the dirty task of teaching you that you probably suck at writing just as much as your neighbor across the table who wrote that god awful poem comparing kittens to towels.  Writing courses teach that you that just because you want to write doesn’t make you good, and that is a useful lesson to learn, because you can’t actually become good if you think you’re hot shit already.

3) Learning how to ignore advice. (a/k/a Realizing it’s all Bullshit)

When you hear a math professor explain a solution to a problem there is very little room for dissent.  It either works or it doesn’t work.  Creative writing courses delude themselves into thinking they can work like that too.  They exist precisely because people believe there are teachable solutions to bad writing.  But throughout the duration of a creative writing class you will  hear the instructor say countless things that are vague, meaningless, and seem 100% wrong.  And that’s not even going to come close to the number of absurd bits of advice the other students will offer up.  You might get a few good ideas to improve your story/poem, but most of the time all you can do is smile and nod while inwardly shuddering at the lameness of their advice.  How to achieve good writing is a mystery.  It defies logic and good intentions.  Listening to the driveling bits of advice from others in a creative writing course will teach you that.  Seeing the bullshit behind a class designed with the assumption writing can be taught will, if nothing else, teach you that it can’t be.  There are no formulas, theorems, or axioms.  The sum of writing is greater than anything a course can try to impart.  And that’s a pretty important lesson to learn.

So I guess my answer to the question, “Can Creative Writing Be Taught” is no, it can’t, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be.  Even though you probably won’t produce anything worthwhile in the course and you may not learn anything that makes writing easier, there is value to watching how the course is attempted to be taught and allowing yourself to participate in that farce.  You may not learn how to write, but you’ll learn about the enigma that is writing.  And that might be the closest any course can ever get to illuminating the mystery of how what Shivani refers to as “literature” is produced.