Technologies in teaching creative writing

Yug. Got some crit on my observation report. For one thing, can I ask YOU,

how much or in fact HOW do you use interactive white board and projector I.T. in teaching creative writing?

And the above question particularly in the context of short courses, two hours per week, with no exam or qualification on offer nor of interest to the self-selected adult students.

Myself, I think writing in class, bouncing creativity off each other, and getting feedback from reading out and/or from tutor are chief methods in the writerly mode.

Increasing student production rate

Jury's out on my observation. I await the feedback appointment. Unfortunately the observer came for the Shadow part of the session -- always a sticky subject.

Meanwhile: wrapping up our marking creative writing topic with the related issue of getting students to write outside class and hand writing in. Remarkable how so many do not take advantage of getting feedback, who do not use the stimulus and goals to get on and write. I can completely understand a writer not wanting to use precious time and energy simply doing homework for teacher -- we are not in that kind of teaching. So I devised a flexible scheme to cover several levels of writer. It's the Alpha, Beta, Delta assignment.

For the details I refer you to the whole actual description from Creative Writing: the Matrix, which is this term's tutor tip on the book's website at http://www.paxtonpublishing.co.uk A freebie.

Here's another link to look at, with a freebie of sorts. It's the Institute for Learning, which is, as FE tutors, our very own organisation -- very big, recognised and official on over 18 AND UP, UP, UP learning. You kinda-sorta-gotta join if you are teaching in a publicly funded institution (community, prison, as well as FE colleges), because we all have to be registered nowadays. And we have to do CPD -- Continuous Professional Development. http://www.ifl.ac.uk

That's where their freebie part comes in. Turns out that simply reading their monthly emailed On the Agenda news bulletin can count towards your annual CPD requirement. How easy is that!

Can you mark creative writing? Part 2.

I was going to tell you about my secret grade scheme, for my files and institutional admin only, having talked last week about feedback on students' creative writing.

But also I ran into the how much do you criticise issue. And How can you best help a writer to improve without squashing? As a professional writer and self-editor I have to force myself to ignore, or give only slight mention to, grammar and puncuation and spelling errors. I mean, not if they are really really bad -- then I'd have to take the student aside and see about getting help... or... what? So much depends on the level of the course and the students. Even little errors, even typos... I do make a few marks in the margins -- but I let some go by.

My perfectionist editorial self really objects! But I have to tell it/me -- this is a creative writing class, the students are not here to be perfect at grammar but to begin or continue to tell stories, or make poems, convey a mood, create a character etc. However, if their language skills interfere... the skills are so interwoven, ugh, I'm getting a stomach ache just writing this: I feel torn!

So I will leave you with that, and move on to grading, and am very curious to hear from you how you do this. Because I have made this up for myself. In the coursebook, to satisfy any management who look, I put

1 for excellent/very good/hardly any weaknesses

2 for good, some weaknesses, satisfactory

3 for some competence, but many weaknesses

4 for weak, but made an effort

0 for made no effort

It is still a matter of very personal judgment and the student's own level and the course expectation. But at least it's got a number on it for those bosses and computers who can only think in numbers. And guess what, I am being observed as part of the regular cycle tomorrow night, so we shall see if my secret scheme meets with management's approval. What grade for me?

Can you mark creative writing?

Do you get pressure from your management to give an 'assessment' -- that is, a mark -- for each student? Most institutions insist on it; and no, it cannot be a little statement [brilliant characterisation but needs to improve language]. It has to be a number or letter to put in the box so that the computer or observer can see instantly that the student has been assessed.

A whole 50% of my lovely keen class, in week 2, completed 'homework' (polishing up one of the exercises we did in class) or, per my invitation, gave me something they'd written previously. I have often had classes where hardly anyone gave in writing, which is a shame. Students aren't getting their own money's worth if they don't get feedback.

So I had a busy day yesterday prepping for class and reading and giving feedback. So how do YOU give feedback? I would never-never-never put a grade on a piece of creative writing -- far too specific and potentially devastating to a tender writer. No, I just put comments on their pages.

Obviously this indicates to you that I do not accept emailed writing from students. I spend enough time at this screen on my own stuff... as well as ink and paper. No, I tell them that publishers and competitions have their rules, and so do I. I want them to Make the Effort. Also, to practice proper layout.

I use pencil, not pen, because it looks softer, kinder. I adopted something that I liked from feedback I have received... tick in the margin and/or bottom of page. Shows I like something, or at least it looks like I have actually read the page.

Except for very small comments I put all my feedback at the end of the writing. Yes, I do it sandwich style: a positive, enthusiastic sentence or several, then some critique (I give page and para numbers, or sometimes in the margin of the section in question I pencil a squiggly vertical line). Then end with some upbeat encouragement.

It is all handwritten on their work. Gracious me, if I got into typing out my feedback I would spend far too much time and perfection on my comments; I know, because I have tried it once or twice, that I tend to get too far into explaining why something isn't working. As in writing this blog, I think and type simultaneously... and always find things to say. In the case of feedback, too many things.

Handwritten feedback is more personal, too. AND, I am famous for my illegible handwriting (though for students I try harder)... so I apologise in advance and say it brings me closer to my students: if you can't figure out something I wrote, come and talk to me!

Then there's the challenge... how much do you criticise? Where do you rein in your perfectionism, where can you best help a writer to improve without squashing? Hmmm, think I'd better continue this next week. And I do have a secret grade scheme, to keep management happy.

Wordstarts exercise

Well guess what? The querying student did enrol (see last week's entry about managing student expectations). Surprise, surprise as to what his genre is: graphic novels. Interestingly, out of 17 students, another is also writing in that genre.

It is a form that I know nothing about -- however, a story is a story, and at the end of the session the original enquiring student said this had been a really useful class and that the whole course would work for him. I thought it would. Synchronicity: this week's Sunday Times Culture has an excellent mini-review for a children's graphic novel.

Wordstarts exercise: Exercise 22 (actually called 'I remember...') gives your students a structure for freewriting. It is something you can use just once, or use over several weeks or longer. Used one way you can also turn it into a self-editing project.

At the start of each term I give away a new exercise and new tutor support tip on http://paxtonpublishing.co.uk/ the website for my book of exercises and ideas. So this blogweek, tune in there for your teachingcreativewriting goody.

Managing student expectations

First week of term! Yes, I do have a class, enrolment has met the required number. Maybe by now, exceeded it. I will go in early tomorrow to check the numbers and to be sure to get in the photocopy queue with time to spare. Also, to pick up whatever admin bumpf the college has devised over the break.

A prospective student emailed me via the college -- will The Hero's Journey teach him to write a true adventure?

Hmmm -- depends on what he means by 'teach him to write', by 'write', by 'true' and by 'adventure'. In just about every new class, someone arrives with the idea that he/she will have written a book by the end of the course, or end of the year. If only!

But this is just a 5 week course, so in the first instance I said that this would give him the tools with which to start and to continue to write a story (by which I mean story or book-length story). The same answer actually also applies to a full year course.

So that's the gentle disillusionment you have to deliver if a student arrives with that goal. Let alone the student who says he/she will write, get published and be rich and famous by the end of the course. But we cannot shatter and trample upon dreams and motivation: gently, gently.

I hope I didn't sound too snippy when I said I was sure he must already have looked at the course outline online where I explain the elements of the course.

But then maybe he was talking about genre? So I explained that the course does talk in terms of heroes and dragons, mentors and Shadows... the stuff of fantasy and sci fi, Star Wars and Lion King. BUT my exercises and lectures are about the psychological power in the hero's quest -- power that works in every story, on a domestic or a galactic canvas. Pride and Prejudice, The King's Speech, Peter Rabbit -- these too have a hero's journey template. But I don't know if his query stems from wanting fantasy or from an aversion to it. Or maybe, by 'true', he meant a real-life adventure, like the 127 Hours story? Hero's Journey can work for that too.

Interesting how so many people can't bear fantasy novels; some students insist literary novels are the only thing, and hate popular fiction of the chic-lit or crime sort. I know of one class that was nearly wrecked by one such student. On the other hand, the few (in my circles) who love fantasy/sci fi are rather lost souls in the world of creative writing classes and I believe in supporting them as well as the others.

I encourage genre tolerance -- we can all learn from other genres, even if we don't like them. Whatever the genre, it has readers or it wouldn't exist. The most important thing: beginning, middle, end -- and getting it written!

I wonder if he will join the course...

Publication for one of my students!

[Last entry before the break; back in January when I find out if my class has made its numbers and will run...]

Oh, the thrill of it. One of my long-time students (whom I no longer teach -- this group of Writers at Work have gone on meeting on their own weekly, reading out and encouraging each other) has told me that his novel is to be published!

CONGRATULATIONS, JOHN ELLIOTT!

John is a fine writer and has completed several novels and a number of short stories over the years I've known him, sensitively and interestingly written. He has sent novels off and achieved rejections. This novel, with the group's support, he approached in a different way: a crime novel, called Dying for a Read. I will be tracking its progress.

I met with another student from that course recently to catch up on things. She had gone in a different direction, asking me to write a reference for her to go for a Master's Degree in Literature & Psychology... six or so years later, it transpires that this became psychology only, and she is now working on her PhD, speaking at international seminars, and editor and driving force of Pendulum, the journal of MDF, the Bipolar Organisation. Go, Clare Dolman!

Several other now-published writers have passed through my classes. I find it really interesting that when my students get published I always feel -- 'it wasn't me, my teaching, they simply had it in them.' And they did! I think what a good class and good teacher do is provide a mixing-holding place for talent, a nurturance and belief, helping writers to sustain their effort.

Many, of course do not get published. Because they stop trying? Because they have not improved enough? Because writing is too hard? Because they find other things to do? Because they aren't writing to get published? Still... it is a journey of discovery.

Helen's comment last week on the student who blossomed... that is so rewarding. Seems to me that with the shy student confidence-building is the key, and patience, and not forcing him/her to read out, and an attitude from you that you take his/her efforts at writing absolutely seriously, you believe in it.

Along these lines of 'growing people', perhaps, is a piece in the NAWE (National Ass'n of Writers in Education) Director's Report 2010 summing up a report on writers teaching in schools. The project effectively demonstrated 'how writing can be used to unlock both intellectual and emotional responses.' Yes, that's what I like about teaching creative writing: helping people to say what they want to say, and sometimes to find out what they want to say.

If you haven't yet joined NAWE, do. Good, re-launched, website: http://www.nawe.co.uk
HAPPY CHRISTMAS SEASON AND NEW YEAR
-- I'LL BE BACK IN 2011, START OF TERM.