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<ul type=disc>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian">The
Guardian</a>, Saturday 30 January 2010 <o:p></o:p></li>
</ul>
<h1><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Rachel Cusk</span><o:p></o:p></h1>
<p class=stand-first-alone id=stand-first>Can creative writing ever be taught?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Any writer who teaches in a university creative writing department will have
been asked (many times) the apparently well-meaning question: "Is it
really possible to teach people how to write?" Actually, I don't think
it's as well-meaning as all that: there's an edge to it, as though the
writer/teacher might be tricked into saying something hypocritical. No, I don't
think it's possible. (In that case why are you accepting money to do it?) Yes,
I think it's possible. (In that case what is the value of your art?)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>The suspicion that it's all a ruse does not, I think, adhere to any
other academic subject; and nor does the ­notion – the question
implies it – that the student will arrive at the university's gates in an
absolutely untutored condition, a virtual savage requiring to be
"taught". A person doing a ­degree in French or history or
maths is ­assumed to have some familiarity with the subject before they
start, and in fact to be already rather good at it. The teaching refines and
builds on what is already there. And if the difference is supposed to be that
writing depends on talent, well so does every intellectual and practical
pursuit. Some people are better at maths than others: no one thinks you can be
"taught" to be a mathematical genius. And no one thinks of teaching,
in that context, as a kind of forcing of the will. But there seems to be an
idea of writing as an intuitive pastime which is being ­dishonestly
subjected to counter­intuitive methods.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>It strikes me, though, that people really ask the question out of a need to
refer to their own lost creativity. They feel critical of a world that remains
compelled by this loss: it reminds them that they used to possess something
that doesn't seem to belong to them any more. The creativity of childhood was
often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others
are demanding to be given it back – to be "taught" – is
disturbing. And writing, more than any other art, is indexed to the worthiness
of the self because it is identified in people's minds with emotion. When a
child writes a story she experiences her personal world as something socially
valuable: her egotism, if you will, is configured as a force for good; by
writing she makes herself important, she asserts her equality with – and
becomes conterminous with – everything around her.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>But as she grows older this situation changes. She is no longer
"good" at writing. This is partly because she sees that its
representational burden has become more complex. But it is also because the
nature of her own importance is no longer quite so clear. The private and the
public have become uncoupled; and consequently there now appear to be two kinds
of writing where before there was one. There is the private, emotional writing
and there is the public, representational writing. The first is too subjective
to be anything other than a secret; and the second is too daunting, too
objective, to attempt.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>The creative writing student is often looking for a way out of this
deadlock, and it is interesting to notice that the second – the public
– kind of writing is the place they think they are going to find it. Yet
it is from the private world that their writing motivation comes; it is the
pressure of an emotional need that has driven them to fill in forms and sign up
for classes. It is as though the bridge between the two were broken, or unsafe.
It is that connection, that pathway, that has been lost. And the creative
writing class itself acts as a temporary walkway. By being present there, the
student is learning to reunite the private with the public. She is perhaps also
returning to the place – the schoolroom – where she believes she
first mislaid her primal expressive joy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>There is almost as much suspicion about this therapeutic aspect of creative
writing as there is about the claim that writing can be taught. The
"hard-man" culture of the writing workshop, where students make
themselves vulnerable in order to have their work ripped to shreds by their
tutor and peers, owes its existence to the generalised terror of
therapeutic values and their putative contamination of the intellect. Yet it
would not surprise me to see this method fall out of ­fashion. It
seekes to emulate the big, bad world of the literary lion's den, the
loneliness and the competitiveness that are the driven artist's portion, the
hurly burly of the critical round. But in my experience, very few students
really want or take pleasure in this elaborate simulation. Often, it merely deepens
the sense of division in themselves: the private world seems more
incommunicable than ever, the public world more daunting and hostile. And the
reason for this is that, even in the best-intentioned workshop model, the
writer's greatest asset – honesty – is placed in the hands of her
critics, and of herself as a critic. Honest criticism, I suppose, has its
place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>At the start of last term, I asked my students a question: "How did you
become the person you are?" They answered in turn, long answers of such
startling candour that the ­photographer who had come in to take a couple
of quick pictures for the ­university magazine ended up staying for the
whole session, mesmerised. I had asked them to write down three or four words
before they spoke, each word indicating a formative aspect of experience, and
to tell me what the words were. They were mostly simple words, such as
"father" and "school" and "Catherine". To me they
represented a regression to the first encounter with language; they represented
a chance to reconfigure the link between the mellifluity of self and the
concreteness of utterance. It felt as though this was a good thing for even the
most accomplished writer to do. Were the students learning anything? I suppose
not exactly. I'd prefer to think of it as relearning. Relearning how to write;
remembering how.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Lucida Calligraphy"'>Adrienne<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Adrienne
L. Thomas<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>MFA
Coordinator<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Creative
Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>University
of California, Riverside<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>900
University Ave<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>4145 INTS
Building<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Riverside,
CA 92521<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Voice:
(951) 827-5568 <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Fax: (951)
827-3619 <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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