Negotiating the Personal in Creative Writing

Using the author’s own experiences in addition to a survey of 150 creative writing teachers, this book critiques the creative writing workshop and suggests a possible replacement that ‘unsilences’ the writer and recognises the complexities of the student–teacher relationship by focussing on dialogue rather than criticism.

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This book describes an alternative way to teach Creative Writing, one that replaces the silent writer taking criticism and advice from the teacher-led workshop with an active writer who reflects upon and publically questions the work-in-progress in order to solicit response, from a writers' group as well as from the teacher. Both accompany the writer, first as readers and fellow writers, only later as critics. Because writers ask, they listen, and dialogues with responders become an inner dialogue that guides later writing and revision. But when teachers accompany writers, teaching CW becomes even more a negotiation of the personal because this teacher who is listener and mentor is also a model for some students of the writer and even the person they would like to become - and still the Authority who gives the grades.