This paper is about learning and writing in higher education, about a range of contrasting types of conception or consciousness of writing, about the obstacles and constraints impeding the deepening and broadening of this consciousness, about the conditions underlying the very possibility of Creative Writing.
1. See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328315754 Towards a Theory of Creative Writing Conference Paper · November 1996 CITATION READS 1 8,449 1 author: Gregory J Light Northwestern University 70 PUBLICATIONS 2,020 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Learning and Creative Writing in Higher Education View project All content following this page was uploaded by Gregory J Light on 26 March 2019. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
2. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. The Literature of the Unpublished, Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education Contents Introduction ................................. p 2 I The Pedagogical Mystique ................................. p 5 The Classroom Professional ................................. p 8 The Process of Writing ................................. p 15 II Towards a New Theory ................................. p 18 Conceptions of Creative Writing ................................. p 20 General Implications for Teaching ................................. p 25 Postscript ................................. p 27 Notes ................................. p 29 Bibliography ................................. p 33 Dr Gregory Light (1998) Centre For Higher Education Studies Institute of Education 1
3. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. Introduction The quirky juxtaposition of the terms in the title, The Literature of the Unpublished, goes further than mere description. It is intended as a warning that the terms 'literature' and 'unpublished' are here being subverted: in the first instance with respect to the aesthetic baggage which clings to 'literature' as 'a highly valued kind of writing', and in the second instance with respect to the negative baggage associated with 'the unpublished', suggesting rejected, unworthy, of lesser value. The title declares, then, a less normative use of these terms, prying them open, preparing them for a broader redescription which takes us beyond the prevailing text-centred paradigm of literature and writing. The pressure for such a redescription is already signalled in the term 'creative writing' of the sub-title. For Creative Writing occupies the rather unique position of sounding well defined and straightforward while being almost meaningless. On the surface it describes, somewhat simply, the practice of writing in particular 'literary' genres: mainly poetry, fiction and drama. But it does not, despite its name, describe the practice of writing 'creatively'. As Williams (1983) notes, the term 'creative' has become "so conventional, as a description of certain general kinds of activity, that ... any imitative or stereotyped literary work can be called, by convention, creative writing"(p84). Indeed, in the capricious world of aesthetic and literary value which underpins the use of these terms, it is not stretching a point too far to suggest that 'creative writing' is synonymous with the 'unpublished'. Once 'published' it becomes a kind of 'literature': subject matter for literary studies, even if this consists of critical rejection. Ironically, then, 'creative writing' is not only not inherently associated with 'creativity', it is often regarded as synonymous with 'uncreative' ('unpublished'), pseudo texts. This is particularly acute in higher education where we teach and study 'literature', but do not produce it: Instead, according to Scholes (1985) "we teach something called 'creative writing' - the production of pseudo-literary texts."(p5) In such a paradoxical climate, Malcolm Bradbury's (1992) remark, that "Creative 2
4. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. Writing has come to prosper, yet one curious feature of its growth is that ... it has generated very little in the way of ... theoretical publication"(p7-9), is hardly surprising. This is not simply an oversight - although on going debates as to whether it is worthy of being an academic discipline in its own right, let alone a field of theoretical study, has certainly limited theoretical progress. Neither is it for lack of attention. Books on the various genres, sub-genres, elements, processes, techniques, markets and experiences of creative writing have almost generated a publishing industry in themselves. No, there has been a marked lack of coherent and comprehensive theoretical publication because Creative Writing genuinely resists theorising. Indeed, it demands a theory which isn't so much theoretical as mystical. It both assumes and aspires to a transcendental realm of "creation". In this respect, moreover, Creative Writing is positioned at the very heart of the end of millennium 'wars' shaking the foundations of English studies, pivotal in what has been described as the "growing fissure opening between 'creation and theory'"(ibid). The fallout of Theory's recent onslaught, proclaiming the destruction of Literature, has been fearfully viewed by many writers as embodying the issue of individual creation itself. Indeed, it may be regarded as a literary version of Genesis contra Darwin: a kind of discursive 'monkey' trial. As with the Author of humanity, the author of the literary text is being displaced by virulent waves of "Theory". Under the banner of the new atheists, the Nietzschean eruption that "God is dead" has stormed ashore to pronounce, along with Barthes (1977), "the death of the author" (p142). In neither case, of course, does the "death of God or the Author" mean the full blown denial of their existence. (These are separate debates.) Its force is, rather, to deny to God or to the writer the notion that their "texts" are fully defined by them, by what Umberto Eco (1992) refers to as the "intentio auctoris"(p25). Nevertheless, for many believers and for many writers this is rather abhorrent. They have, respectively, an unshakeable faith in the original, omnipotent creativity of God and in the original, individual creativity of the writer. And in this, it is primarily a question of "ownership". As God "owns" His creation, writers fully "own" their textual creations. Indeed, this is enshrined in the Bible and in copyright, both of which are respectively sacrosanct. What many writer's feel desperately uncomfortable with is the 'sight' of literary theorists stomping over ground which they have come to hold as sacred. Their texts are expressions and reflections of themselves, of their ideas, their experiences, their 3
5. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. emotions and, here, theorists have been saying this is not so, at least not so when the reader gets hold of it. Suddenly it's a cultural artefact which reflects the conditions of its production, the ideological structures of its culture. Suddenly its a product which is not read in terms of the issues and questions it's creator, the writer, encouraged, but rather in terms of those he or she did not encourage. Wayne Booth (1979) illustrates this well: What do you have to say, you seemingly innocent child's tale of three little pigs and a wicked wolf, about the culture that preserves and responds to you? About the unconscious dreams of the author or folk that created you? About the history of narrative suspense? About the relations of the lighter and darker races? About big people and little people, hairy and bald, lean and fat? About triadic patterns in human history? About the Trinity? About laziness and industry, family structure, domestic architecture, dietary practice, standards of justice and revenge? About the history of manipulation of narrative point of view for the creation of sympathy? Is it good for a child to read you or hear you recited, night after night? (p 243) For many writers this goes too far. It is interpretation of the worst kind, overinterpretation resulting in the loss of the aesthetic text for the cultural object. The "passional" reading is set aside for the cultural reading. It echoes the lament of many believers: the loss of the transcendent spirit of God for the ideological interpretation: a kind of literary atheism. And if this parallel with the more fundamental stances of religion sits uncomfortably with liberal minded writers, it further underlines the depth of feeling and the theoretical resistance dwelling at the centre of Creative Writing. To critically and comprehensively theorise Creative Writing under such conditions is next to impossible. To proceed, "Creationism" (author as original, authentic creator; text as sacred object) must be recalled from Creative Writing. As we shall see, this requires an approach based neither in the 'literary' judgement of creative writing texts nor in ephemeral, subjectivist concepts of the writer's "creativity", "originality" etc, but rather in the writer's concrete, material consciousness, understanding and 'learning' of writing. As such, this paper should not be regarded as describing creativity, except, perhaps, in the broadest, most peripheral sense. It is, rather, about learning and writing in higher education, about a range of contrasting types of conception or consciousness of writing, about the obstacles and constraints impeding the deepening and broadening of this consciousness, about the conditions underlying the very possibility of Creative Writing. But first, a critical review of "creationism"; in particular the pedagogical implications 4
6. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. of its twin assumptions of objective, literary value and of an independent writing self. I The Pedagogical Mystique The "creationist" view of writing has a longish history, particularly acute in the curious 'pedagogical mystique' associated with college and university creative writing courses. The reasons for this rest primarily in the nature of higher education as a 'national institution'. In contrast to such courses offered through adult education classes, commercial writing courses, WEA courses, community groups, Arvon courses, theatre based courses, loose groups of writing friends and so on, there is a convergence in higher education (particularly English studies in which or in response to which most creative writing courses are developed) between questions of teaching and learning writing and those of 'literature' and 'literary value'. Doyle (1982), for example, describes the historical process by which English Studies came to embody both 'high culture' and the 'national character' as a process of "nationalisation" enshrining the text "as the central and supposedly objective element in the study of literature within higher education, supported by the equally objective-looking notion of 'literary-value'"(p27-28). The collision of creative writing courses with this specialised 'national' context of English studies in higher education accentuates the pedagogical mystique born in the triad of writing, learning and the 'literary'. This mystique is, perhaps, most visible in high-profile courses such as the MA in Creative Writing at UEA where, despite customary disclaimers, the relation between creative writing courses and future literary recognition is implied, almost in a linear or formulaic manner. Not withstanding this program's natural wish that its students do well, it does not, of course, make such claims. Bradbury is very forthright about the question of teaching 1 writing. In one handout , he says that the course "makes no claim to teach those who are not yet writing how to write"(p1). And in another handout, applicants are told that: A number of writers who have participated in the programme have developed successful and full-time careers as writers, but it must be obvious that acceptance onto the programme is no guarantee of success nor does it necessarily afford special advantages in securing publication or production.(p2) Nevertheless, (despite this issue of 'teaching' versus 'developing'), the inference of a 5
7. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. relationship between students (published writers or not) who take the course becoming established, recognised authors remains. This is certainly suggested in most of the literature on the course: the names of 'recognised' former students constantly tumble out. Indeed, this seems to be the whole point of yet another handout written almost in the form of a press release. Of the around 100 students who have by now passed through the course, some thirty have made their way as established writers. Some ten novels by former members appeared in 1989 alone. Its authors have won or been short-listed for many major prizes: the Whitbread Prize (Ian McEwan, Kasuo Ishiguro), the Booker Prize (Ian McEwan, Kasuo Ishiguro, Rose Tremain), the Betty Trask Prize (Glenn Patterson, Paul Houghton), the Dylan Thomas and Angel Prizes (Rose Tremain), the Somerset Maugham Award (Clive Sinclair, Ian McEwan, Deirdre Madden), the Rooney Prize (Deirdre Madden), the Ian St. James Short Story Prize (David Rose) and other notable literary awards. Several of these authors were chosen as among the twenty "Best of Young British Novelists" in 1982. While you may not be 'taught', the clear suggestion here, and reinforced in another handout, is that given "firm motivation towards writing ... already produced work, whether published or not, with a defined direction" you may be 'developed' towards a 'recognised' published author. If this 'pedagogical mystique' manifests itself in the UEA course in the literary recognition of some of its students, in the case of the many other less known creative writing courses, its manifestation rests in the various forms of intellectual and academic resistance which they have faced. Thick and widespread in institutions of Higher Education, this resistance has traditionally surfaced in the form of arguments that 'creative writing' is not a sufficiently rigorous discipline. Neither is it something that can be formally taught (or learned) or assessed. You are either a good writer or 2 not. In a paper about the setting up of an undergraduate creative writing course at University College, Cardiff, John Freeman (1987) wrote: There was considerable opposition to the setting up of the course from colleagues in the English Department. The reasons for this opposition are not usually fully and openly rehearsed, but they appear to be the familiar prejudices against creative writing: a general sense that it is not 'serious', encourages self indulgence, and is a waste of precious time which should be devoted to the study of literature and critical theory.(9:p3) Closely associated with these arguments, he notes that: The most persistent objection to a writing course is that (so it is claimed) it 6
8. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. will be impossible to grade and assess creative writing fairly and accurately. Suppose the student is a genius ahead of his time? (Ibid. p2) And Freeman's experience is not solely confined to the more traditionally minded universities. Writing in the same collection, Susanna Gladwin (1987) explains how her experience of setting up a writing course at Middlesex Polytechnic met with: ... no more than silent acceptance from my English literature colleagues, with one or two exceptions. The main objections to writing courses that I have come across - (1) they are a waste of time, and (2) they can't be taught anyway - seem to be tied up with the anxiety in the English department for maintaining unimpeachable academic rigour. (8:p1) Indeed she saw opposition to writing courses as so virulent, it was not considered propitious to confront it head on. As a result of her experience she suggests a host of strategies for "introducing writing courses into the often hostile environment of HE degree courses", including not calling the course 'creative writing', linking it with other terms such as 'rhetoric' (which suggest a "higher academic approach") and/or "respectable 'skills' courses, such as languages and computing" and looking to other departments such as Communications or Media Studies. Perhaps the most telling strategy Gladwin suggests, however, revolves around course design. Design the writing creative course, she suggests: ... to fit recognisable teaching and assessment structures: so if it is normal for students to sit three hour unseen written examinations, include this as an assessment component in your own course. If it is usual to have set books and produce lengthy bibliographies, then you do the same. (ibid. p2) This relationship of course design to academic respectability is one that, in one guise or another, surfaces regularly. It reflects the resistance teachers are getting. In a paper entitled "Teaching Creatively, not Teaching Creativity" (1989), David Craig, director and teacher of the MA program in creative writing at the University of Lancaster echoes Gladwin's concerns: Politically, it is true, we may well have to recognise that now and again it is difficult to maintain respect for our subject or hold its slender beach- head in the curriculum, without hardening it into a set of impressive formulae: the sort of xeroxed A4 sheets, with numbered paragraphs and a tidy little book-list at the end, which committees feel at ease with. ... What we have to remember is that the committees and monitorial personages who demand that we codify our ways are very probably sceptical about creative writing as a subject. ... our subject has never managed to be more than marginal on the campuses (contrast America!) and has to justify itself 7
9. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. at every turn against entrenched grudge and cynicism. (p3) In some courses the relation between respectability and design is not explicitly made, although it may still be implicit. The East Anglia MA course, for example, is designed with a formal critical element including formal essays, written examinations and so on. And while there is no evidence that these elements of the course exist simply as strategies to defend the 'creative' writing element against charges of lack of academic respectability and rigour, it does, nevertheless, provide such a bulwark. The suggestion here is that academic resistance to creative writing has been internalised, the implication being that the writing-centred elements of the course do not warrant academic respectability on their own. They are too intangible, too 3 mysterious to be taught, assessed or encompassed in the academic tradition. In an article in The Independent Magazine comparing the East Anglia MA course and a similar creative writing program at Columbia University in New York, Mark Lawson (1990) sums up this notion of pedagogical suspicion and 'mystique'. Echoing David Craig's point (briefly alluded to above), he implies that the victory secured by creative writing courses in establishing themselves in universities and colleges in America, suggests that academic resistance is a British phenomenon. The standard British literary attitude is one of suspicion towards these schemes. There is an assumption that creative talent is instinctive and unteachable, although, curiously, many of those who hold this view about writers would not apply it to painters or composers, who are invariably graduates of some kind of specialist academy. ... Is this fair? Can literary creation be taught and examined like maths? Or are the courses just the illogical extension of a culture obsessed with qualifications and educational certificates? (p53) The contrast with the American situation is significant insofar as it presents us with a context in which both widespread academic resistance to creative writing courses appears to have been surmounted, and in which there is strong evidence that creative writing courses do produce professional writers. Nevertheless, in America, too, this notion of a 'pedagogical mystique' refuses to lie down. Writer, Eve Shelnutt (1989) of the Ohio University MFA (Masters of Fine Art) program, for example, raises (albeit dismissively) the "question that has plagued MFA programs since their inception, namely, can creative writing be taught?"(p7) The Classroom Professional In terms of the acceptance of creative writing, it is difficult to argue with its duration 8
10. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. and extent in America. Joseph Moxley (1989) notes that such courses have been available in America for 60 years, beginning with the Iowa program in 1936. They have prospered so well that Dana Gioia writes in the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic Monthly that "there are now about 200 graduate creative writing programs in the 4 United States, and more than a thousand undergraduate ones" (p95) . He calculates that with an average of ten poetry students per graduate program, in the next decade alone there will be 20,000 more 'accredited' professional poets. Even more striking is Shelnutt's (1989) assertion that: ... in America the majority of new, 'serious' imaginative writing is being produced by writers trained in MFA programs staffed by teachers who are themselves products of MFA programs. (p4) The depth and breadth of these programs in America, suggesting the collapse of the grudging sort of academic acceptance evident in Britain, implies there is a consensus among American practitioners that creative writing can be adequately "taught/assessed" and, furthermore, that graduates go on to become 'recognised' writers. Significantly, it is the meaning of 'recognised' which is of central importance here. The proliferation of programs, some claim, has distorted its sense from recognised 'aesthetic' writer to recognised 'professional' writer. In a controversial paper entitled "Who killed Poetry", Joseph Epstein (1989) argues, for example, that: Whereas one tended to think of the modernist poet as an artist ... one tends to think of the contemporary poet as a professional: a poetry professional. Like a true professional he is rather insulated within the world of his fellow professionals. The great majority of poets today live in an atmosphere almost entirely academic, but it is academic with a difference: not the world of science and scholarship but that of the creative writing program and the writing workshop. ... The poets who come out of this atmosphere ... publish chiefly in journals sheltered by universities, they fly around the country giving readings and workshops at other colleges and universities. (p3) Gioia (1991) reinforces Epstein's concerns, referring to the sheltered academic world of these academic poets as a bureaucratic subculture which eschews artistic quality as criteria for defining the poet in favour of professional positioning, objectively assessed in terms of careers in academic institutions. In this he quotes the critic Bruce Bawer as observing that: A poem is a fragile thing, and its intrinsic worth, or lack thereof, is a frighteningly subjective consideration; but fellowships, grants, degrees, appointments, and publications are objective facts. They are quantifiable; they can be listed on a resume. (p98) 9
11. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. Extending the argument beyond poetry, Shelnutt echoes Epstein's and Gioia's view. Like them, she is concerned about the proliferation of small university presses which have grown along with creative writing programs and have become the mainstay of publication for writers teaching and/or studying on them. They became a focal point for measuring the 'professional' writer: for teachers seeking tenure, for departments seeking to validate the 'seriousness' of their writing programs and, significantly, for "writing students aiming to 'make it' by publishing first in literary journals before an assault on New York publishers" (p6). The crunch of what Epstein, Gioia and Shelnutt are saying, however, goes much further. Not only has the proliferation of creative writing programs altered the meaning of 'recognised' writer, it has also resulted in a reduction of artistic quality and integrity. Poetry, Epstein (1989) writes, has been "... taken out of the world, chilled in the classroom and vastly overproduced by men and women who are licensed to write it by degree if not necessarily by talent or spirit" (p16). Likewise, Gioia (1991) argues that this academic subculture has resulted in the super-abundance of dull and mediocre poetry through a poetry industry "... created to serve the interests of the producers and not the consumers. And in the process the integrity of the art has been betrayed" (p100). Again, extending the argument beyond poetry, Shelnutt (1989) points to the isolation of creative writing programs in their own academic world - she differs from Epstein and Gioia in pinpointing the demise of 'quality' writing in the separation of creative writing programs from English departments not solely the outside world - as augmenting "publishers economic moves away from quality literature" (p9). Ironically, then, far from supporting the notion that creative writing programs in America 'teach' creative writing and produce recognised 'literary' writers, a significant part of the American experience suggests that such programs as they are presently constituted contribute to undermining the development of 'literary' writers. Of course all of this is based on aesthetic assumptions of literary and poetic quality and, at that level, it should be noted that both Epstein's and Gioia's essays did not go 5 unanswered. While some writers were in general agreement, noting along with Bruce Duffy, that these writing programs "crank out ... modest graduates who en masse can only swamp and further dilute the standards of their art" (p13), many more questioned the aesthetic assumptions Epstein and Gioia were intent on preserving, assumptions about the nature of literary quality and its associated canons, big names, homogeneity and so on. The poet/teacher Toi Dericotte (1989) contends their view 10
12. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. is narrow and elitist. Epstein's list of the "all-time greats" she notes is "100% white and 99% male" and perpetuates "racism, classism and sexism in our literature" (p7). Askold Melnyczuk (1989) takes issue with the idea of a homogeneous literature in a pluralist society, preferring "the grand cacophony emanating from the alert and mangy choir of voices serenading us today and don't for an instant regret the absence of the one big voice booming out its Truth" (p6). And the teacher/writer Bill Tremblay (1989) charges Epstein and Gioia with arguing on what "is, finally, a matter of personal taste."(p9) Tremblay, moreover, suggests that the distinction between writer as 'artist' and writer as 'professional' is an ideological distinction based on an economic argument asserting that poetry coming from the subsidised sector of academia somehow fails to meet the literary standards of that coming from the market place: My sense is that Mr. Epstein's agenda is to subject poetry to 'marketplace' pressures ... He believes that if academia didn't provide a refuge for poetic scoundrels, there'd be a lot fewer of them ... (ibid) Fewer professional poets and fewer mediocre and dull poems. Only those poets of quality would survive and with 'genuine' audiences. But, Tremblay argues, there is no intrinsic reason why the structures of academically based writing should be worse than those subjected to the market place; indeed, he suggests that much of the 'disaster' facing many writers is attributable to "wanting to be taken seriously as poets in a commercial society", arguing (after Camus) that "a commercial society must trivialise art, including poetry, to maintain the domination of its myth ..." (ibid). Such a commercially oriented society leads, he says, to the narrow, ideologically preferred single canon represented by "big names". Tremblay's argument highlights the conflicts which the profound relationships existing between English studies in higher education, the category of 'literature' and the economic forces of the market place upon the writer. The myths of 'literature' and the 'literary canon' are market based constructs; categories made necessary in order that the texts which they encompass can, as Doyle (1989) notes, compete in the market against "the increasing dominance of 'popular' markets for symbolic works during the twentieth century" (p13). Insofar as they institutionalise literature "as an academic discipline", they manipulate, Doyle argues, the exchange markets of symbolic works by creating a measure of "intrinsic value prior and external to exchange" (ibid p14). This relationship underpins the 'serious' writer's thorny problem of wanting to be 'recognised' both aesthetically and commercially: i.e. to face 11
13. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. the 'disaster' of attempting to carve out a living writing texts of intrinsic worth. It assumes that 'literature' is a concrete objective thing, 'makeable' by the writer irrespective of social relationships and measurable in terms of objective 'literary value'. The debate takes its departure in literary 'quality' which, while sounding like a reasonable starting point - after all what are these creative writing programs doing if not improving the 'quality' of the student's writing - turns out to be extremely problematic. Indeed it is at the root of the 'pedagogical mystique' raised above. The American experience, despite its breadth, has not resolved the issue; if anything it has highlighted the difficulties. If British resistance to creative writing courses turned on the question of 'pedagogical mystique' - can it be adequately taught or assessed - the argument in America also centres on the question: is it being adequately taught and assessed and are the 'professionals' (teachers/graduates) 'artists' with an audience beyond the doors of academia. Moreover, in his essay, "The Future of Creative Writing Programs", George Garrett (1989) describes a further dilemma associated with this academic professionalisation of creative writing: ... the new generation of writers goes directly from school into teaching, thus never really leaving school. No matter how technically proficient they become, what will become of the sum and substance of their work? (p 58- 59) While not synonymous with 'quality', "sum and substance" here is related to it: if the "sum and substance" of the student/writer's work is basically grounded in university experience, what chance for the 'quality' of the work? Ironically, Garrett addresses this issue with a call for a 'literary' experience grounded in the university. "We, the teachers ... need to find ways to make literature more meaningful and practical to the writer" (ibid p61). In this he echoes Moxley's (1989) call for students to have "a background in literature and criticism" to enable them "to identify and produce creative work" (pxvi). Shelnutt (1989) blames institutions and teachers for undermining students who "aspire to the quality of work" (p7) by separating English and creative writing departments and thereby fostering "a growing climate of anti- intellectualism among writing students" (ibid). Students should have a more thorough grounding in literature, criticism, critical theory as well as composition. Without such courses, "how will universities continue to make a distinction between the kind of education provided in a university setting and that provided by 12
14. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. commercial schools of writing" (p10). This debate raises a curious conflict between two kinds of experience: one concerned that the quality (sum and substance) of the student's writing is undermined by predominately academic experiences and another that the quality of their writing is undermined by the failure to provide more of a 'certain kind' of academic experience. The solution to the paradox lies in the assumption that this 'certain kind' of academic experience (English studies) differs from that of creative writing departments in the richness of 'experience' and 'life' it provides. It is a paradox which has historically been transcended in exactly this manner. In his study of the history of English and education, Doyle (1989) shows how the 1921 Newbolt report - which proposed a strategy for national cultural renewal by means of a system of education led by the universities" (p41) - transcended this same paradox by the appropriation of such terms as 'experience', 'reality', 'life' and limiting them ... in such a manner as to enable the claim that popular access to all three can only be gained by means of art which, for the purposes of national education effectively means English and especially English literature. (p 45) Ironically (perhaps supremely so), associated with the above paradox is the implication that whereas the institutionalising of English studies in higher education safeguards 'literature' and 'literary value' through which it can manipulate the market in symbolic works, the institutionalising of creative writing in higher education undermines the production of 'literature' by bypassing the traditional market of symbolic works for an 'academic' market of symbolic works and workers (academic professionals). Significantly, the anomalies noted in both the different kinds of experience and the two different areas of higher education arise against a background which is chiefly concerned with 'literature' and 'literary value'. Shelnutt's solution to these conflicts is historically based - the integration of creative writing with English studies: that is with an "(inter)nationalised Literature" which enshrines the 'literary canon' and 'literary value' at the heart of a global as well as a national cultural heritage. ... writing programs do not need to produce more writers ... (but) better writers for whom the latest fads in fiction and poetry are to be questioned; writers who envision themselves in a community of intellectuals - a global community of writers who are able to question American publishing practices and their effect on literature; writers who know they have a cultural heritage; and writers who can envision producing that which can 13
15. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. become a cultural heritage ... (ibid 22) It is not clear, however, whether this is less a strategy for producing better writers than a market strategy for supporting the contingent structure of, as Doyle (1989) argues, an "anti-democratic" "masculinised", "institutionalised" English Literature, founded "upon a long and contradictory history" (p1). The important difference to note here is the internalisation of the debate, taking it into the writing classroom/workshop. In so doing, the focus is on the nature of the student's experience, particularly the nature of the 'literary' discourse in which the student is to gather the requisite experience to become a good writer. Shelnutt argues that the workshop method "whereby students discuss their own writing around elbow- worn tables" (p8) is limited in this aspect. The workshop method of 'teaching' creative writing is symptomatic of the isolation of creative writing from English studies and literature. Garrett (1989), too, believes that student/writers must read more widely and deeply, noting that workshop teaching methods may be offering too much of a good thing and creating: ... an odd dependency ... which may not be the best training for the essentially lonely enterprise of making up poems and stories. As the Existentialists were always telling us ... "Nobody else can take a bath for you". (p 61) Here, again, the invisible hand of the 'pedagogical mystique' is at work. While providing valuable editorial and peer response, the workshop method, it is argued, does not address the "lonely enterprise" of writing from personal experience. The central point here is the nature and diversity of experience and its management, or as Moxley puts it, "the gathering, shaping and revising of material" (p xiv). If the workshop does not directly address this problem, what can be done to remedy the situation? How can the student be aided in this respect? Suggestions range from extending the students' experience of literature and literary criticism, to extending their knowledge of the writing process and their competence with craft. However, while this new approach does not presume (as workshops presumably do) that the "bath" has been taken or is being taken, it can, at best, only indicate to the student a certain style of 'literary' bathtub and bath water, it still cannot take it for him or her. In his essay "Learning to Unwrite", Donald Murray (1989), a teacher keen to initiate his students in the processes of writing, suggests a similar metaphor: My teacherly task is to make my students uncomfortable, to lead them into unknowing, but not to abandon them there, but to be an effective Maine 14
16. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. guide, paddling them towards the salmon but allowing them to make their own catch. (p 107-108) And Lawson (1990) concludes his article on the Columbia and East Anglia programs with yet another metaphor in the same vein: Perhaps the graduates of writer program/programmes will always be like the holders of driver's licences, whose qualification guarantees only technical competence not, necessarily, arrival at the intended destination. (p57) 7 Each of these metaphors suggests a "leap of faith" into the intangibility of writing. And this, finally, is at the heart of the 'pedagogical mystique': the use of metaphors ("bathing", "fishing", "driving") to understand writing; the reticence of 'teaching; the reluctance even to talk about 'teaching'. Pedagogically speaking, Creative Writing is regarded as intangible or mysterious. And it is so against a background of historical assumptions embedded in terms such as 'creative', 'literature', 'literati' which are not, I think, justified. The main assumption is that there is an objective creative 'literature'/'literati' which/whom can be assessed as such and, by implication, writing/ writers which/whom can judged not to be so. It takes as its starting point, the 'product' of creative writing courses in terms of both the text and the writer. And while on the face of it this may seem to be a perfectly reasonable assumption (particularly with respect to teaching) it is also one (as indicated above) which leads to a pedagogical 'swamp' of internal conflicts and anomalies. The burden of these anomalies demands, in an almost Kuhnian sense, a shift in the approach taken to creative writing in higher education. The Process of Writing If the "mystical" or "creationist" theory of creative writing is disclosed is in the university creative writing classroom in terms of the pedagogical mystique, it can also be discerned, albeit in quite a different way, in recent empirical research on the 8 'process of writing' . The employment of this research in school teaching, moreover, has had a profound effect on students coming to higher education, in particular to creative writing classes. Ironically, perhaps, it is the "scientific" assumptions sustaining research on the process of writing which align it here with the "mystical": in particular its assumptions that both the writing self and the writing process are objective cognitive categories. This is, perhaps, most clearly reflected in Bereiter & Scardamalia's (1987) 15
17. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. comprehensive six level description of research on the composing process. The first three levels focus on various empirical methods and techniques for analysing process through the textual products of the writing process. Level 4 methods, on the other hand, are concerned with empirical methods examining the writers composing 9 activities . Significantly, despite this difference: There is a similar problem in establishing the psychological reality of the theoretical construction. ... what the actual organisation of the composing process is within the mind of the writer is a question that cannot be fully answered through level 4 inquiry. (p43 my italics) They rightly note that, like text analysis, research on the writers actual activities does not describe the cognitive writing process directly but rather the 'products' of the activity: the latter is concerned with "intermediate products, retained and further processed in the mind, rather than the final products that appear on the written page"(ibid p44). Nevertheless, they retain the idea of cognitive writing process as an independent entity existing in the way the objects of physics do. The final two levels of inquiry - concerned with the "nature of the cognitive system" and how this "cognitive mechanism works" - consist of testing theoretical constructions of the kind found "in a theoretically advanced field like physics" (ibid). The process tradition, moreover, grounds this notion of cognitive independence in the writing self; in particular in an "expressive self". As noted, for example, by Britton et 10 al (1975) in their widely influential model of student writing , "expressive language signals the self"(p10). Indeed it underpins its core feature, expressive writing, which is ... at its most relaxed and intimate, as free as possible from outside demands, whether those of a task or an audience. It is, at this central point, free to move easily from participant role into spectator and vice versa. (p82) This model differentiates between three mature modes of writing which may be regarded as lying on a continuum with 'expressive' writing in the middle flanked by 'transactional' writing at one end and 'poetic' writing at the other. In both directions there is a "move ... from an intimate to a more public audience" (ibid p83): from expressive self to public other. Of critical importance, here, is the nature of the expressive self in the two situations. As transactional writing moves out towards reader, it increasingly "excludes the personal, self-revealing features" (ibid p83). Moving out to reader in poetic writing, however, leads to a focus on precisely these 16
18. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. personal features: "the embodiment by the writer of feelings and beliefs becomes paramount, and what is included in the utterance may be highly personal" (ibid). If 'expressive writing' signals the idea of a 'self-which-expresses', the distinction between two modes of writing, focuses attention on a private 'inner' self which is (or is not) expressed. Writing modes which are "self-revealing" or not "self-revealing" suggest a private self behind the writing to be revealed. While the assumption of an expressive self is one thing, that of a self which is private and independent is quite another. The former assumes nothing of the nature of this self (other than that it is capable of expression) the latter makes assumptions on its nature. Closely associated with the construction of a private expressive self, and 'expressive' and 'poetic' categories of writing are normative distinctions such as 'authentic' versus 'inauthentic' writing. Arnold (1991) notes, for example, that 'authentic' writing "is writing which emanates from a writer's search for meaning ... authentic writers need not be audience aware" (p8-9). And Moffet (1981) writes "that the process of authentic writing involves tapping the stream of inner speech and focusing it" (p23). The assumption is that 'authentic' writing is associated with a private inner self. Closely related with 'authentic' writing is the idea of the writer's 'voice'. 'Voice' in writing is the authentic manifestation of the self. Writing is authentic if the 'voice' is permitted to express itself unhindered, to remain its own self. Indeed Elbow (1973) even went so far as to suggest that students might be better off learning to write in the "teacherless writing class" (p6) without the conforming pressures of teachers hindering their unique voices. If the 'process tradition' tends to regard 'authentic' writing as an activity in which the writer taps their own, personal inner speech and discovers their own 'real' voice, it also regards it as a criterion for describing student texts. While noting, for example, that 'authenticity' is sometimes difficult to 'read', Arnold (1991) still professes that it gets easier with experience: "at the simplest level, authentic writing sounds genuine. Contrived writing sounds phoney" (p9). And Gilbert (1989) notes how the 'process tradition' requires that texts "carry the effect of the 'personal voice' of the student writer so that the 'honesty' of the 'inner vision' is maintained" (p27). Critical of the tradition, Moss (1989) notes how it associates good writing with "the personal, the expressive, the natural" and bad writing with "the second hand, the acquired, the contrived" (p31). 'Authenticity' here has become a criterion for textual value. This transfer of 'authenticity' from activity to text locates the value of the text in the 17
19. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. assumption of a unique, expressive self. Moreover, issues of textual 'authenticity' are conflated with issues of 'literature'. Significantly, Moss points out that to qualify as writing even spontaneous, personal, emotional 'authentic' writing "has to have form ... must enter a system of shared meanings" (ibid p33). Teachers have traditionally viewed only certain 'literary' forms as reflecting or preserving the writer's authentic voice, condemning others. And "condemnation", she writes, "is reserved for those who are judged to imitate a particular body of literature - popular fiction. Would pupils be accused of being clichéd if they had carefully striven to write in the manner of Kafka or Virginia Woolf?" (ibid p32). Similarly, in her examination of the pedagogical conflicts inherent in teachers judgements of student compositions, Gilbert (1989) notes that: The creative tasks that students are asked to write are linked not only to the concept of original expression, of spontaneous response - but also to ... the unique perceptions of the literary artist. (p60) The relationship between textual 'authenticity' (grounded in the idea of a private, expressive self) and 'literary value' is central to "the dominant pedagogies of sixth- form English" which Davies (1982) notes are taken to higher education in general and creative writing courses in particular. Indeed, this is reinforced by recent research suggesting that there is a convergence in the creationist or subjectivist assumptions 11 which students bring to their creative writing classes in higher education. There is, here, a crucial parallel with the pedagogical conflict described earlier between creative writing in higher education and the sum & substance (or absence of it) of the individual's 'real' (non higher education) experience. Historically, it was resolved with the assumption that English studies reflect reality, life and experience. The conflict raised in the encounter between the 'authentic' expressive self and certain constructed literary forms of writing is similarly resolved with the assumption that these forms of English studies are precisely the forms of textual 'authenticity'. Assumptions of the Process Tradition and those of the Pedagogical Mystique converge on just this point: that the real, original, spontaneous, authentic 'voice' is naturally aligned with those 'literary' forms and styles which English Studies embody. II Towards A New Theory The accumulating conflicts and anomalies disclosed in the above discussion necessitate a radical shift in thinking about Creative Writing, a shift which, in the first instance, suspends the two main pillars of creationism: assumptions of independent 18
20. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. textual quality and of an independent, expressive self. This is a shift which is grounded in the student's material conception or consciousness of his/her writing practice. It re-examines writing in terms of categories which regard the writer as dialogically engaged in and conditioned by a situated, socio-historical practice. As Williams (1977) remarks: The central error of expressivist theory ... is the failure to acknowledge the fact that meaning is always produced, it is never simply expressed. (p166) Conception of Creative Writing is best described as a dialogical concept fully dependent on the social other-as-reader (or potential reader). Indeed, this dialogical character of conception may be traced to an even broader very recent movement in education and psychology which views human activity as socially constructed. It is, as Bruner (1990) writes, ... the view that human action could not be fully or properly accounted for from the inside out - by reference only to intrapsychic dispositions, traits, learning capacities, motives or whatever. Action required for its explication that it be situated, that it be conceived of as continuous with a cultural world. The realities that people constructed were social realities, negotiated with others, distributed between them. The social world in which we lived was, so to speak, neither "in the head" nor "out there" in some positive aboriginal form. And both mind and the self were part of that social world. (ibid, p105-6) In this respect, the roots of conception reside in the work of educationalists describing student learning in terms of categories of practical understanding embedded in specific academic situations as well as those challenging traditional categories of 'literature' and 'literacy'. It provides, moreover, the ground for a theory delineating useful learning distinctions which not only shed important light on our knowledge of the activity of writing, but also, because of its distinctive relationship with learning, on a host of 'literary' and pedagogical issues. Within the writing context conception goes beyond the writer's abstract consciousness of their text (as aesthetic or literary construction) and their cognitive writing 'processes', to encompass a richer, concrete understanding of writing within the social situation. It incorporates the reader in what Bakhtin (1986) calls the "addressivity" of writing: that aspect of being "directed to someone", an "addressee", who may vary from "an immediate participant-locutor in an everyday dialogue (to) ... an indefinite, unconcretized other" p95. It embodies what Williams (1977) means by the writer's material consciousness: the "experience of the production of objects, which, from our 19
21. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. deepest sociality, go beyond not only the production of commodities but also our ordinary experience of objects"(p162). It denotes, what Pattison (1982) describes in terms of 'literacy' as "consciousness of the questions posed by language coupled with mastery of those skills by which a culture at any given moment in its history manifests this consciousness"(p5). Conception may also be usefully described in terms of what it is not: 'aesthetic' or 'qualitative' literacy describing a capacity to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' writing, grounded in the idea, as Doyle (1989) shows, that "to ask whether a piece of writing is 'literature' is to ask whether it is 'good'"(p120). 12 Recent research in learning theory , moreover, provides a way of describing contrasting types of conception within a dialogical perspective. Very briefly, this research has identified a range of general learning conceptions which can be divided into two categories: reproducing conceptions in which the student "uses meaning", memorises and reproduces material, and transforming conceptions in which the student "makes meaning", understands and transforms material. Central to this work is the recognition that learning is not well described in terms of the acquisition of facts or knowledge but rather in terms of "a change of conception" (Dahlgren 1984) regarding a particular area and practice. Significant learning may be described as a change from a reproducing to a transforming conception. Learning vis-a-vis Creative Writing, then, consists of a change in the student-writer's material consciousness of writing. The delineation of a descriptive typology of conceptions or forms of "material consciousness" unites issues of 'learning' and 'literature' in a special instance of 'literacy', providing a way of examining, analysing and understanding Creative Writing without resorting to the assumptions of 'creationism'. Conception converges in the student's activity of "gathering, shaping and revising" his/her writing, and so fused provides the foundation of a new theory. In the next section I shall briefly summarise this description of creative writing conceptions. Conceptions of Creative Writing It is worth noting, briefly, that the empirical research upon which the study of student conceptions of creative writing is here described drew on interviews which I conducted with 40 students selected from three writing courses in three different institutions, including both graduate and post-graduate courses. It should also be noted that conceptions of creative writing are not isolated cognitive entities immune to the context and the different situations in which student-writers are writing. They 20
22. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. vary in individual practice, particularly within the two main categories. The study 13 disclosed a typology of six distinct conceptions in two categories (Table 1). TABLE 1 Student Conceptions of Creative Writing TYPE CONCEPTION CATEGORY Type I Releasing Type II Documenting (Limited) TRANSCRIBING Type III Documenting (Extended) Type IV Narrating (Limited) Type V Narrating (Extended) COMPOSING Type VI Critiquing (Light 1995, p205) Briefly this typology is described in terms of three features of conception: reader awareness, cohesion and range. Reader awareness is the most important feature, and that by which the main two categories are delineated. It has two dimensions: the first (at the reader level) distinguishes between student-writers who regard the reader's comprehension of their material as "detached" from their own writing activity, and those who are concerned to "integrate" the reader's comprehension of their material during the activities of writing. These may be defined as: Detached awareness: the writer 'uses' (reproduces) the meanings of his/her material with respect to the reader in the activity of writing. (Transcribing). Integrated awareness: the writer 'makes' (transforms) the meanings of his/her material with respect to the reader in the activity of writing. (Composing). The second dimension of reader awareness (at the readership level) concerns readers in socio-cultural situations, using specific forms: readers as readership. Williams (1977) writes of such forms that they are "the common property ... of writers and audiences or readers, before any communicative composition can occur" (p187-188). The distinction here is whether or not the student "assents to" or "dissents from" the prevailing forms (discourse) embraced by his/her readership. The second feature of conception is cohesion and refers to the nature and connectedness of the 'work' in which the student is engaged during the activity of writing, particularly in terms of the kind of conventions (notational vs elemental) and 21
23. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. the kind of judgements (material oriented vs writing oriented) with which they were most concerned. The third feature, range, refers to the nature and origin of (personal and public) writing forms which the writer sees his/her work taking. The six types of student conception of creative writing can be described in terms of these three features. TYPE I (Releasing): Creative writing is basically understood as being therapeutic and for the writer. It "works" if it is released and provides a kind of personal "therapy" and or self-knowledge: indeed there is the concern that seeing writing with respect to a reader is "inauthentic", a betrayal of self and of artistic integrity. The writer "dissents from" the prevailing forms of readership and "releases" his/her inner narrative (or material) in a personal form (often associated with stream of consciousness). The writer is not concerned with reader comprehension except accidentally, in a "detached" sense. He/she is chiefly concerned with notational kinds of conventions; punctuation, layout, spelling, etc. TYPE II (Documenting-Limited): The writer readily accepts that he/she is writing for a reader, but primarily at the level of their material: they want to capture an experience, a scene, an idea, transcribe or document it the way they see or feel it and "hopefully as well ... say ... something to somebody else." How the reader will read it is an incidental situation over which they feel they have little control, "detached" from the activity of writing. Concern mainly focuses on notational conventions and the writing "works" if the material/experience is interesting, communicated and/or meets course requirements. While recognising different forms and genres, their choice is often limited to general forms (fiction, poetry, drama) and those taken from course exercises. TYPE III (Documenting-Extended): The writer's understanding of writing is still one of documenting his/her material, but there is an extended sense of reader. In the first instance this embraces an awareness of reader-as-market "and how you really have to structure your work depending on where you're going to send it." There is also a move from regarding general forms (fiction, poetry, drama) as public forms in which to express your inner narrative, to regarding them as market or consumer forms in which ones material can be read. The latter case embraces an intellectual recognition of integrating the reader coupled, however, with a practical inability to integrate the requirements of this recognition in the material activity of writing. In this guise, conception is often associated with conflict and frustration. 22
24. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. TYPE IV (Narrating-Limited): The writer is writing within and to a discourse, the features of which they generally recognise and endorse. Within the material activity of writing, they "narrate" their meanings vis-a-vis meanings shared with the reader, reflecting on and integrating the concerns of their material with the comprehensibility requirements of the readers sharing this discourse. It is characterised, however, by a recognition that it is relatively new and tentative and limited to trying out a less extensive range of general forms and elemental conventions (such as character, description, plot etc.) at a less encompassing level. TYPE V (Narrating-Extended): The writer is, again, writing within a discourse, the forms and features of which are accepted and positively endorsed. Again, they "narrate" their meanings vis-à-vis meanings shared with the reader, reflecting on and (within the material activity of writing) integrating their material with the comprehensibility requirements of the readers sharing this discourse. These conceptions are, however, characterised by a more extended and internalised understanding and use of the shared forms, elemental conventions, techniques and so on. TYPE VI (Critiquing): The writer integrates reader and readership (discourse) within the material activity of writing, but there is also evidence of a dissent from and a critique of particular aspects of both that discourse and its integration. In this respect the comprehensibility requirements of the reader are both challenged and integrated. This critical dissent may consist in a dissenting critique of the practice of creative writing itself (re-integrated in the writing) and/or might consist of a dissenting critique of a wide variety of discourse issues, forms, elemental conventions and techniques of that practice. The delineation of these six (albeit brief) portrayals of conception or material consciousness provide a dynamic scheme for describing and analysing Creative Writing and the student-writer in terms of their learning and development in situo. It should be reiterated that the conceptions described above, are not independent cognitive entities but are, rather, socially constituted products poised between private and public, grounded in the 'encounter' of the writer's personal history (particularly vis-à-vis reading/writing) and the academic situation. And, in this respect, a variety of socio-academic features characterising the situation were found to play critical roles with respect to the formation, change and development of student conception. Gender, class, age and ethnicity/nationality as well as issues of specific course structures and interpersonal peer and teacher/student relationships were identified as 23
25. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. being constitutive of conception and learning. Most significantly, it was found that 14 these issues tended to 'gravitate' around a dominant text-based 'literary' authority, an 'authority', moreover, perceived as alien and inaccessible to a wide range of excluded experience and meaning. Across the typology of conceptions, it was often found to redefine negatively the conflicts in shared meaning, arising with respect to social and academic issues, insinuating them into the student's conception of writing. In this respect, the authority of 'literature' significantly restricted conception development, 15 and seriously obstructed the development of student conceptions and learning. In the first instance, the significance of this new theoretical perspective is, perhaps, most acute with respect to the issue of voice. The writer's voice, as noted earlier, has often been described in terms of fidelity to the contents (experiences, ideas, feelings etc) of a private, expressive inner self, and is characterised by such terms as 'authenticity' and 'originality'. The 'authentic' voice is the one expressing the writer's real or natural inner self. Research in this new perspective, however, suggest that voice is best understood in terms of the writer's material consciousness or conception of the practice of writing. Voice is not 'authentic' or 'phoney' but 'integrated' or 'detached'. As such, it is not simply a function of the writer but of the socio-cultural situation in which the writer is writing. "Finding ones voice" is best described in terms of the integration of one's material and reader (within the particular situated readership) in the writing activity. Voice is neither determined in terms of the originality or authenticity of the writer's self (ideas, feelings, experiences) nor in terms of the authoritative literary or aesthetic 'quality' of the discourse forms with which he/she is working, but rather in terms of their situated conception of writing. If this crucial recognition and redescription of voice in terms of the dialogical notion of concepti on displaces (or repositions) normative terms such as 'authenticity', 'originality' and 'creativity' from their hitherto central position in writing, it also dislodges parallel descriptions of 'literary quality'. The formula by which voice 'authenticity' is transformed into a criterion for textual 'value', in which 'authentic' writing voices are regarded as producing writing which is 'true', 'authentic', 'original', and corresponding 'authentic', 'original' texts imbued with intrinsic 'literary' quality collapses. The historical relationship between subjective authentic voice/expression and objective literary text, is, here, displaced and redefined in terms of the social realm of material practice/understanding, inclusive of writer, writing, text and writing situation. As such, the typology of conception developed in this study provides a radical new basis for redefining, analysing and critiquing 'literary' practice. And in so doing, it reclaims "literature", in Williams' (1983a) words as "the full active interests 24
26. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. of students, including those interests which stem from a love of writing and from a human concern for all its conditions and materials and possibilities" (p215). Finally, it is worth saying that this perspective supports assertions such as Eagleton's (1983) that "literature (as text) does not exist in the sense that insects do"(p16), that there is no intrinsic or transcendent literary quality to a text over and above the socio- cultural situation in which it is written and read. Indeed, the research provides compelling evidence that 'literary' discourses suggesting such claims to 'transcendence' undermine and inhibit the student's very conception of their practice. Indeed, this reveals a much more perfidious disenfranchisement than one which defines certain texts/discourses as aesthetically 'inferior' (less authentic, original and so on) to one in which a dominant literary authority, permeating, to some extent, all writing, hinders and marginalises the writer's very consciousness of their practice. General Implications For Teaching It should be remarked that this theoretical perspective provides a radical response to the long-standing questions raised by the 'pedagogical mystique': Do creative writing courses produce creative writers? or Can creative writing be taught? The very response of "yes" , however, brings with it two key qualifications which subvert the force of the questions' literary impact. The first, reiterates that Creative Writing, here, does not mean the written text nor critical/literary valuations of its worth. Neither does 'creative writer' mean writers who publish or distribute such texts. 'Creative writing' is, rather, understood as embodying the student's situated conception of writing in certain general kinds of genre: poetry, fiction, drama. The second describes teaching in terms of learning, in terms of the teacher's facilitation and development of the student writer's conception. In this finely drawn respect, it may be said that Creative Writing is learned on higher education courses designed and led by teachers facilitating and developing the student's "love of writing and ... human concern for all its conditions and materials and possibilities": that is by teaching it. This argument that student's may be so taught, however, occurs at the expense of the specialised category of 'literary value'. And it is from this angle that the following pedagogical implications of this theory are to be regarded. The first point to stress is that the debate over the general design of creative writing courses and programs (eg "exercise" based vs "workshop" based) must speak to much more fundamental issues than hitherto assumed. However rigorous, pedagogical focus at this level is not sufficient. Moxley (1989), for example, sums up the 25
27. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. recommendations of a wide range of writers/teachers on the theory and pedagogy of creative writing as follows: (1) student writers must be readers - a background in literature and criticism enables student writers to identify and produce creative work; (2) academic training in writing must be rigorous and diverse; (3) student writers must have an understanding of the composing process and a knowledge of a variety of composing strategies; and (4) student writers must master the fundamentals of craft. (p xvi) While these recommendations address the technical requirements of a particular course, they fail to address key issues of the nature of the learning encounter between student and course: issues turning on student feelings and concerns about what it is to be a 'creative writer'. How, for example, does this relate to social and literary issues enveloping them, inclusive of the nature of 'voice', 'truth', 'authenticity', 'originality', the 'personal' and so on? This also embraces what the student-writer writes, what genres they choose, what they read, what critical approaches they employ, what composition conventions and problems they attend to, and how that is disclosed in a course situation. These, moreover, depend on how they perceive themselves as a writer vis-à-vis the social and literary character of both their own writing history and the course readership into which they are writing. Insofar as creative writing courses are aimed at comprehensive student learning and understanding - not simply the production of polished, 'publishable' texts meeting particular 'literary' criteria - such courses need to address the question of conception across the whole gamut of course design, teaching and assessment issues. These are issues, I believe, which a course is only able to properly address in a comprehensive 'dialogue' with the student. Indeed, the issue of learning conflicts needs to be disclosed with students, particularly with respect to the nature, categories and types of conception. This should be undertaken moreover against a background critique of the role which an historically dominant literary paradigm plays in relation to the social and course issues impinging on conception. Such a strategy requires, for example, a critique (collective and individual) of the 'literary authority' prevailing in the situation in which they are writing; whatever its complexion (age, gender class, ethnicity etc), or form (institution, teacher, assigned texts, methods of assessment etc). The object is neither to reconstruct another 'authority' (which might also be exclusive and detrimental to the development and formation of individual conceptions), nor to engage simply in a critique of the 26
28. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. student-writer's aesthetic, moral and ideological responsibility vis-à-vis such an 'authority', but rather to understand the role and effects it has on student conception. It does not necessarily entail a study of different texts (although these - literary, critical and practical - should be scrutinised in any wider examination), but rather a fuller "recognition" of how these issues - over the whole domain of curriculum issues inclusive of structure, design, assessment, feedback, teaching style etc. - relate to the student's practical conception of creative writing. The most fervid implications, perhaps, are concerned with the broader contemporary debate within which creative writing has been recently situated. This debate sets literary theory against writing; interpretation against composition, and embodies what Bradbury (1992) calls the "growing fissure between 'creation' and 'theory'"(p8). Contemporary literary theory, he argues ... exteriorises and de-existentialises actual creative activity, and ... interlinked with philosophical post humanism and ideological critique has persistently striven to take the intentionality out of the writing. The Author, a false creative subject, is dead. (ibid). John Carey (1994) similarly argues that theory decrees "... authors should not be regarded as the originators of their work; it rejected the idea of people as free agents with individual inner selves"; that "people are not autonomous selves, but are 16 controlled by social networks and cultural codes"(p3). The theory proposed in this paper provides, I believe, a fresh perspective on this debate. It suggests that while contemporary theoretical critiques may succeed in 'deconstructing' the idea of Author as a kind of transcendent 'creator' tapping into an aesthetic realm inaccessible to other mortals, they do not displace the more dynamic notion of writer as individual grounded in his/her socio-cultural situation (characterised, not 'controlled', by it). Redefining writer in dialogical terms (inclusive of writing experience, practice and 'voice'), does not impoverish him or her. Indeed, it releases the writer from the myths and constraints of subjective, transcendental aesthetics, from Bradbury's "fundamental form of quest for the supreme fiction" (ibid). It enriches their writing practice, grounding it in the social material of their experience, imagination, ideas, feelings, allowing the writer to recognise more clearly his/her relationship with their readership. It frees the writer from the cheap, artificial hunt for the supremely aesthetic/literary text and/or experience. It allows him/her to "shape, develop, discover, contradict, divert and subvert" (ibid) their own material realm of experience and imagination in conjunction with a readership, free of the 27
29. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. constant, external and internal barrage that the writing is not or may not be 17 sufficiently 'aesthetic' or 'literary'. Freeing writer from the constraints of Author does not displaces the writer's individuality, personal voice or creativity. It argues, rather, that he/she is characterised by dialogical experience and imagination within a real cultural situation, and by his/her personal understanding of these as individually initiated and enacted in the material act of writing. While this may have theoretical repercussions for transcendent descriptions of both Author and Text, it does not have such repercussions for individual descriptions of the writer or their practice. Postscript It is the very nature of Creative Writing, or at least the quirky role which our culture has assigned to it - on the one hand a kind of 'trivial' self-centred hobby left alone quietly to get on with its own personal pre-occupations and on the other a practice from which 'serious literature' might emerge - that underlines its historical, some may say self-imposed, exile to a theoretical Siberia. The gaping chasm at the centre of its fusion of the 'serious' and the 'trivial' has, hitherto, been bridged in a 'creationist' leap resistant to all but 'mystical' theory, grounded in assumptions of subjective 'originality/authenticity' and transcendent 'literary value'. It has been this paper's aim to critique those assumptions and to reconstruct Creative Writing as a cultural practice grounded in the writer's conception or material consciousness. In so doing, I am proposing a new theoretical perspective of this practice, constitutive of all its material attributes from experience to publication. 28
30. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. Notes 1. The references here to UEA "notes" and "handouts" are respectively to: "Notes on the University of East Anglia's work in Creative Writing" (23.3.1990); "The MA in Creative Writing" (undated); "MA Course in Creative Writing": (undated); "Notes on the University of East Anglia's work in Creative Writing" (23.3.1990). For copies, see Light (1995) "Appendix 1.1 (p377)", The Literature of the Unpublished: Student Conceptions of Creative Writing in Higher Education, Phd Dissertation, the Institute of Education, University of London, 1995. 2. The references here to papers in the VAA Pact, are respectively to: paper 8 "Creative Writing in a University English Course" and paper 9 "Introducing a Writing Course at a Polytechnic". For copies, see Light (1995) "Appendix 1.2 (p387)". 3. The uncritiqued assumption of the 'pedagogical mystique' - that creative writing is not something that can be 'really' taught or learned - is generally very wide spread. For a selection of more recent, wider audience, articles making this assumption, see: Hunter Steele, "Writer's Block to Wordsmith's Goal", The Times Higher Education Supplement, February 23rd, 1990 (p16-17); Mark Illis, "The Art of Course Writing", The Sunday Times, March 6th, 1994; Francis Mead, "Still Waiting for my Advance: Can 'Creative Writing' be Taught?" University Life, March 11th, 1994. 4. The 1990-91 AWP Official Guide to Writing Programs lists 219 graduate programs (137 MA's; 48 MFA's'; 25 PhD's; 3 DA's; 1 MAET; 1 MPW; 4 MS; 1MTSC). 5. For a fuller debate on these issues, see the May 1989 issue of the AWP Chronicle which was devoted primarily to solicited responses to Epstein's essay from writers, critics and teachers. 6. For an analysis of the structure of English studies encompassing this paradox, see Comely & Scholes (1983) and Scholes (1985). "The field of English", the latter writes, "is organised by two primary gestures of differentiation". In the first, the field is divided between "literature and nonliterature" and in the second between "the production and consumption of texts" (p5). English Department produce, at best, 'pseudo-non-literature' (creative writing). The reason for this, he writes, is the unstated priority given to texts produced 'outside' academia to those produced 'inside'. 29
31. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. What is 'real' (sum & substance) is linked "to a 'reality' outside academic life" (ibid). He also distinguishes between the proper consumption of 'literature' which "we call 'interpretation'" and "the consumption of 'non-literature' ... called 'reading'" (ibid 5-6). In this respect, Paula Johnson (1980) also makes a useful distinction between 'outside' literary texts and 'inside' student texts: "Student texts are not merely there waiting to be studied; they are elicited in order to be improved." 7. In a review of 2000 published interviews with 'creative' writers, Barbara Tomlinson (1986) reduced the various metaphors they used for their writing activity into four categories: as cooking, as mining, as gardening, as hunting/fishing (p74). Interestingly, the cooking and gardening metaphors she considers to be more craft oriented and the mining and fishing/hunting ones more inspirational in nature. (See also her discussion of metaphors for revision: Tomlinson 1988). 8. It is worth noting that while Odell et al (1978) were writing over 15 years ago that a focus on the writing process was providing the assumptions for an "emerging paradigm" (p2), more recent writers in the area suggest the establishment of this paradigm. Anne Kinmont (1990) notes, for example, that while "many of the recent studies of the writing process, of writing performance and of writing development, have, predictably, introduced new areas for exploration" (p109) and differ considerably in their areas of concern, they nevertheless share many pedagogical assumptions; assumptions which, Pam Gilbert (1989) writes, constitute "what appears to be a constructed 'shared world view' on the part of English education writers and researchers" (p15). 9. For research regarding subjects verbalising their thoughts aloud ('protocols') during the act of writing (Emig 1971, Flower & Hayes 1980, 1981, Sommers 1980, Perl 1979, 1980, 1983 Berkenkotter 1981), re use of electric pens (Emig 1971, Britton et al. 1972), time-lapse photography (Emig 1971) direct observations and/or tape recording and/or video-taping sessions (Faigley & Witte 1981, Odell 1978, Della- Piana 1978) and controlled and less formal interviews (Sommers 1980, Emig 1971, Rose 1980, Murray 1978). 10. For a full description of this model and other closely related models, see Britton (1970, p174), Britton et al (1975 p81-83) and Emig (1971, p37). 11. In particular, see Greg Light (1995b) "Avoiding the Issue: Student Perceptions of Creative Writing" in Writers in Education No5 (Spring 1995, p5-9) and Wendy 30
32. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. Bishop (1994) "Crossing the Lines: On Creative Composition and Composing Creative Writing" in Colours of a Different Horse, Bishop & Ostrom (eds), National Council of Teacher's of English (NCTE), Urbana, Illinois. 12. For recent discussions of this research, see Light (1995a); Ramsden (1992); Entwistle & Entwistle (1992); Marton (1988); Ramsden (ed. 1988); Entwistle (1987); Marton, Hounsell, Entwistle (1984); Saljo (1979). 13. For an in-depth discussion of the subject matter described in this section, see Light The Literature of the Unpublished: Student Conceptions of Creative Writing in Higher Education, (chapters 7-10) Phd Dissertation, the Institute of Education, University of London, 1995. See also Light (1995) "How Students Understand and Learn Creative Writing in Higher Education" Writers in Education (No7, Winter 1995/96) and Light (1996) "The Limits of Literature: Creative Writing in the University Classroom: Two Case Studies" Writers in Education (No9, Summer 1996). 14. The term 'literary' is being used here to describe issues linked to the textual paradigm of literary quality and value exemplified in the writings of certain recognised writers, writers 'in' the canon; writers claimed by specialised categories of literary criticism etc. 15. It should be noted, however, that conflicts in shared meaning are not detrimental of themselves (indeed in a few cases it aided the development of a critiquing conception) but rather the perceived 'exclusivity' of the premises and 'meanings' associated with the prevailing literary discourse was such that the student was unable to fully enter it and work within it at an 'integrated' or 'meaning making' level. 16. For some recent debates on this subject, see Bradbury (1994) in The Independent; Bradbury (1992) in the Times Literary Supplement; (1994) in the Books section of the Sunday Times; Illis (1994) in The Sunday Times. See also the debates in AWP Chronicle, particularly Volume 25, numbers 1, 2 &3. For an in depth debate see the contributions of Echo, Rorty, Culler and Brooke-Rose in Echo Interpretation and Over-interpretation (1992). In America, moreover, R.M. Berry (1994) writes that "in a series of recent articles Marjorie Perloff, Peter Stitt; Reginald Gibbons, Donald Morton and Maslud Zavarzadeh have all indicated that the widest division in contemporary literature departments is that between Creative Writing and critical theory ..." (p67). Referring to Stanley Fish's (1980) theoretical critique of text, Berry 31
33. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. sums this division up neatly when he writes that "for the vast majority of American liberal arts students, questions like "what makes this text a poem?" are matters, not of theory, but of Creative Writing" (ibid p57). 17. This theory and the research upon which it is based, coincides with, indeed provide powerful evidence for the position Scholes (1985) describes in Textual Power: My position is that the debate ... - between a view that holds authorial intention irrelevant and an opposed view that authorial intention is decisive - admits of no resolution. ... Both of these notions will have to be abandoned ... The missing ingredient in all these formulations is the cultural system in which all of these individualities - the writer, the reader, and the text - take shape and have their being. (p47) 32
34. The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education. Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996. Bibliography Arnold, Roslyn (1991) Writing Development Open University Press, Milton Keynes. Bakhtin, M (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. University of Texas Press, Austin. Barthes, Roland (1977) Image, Music, Text Fontana/ Collins, London. Bereiter C & Scardamalia M (1987) The Psychology of Written Composition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, New Jersey, London. Berkenkotter, C (1981) "Understanding a Writer's Awareness of Audience" in College Composition and Communication, Vol. 32, p 388-399. Berry, R M (1994) "Theory, Creative Writing and the Impertinence of History" in Colours of a Different Horse, Bishop & Ostrom (eds), (NCTE), Urbana, Illinois. Bishop, Wendy (1990) Released into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing, National Council of Teacher's of English (NCTE), Urbana, Illinois. Bishop, Wendy (1994) "Crossing the Lines: On Creative Composition and Composing Creative Writing" in Colours of a Different Horse, Bishop & Ostrom (eds), National Council of Teacher's of English (NCTE), Urbana, Illinois. Booth, Wayne (1979) Literary Understanding: The Power and the Limits of Pluralism , University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Bradbury, Malcolm (1992) "The Bridgeable Gap: Bringing Together the Creative Writer and the Critical Theorist in an Authorless World" in The Times Literary Supplement, January 1992, p7-9. Bradbury, Malcolm (1994) "To Begin at the Beginning" in The Independent, December 30th 1994, p20. Britton J, Burgess T, (1975) The Development of Writing Abilities (11-18), Macmillan Martin N, McLeod A, (Education), London. & Rosen H 33
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