Learning to Rewrite

[sartorias]

and plagiarism.

Forty years, the needle of guilt--and the smothering pillow of that internal sense of mediocrity--I figure, why not tell this story.

Comments

[kalimac]

Isn't there some way the professor can let you know your writing is inadequate without crushing you into the dust? This isn't the Marines, you know. Sure, there may be some who come roaring back with a determined "I'll show him!" (but will they succeed in doing so? as you point out, passion does not always equal talent), but others may be set back by years or put off altogether. Again, that doesn't mean the alternative is to praise or coddle that which doesn't deserve it! But surely there's a positive way of doing this, to steer the students right instead of just saying wrong wrong wrong all the time.

What intrigues me is your mortal embarrassment on being complimented for something you knew you hadn't written. There's no sense of accomplishment in that, just the awareness that one is a fake. A real plagiarist wouldn't care. The praise is all they want, not the knowledge that they did something, and I suspect they think that everybody's really a fake to some extent.

[sartorias]

For the first, some of it was the way learning was perceived back then--like teaching math, if you didn't get it, you were stupid. Period. Now we know there are differing learning processes, and also, what one perceives as excellent writing isn't excellent to another person

[negothick]

I have never taught "Creative Writing" for college students, nor would I want to. At my institution--and at many others-- some students take the course because they see it as an "easy A"--especially if they've been praised in earlier classrooms that operate on the "We're all above average" principle. In the same section, one might find a budding Sherwood or Delia, but not have enough time to help them because the first group take up all the air.
Grading is another nightmare: if everyone takes it Pass/Fail, that's fine, with failure defined as not completing the assignments. But these days, some MFA program grads believe that grading should simply be on effort: So many poems or pages of prose completed. I can see where that approach would be easier than deciding whether someone's poem rates an "A" or a "C."

[sartorias]

Well, this guy gave me a B in the class because, though I wrote untimitigated tosh, as he said at the end, "You gave it all your effort." I thought I was going to get an F.

[sartorias]

Oh, it did happen to me, more often than I liked. But this guy didn't do that. He didn't like the same stuff as me, but he didn't expect people to write like his favorites, he just discussed them with more passion.

He really was a good teacher, given the times and the accepted methods--I was just a couple of decades behind understanding what he had to teach me.

[kalimac]

Well, if he can tell the difference between junk writing with sweat in it and junk writing that's just been tossed off - and I can grasp what the difference would be, though I'm not sure of my ability to distinguish it with assurance in the actual test - that part, at least, is the right approach.

[sartorias]

Some of that telling the difference is done in the class discussions, attitude, what the student does in rewriting . . . again, I don't like grading creative writing for a lot of reasons. In a workshop situation, people can progress at their own rates without that judgment thing hanging over their head like the S of D.

[sartorias]

Yes--I was very careful when teaching creative writing; I told the kids up front that their grade depended entirely on their own effort, and that nobody's story was ever going to be graded as "better" than anyone else's. However, I told them that when I read them out loud (because I did, and wouldn't give the names) they should pay attention to the audience's reaction.

That worked until the alphas gamed the system by making sure their posse knew which story was theirs; of course, the posse would probably love the story anyway or they wouldn't be a posse, but that dividing line between being popular and being a successful writer wasn't always as clear a distinction as would be ideal for instructors. *g*

[asakiyume]

If I tell someone "This is what I'm seeing here. Is this what you want me to see?"

Yes! I like receiving this when someone is critiquing my stuff, and I aim to do similar when I'm critiquing.

Asking questions, too, I like (again, in both directions). "Is she angry when she says this?" etc.

And, tangentially, about overused phrases--they can be just right if you're trying to evoke the feel of a folktale or a traditional ballad or something (which you can then subvert--or not--depending on what your goal is).

[sartorias]

Very true, equally in dialogue--the use of trite phrases is a character signal.

[green_knight]

"This is what I'm seeing here. Is this what you want me to see?"

That is a wonderful way of giving feedback. And it puts the ball back into the writer's court: did I put this on the page? Could I have put something better? Does it need more? Am I drowning out what I am trying to say?

[lenora_rose]

Raven, too, as matociquala observed, is a specific kind of black, implying that it shines in the light with a near-iridescent effect, slightly blue. (It also implies dead straight hair to me). *If* the writer goes on to describe that in future scenes or other touches of description, rather than falling back on raven every time, it works just fine.

[sartorias]

I suspect that some don't actually know this, and use it because it sounds more fantasy-like than black. But yes!

[heleninwales]

All the creative writing teachers I've come across in recent years have had a much more supportive approach to their students. Of course you can't praise tired old cliches, jingly greetings card metres and awkwardly inverted phrasing in order to create a rhyme, but you can point out the shortcomings tactfully and set tasks that help students see what they ought to be doing.

And thing is, one of these build-up tasks might be to "find" a poem in prose, so what sartorias did was perhaps wrong with regard to what the class had been asked to do at the time (write a wholly original poem), but as a learning technique, it has its place. Of course with a Found Poem, you should acknowledge the source and if sartorias had been taking a class today she could have done and would have had no need to feel embarrassed at all.