Creative Writing Pedagogy

Blog #3  -  September 26, 2016

Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. Lore. Practice, and Social Identity in Creative Writing Pedagogy. (2010). Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 10(1). 79-93. http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.odu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=be3fcec4-ccdb-47a8-8d56-785c48aebf97%40sessionmgr4007&vid=1&hid=4210



In this essay, Lim raises important questions about the mission of creative writing programs, the development of creative writing pedagogy and its relationship to how creative writing workshops are actually conducted, the ongoing discussion about whether creative writing can be taught and the value of creative writing programs to innately talented students. She raises these questions in order to lay the foundation for what she considers one of the most important challenges facing the creative writing workshop today: the “absence of ‘diversity,’ particularly as a raced, culturally, communally, and marginally specific subject in the 'lore' of the workshop narrative."

She opens the essay with a definition of "lore" - the term used "to describe standard practices in writing instruction." She uses the lore discussion to raise and discuss pedagogically two of the fundamental questions facing creative writing pedagogy today: “can creative writing be taught” and "what is the mission of creative writing?"

Having raised these questions, Lim proceeds to the real heart of her article, what she calls the “conscious construction” of language to be purposely and explicitly inclusive.  She uses the metaphor of the "elephant in the creative writing classroom"; instead of being approached directly, race, culture, and ‘diversity’ are more often cloaked in the that all-important aspect of creative work, "Voice."  Voice has many different terms of expression depending on who is talking about it, ranging from the “traditional Euro-white, Anglo-British, male subject to (now) include gender and other attributes of privilege in any given context.” One possibility that Lim points to for uncloaking the elephant is the ability for creative writing classrooms to become a place for  introducing social responsibility into the model, freeing previously silenced voices, and "allow(ing) for multiple kinds of writing (and reading and talking) rather than relying upon those language activities that merely aim for 'finished' student writing."

The issues Lim discusses are of immediate interest not only to creative writing pedagogy but to all writing education pedagogy. For, as Lim quotes Judith Harris in this especially salient observation, "How can a student write as a self without first formulating a social context in which to express the personal?"  Inside the classroom, the responsibility for creating the conditions that allow that social context to develop rests entirely with the professor. It must be understood as an integral aspect of the pedagogy of teaching the course if we expect our students to learn what we have to teach them. Uur ability to successfully create the conditions for that context is a prerequesite for our students’ ability to succeed.  We nust begin from the premise that "writing is a collective act, an act that builds on the attempts of other writers to transform silence."