Elyse Kuntz Paper #4 Within the writing community the writing process is something that is looked at through narrow

eyes. Many articles have discussed the writing process, which is nothing new. They discuss the drafting, the prewriting, writing, reading, editing, and finalizing over and over again always missing an important part of the process. (Lager, Perl, and Sontag) The writing process is often described as this direction-type idea and if you follow all the rules you will have the desired outcome. This is not as simple of a concept as everyone has made it sound and many authors have discussed all types of writing processes. Such as Stephen King in his piece, What Writing Is, where he talks about how he thinks of his writing process as telepathy. Or Kent Haruf in his writing, To See Your Story Clearly, Start by Pulling the Wool over Your Own Eyes who describes in great detail what is surrounding him while he writes, where he goes to produce his best writing, and even the type of things he does while writing (putting on a blindfold). Everyone talks about their writing process and it shows how different they truly can be, but they always look over this one little aspect: Creativity. There is a fine line between creative and completely outlandish, and when no one has a clear definition of what creativity is it starts getting thrown around very loosely. According to most dictionaries creativity is defined as, the state or quality of being creative and then creative is defined as having the quality or power to create. (dictionary.com) So thanks dictionaries, you really didnt define anything at all. Along with the dictionaries is Robert Epstein in his article, Defining Creativity, he starts explaining how a behavior is creative when its variables are

unknown and how creativity is put in this natural category thus not being able to define it. (Epstein, p. 65) His ideas on variables not being known are very helpful when defining what I believe creativity is because it brings up the conflict that creativity is having the ability to be complex and having limitless ideas and no boundaries making the variables unknown like Epstein had stated. But then, he rants about how it cannot be defined because it is a natural category so he really does not make his definition of creativity any clearer. For me, creativity can be defined. And pieces of work whether it is a painting, sculpture, writing, or other forms of art can be clearly determined if it is creative or not. My definition of creativity in writing is; a subjective piece that does something different than expected, it is personal to yourself but also personal to the reader, and having the ability to be complex with combining multiple ideas making variables unknown and limitless (Epstein). Along with defining creativity you have to bring up that when one is judging the creativity of something it cannot be based on whether or not you like it, but if it fits the criteria defined previously. The reason I have given this definition of creativity is because today in writing courses and English classes teachers have focused more on the writing process instead of creativity. Most of the time the teacher barely mentions creativity in discussing an upcoming paper, and that makes students focus on the basics; how many paragraphs, how many sources, how many words, having an introduction, body, and conclusion, discussing main points, etc. This is a major problem because the main focus of writing/English as a whole is the creativity in it and the ability to express something new and different, as how it is relevant to you. It should not be

about following steps, checking off things on a rubric, or how you go about writing. Writing should be about being, what I stated, creative is. Many authors that I have previously stated do not even mention creativity in their works, which was very interesting to me coming from a school that is focused on the fine arts and deeply involved in creativity. I noticed while taking a poll from students about whether or not their schools English and Writing classes focused on writing process or creativity, that 72% of the kids said that is was all about criteria and fitting the criteria, 18% stated that they thought it was a mix of both, and 10% of the students said it was focused more on creativity, and those students who focused more on creativity are in a wide variety of majors. Some of them are engineers, some our journalism majors, some were trying to be a doctor, and some were simply business majors; which shows how creativity broadens the mind in more aspects than just writing. So when I read all these articles about the writing process and the formula for a good paper, or when I sit in a class where the professor is telling the students that they need an introduction, body, conclusion, 2500 words, 5 pages, and 10 sources I want to scream, That is not what helps students reach their full potential! I have had incredible teachers through out my schooling, ones who have taught me a lot of things that I would need for the read world such as how to calculate compound interest or how much I need to exercise and eat in a day to maintain a healthy weight but some teachers have taught me things without even knowing they were teaching it to me. For example John Boe writes about his favorite teacher in his article, From the Editor: My Best Teacher, which with some irony isnt

even a teacher but his mother. He talks about the rules his mother gave him and the number one rule was, Dont worry about your grades, and dont be the first one home from a party (Boe, 256). Focusing on creativity and not worrying about the formal issue [grades] helps students branch out to new things [unassigned reading] and gives an intrinsic motivation to the student helping create better papers. Which is where the argument of what a good paper is comes up. Writing itself is something that is very unique to the individual, some people love papers that seem to relate exactly to them, some like papers that are factual and leave personality out of it, so what is a good, well-written paper? Having strategic awareness is something that is discussed in many papers and making sure teachers are teaching strategies and helping students be strategic in the ways in which they approach a task (Langer, 842). So how in the world are these formulaic and strategic strategies combining all the different styles of writing? Its not. This idea that I will call Plugging and Chugging, where you plug in your information into a formula then it chugs out the right answer, is not what makes writing good. This makes the papers all the same and boring as hell to read, this actually makes them completely opposite of what well-written writing is. Creativity in writing on the other hand benefits students in multiple ways, and if teachers were to focus more on creativity instead of the writing process not only would students want to write, it helps the students build problem solving skills, teaches them to be more complex, it makes their writing more unique making it more successful, and it also teaches them to take risks.

Once writing is focused on creativity the change within the students is remarkable. Within a few weeks, it was easy to see not only the changes in the students own writing, but also in their attitudes toward writing (Steinberg, 35). Is a comment that was stated by Michael Steinberg when talking about his involvement in, An experimental course required(ing) students to read and respond to a variety of personal essays, to write their own essays, and to keep a weekly response journal to the readings, their writing, and the course itself (Steinberg, 35). This helps show that when it isnt about a grade, or a rubric students get more involved and have a desire to write. For myself, I have noticed that being involved and in-touch with my creative side I have incredible problem solving skills. Thinking creatively is about being able to see, not just one angle of an idea/subject, but multiple sides and being complex with your ideas and having limitless directions in which the subject could be taken. So the results of my original poll about creativity in classrooms proves that once exposed to creativity you can think on so many levels that your options for anything can be limitless. Which is why the fact that they are in many different majors is intriguing to me. Risk taking is also gained through the exposure of creativity. Within the writing community taking risks is a minefield (Johns, 515). Once you have broken a rule there are many negative and positive consequences that could happen. Part of writing a good creative paper is taking those risks, bending the rules, testing the limits. Not only does this benefit your writing skills but it also helps you gain the skill for out of the classroom type situations. Taking risks makes your writing

unique, making yourself unique, building character, and not being cookie cutter (Johns 515). Lastly, bringing creativity involves a whole new level of complexity. Having the ability to tie scenarios, thoughts, images, and words all into one form is a very difficult and sometimes in the eyes of pessimists, impossible. With creativity being instilled in students they learn to do this with ease just from involving themselves as a whole and really diving into the writing that is for them. It brings back the ideas of gaining problem solving skills and that is a worldwide skill. Many people will bring up arguments about creativity in writing classes. They can say that systematic writing teaches the basics and students learn to build off that, but in reality it should be the opposite. The idea of teaching kids to be all out of control and all types of crazy and then being able to pull it all together and create a paper that makes sense is brilliant. It is easier to be given a box and fill it up, then to have all of these items you want in the box and then trying to find one worth enough to hold it all. Another argument is that if we focus more on the writing process and everyone does it all in the same format it makes it easier to navigate through all papers and people are able to find information more quickly because it is all in the same place as every other paper. This may be true, but it takes away the interest and the fun in finding new information in new pieces of work. Some people would say that if we focus more on creativity students wont be learning anything really they will always just be making no sense at all and saying it is creative to validate that it isnt just junk. This is complete nonsense, students

will always, bull-shit, for lack of a better word. This is nothing new and teachers who are focused on teaching it correctly will know the difference between a creative paper and a paper that was written the night before. I am a student who is going to school to be a teacher, and so I know both parts of this argument. I want to be a teacher who instills in my students that creativity is what matters not if you fit the criteria and how you went about doing it. I want to inspire my students to be writers not people who can write. Ive had all kinds of teachers; the strict one, the laid back one, the artsy one, the weird one, the one who youre not sure is even certified to teach, and the one that inspires you and makes you who you are suppose to be. Those ones, are the teachers that I remember the most, and those teachers who encouraged me to go out on a whim and break the rules, do something different, and pushed me to my limits were the teachers who taught me all about creativity and they are the ones that I am forever thankful to. Creativity is a powerful thing, and if focused on more when in class we could be doing great things. It is not about getting a good grade; it is about doing something new and different. There are many pros and cons with doing this, but I believe that the pros outweigh the rest of the negative. So in theory, if creativity is focused more on we are not only creating better writers, we are helping create better people.

Full Reference

Boe, John. "From the Editor: My Best Teacher." Writing on the Edge 21.2 Jan. (2009): 256-70. Print. Creative. (n.d). Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creative Creativity. (n.d) Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creativity Epstein, Robert. "Defining Creativity." The Behavior Analyst 3.2 (1980): 65. Print. Johns, Ann M. Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity. Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 51-70. Print.

Langer, Judith A. "Beating the Odds: Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well." American Educational Research Journal 38.4 (2001): 837-80. Print. Steinberg, Michael. "Teaching Composition, Writing Creative Fiction: A Personal Narrative." Writing on the Edge 18.115 Oct. (2011): 34-40. Print.