ed 366 967 aut7or title institution report no pub date note ... - ERIC

xviIntroductionearn a living through writing. I can't afford the time to 'fir- .wize' aboutteaching. even if I wanted to. What I desperately need some luck,some time to write, and the courage to keep writing, none of which'theory' can give me:'The situation becom -s even more complicated when parents andchildren of the dysfunctional English studies family mix it up. Literaturefaculty often dislike the apparent isolation of creative writing teachersand then do much to insure that the isolation will harden. Theyobjectify creative writing by naming it "anti-intellectual" or "touchyfeely"then dismiss ita process of bigotry that is not so different fromracism, which always finds the enemy it seeks.Meanwhile, a growing rank of research- and theory-trained rhetoriciansmay be widening old divisions, perhaps unwittingly: Those whostudy "writing" without adjectives (just plain writing processes, not"creative" or "imaginative" or "art" writing) are eager to study creativewritersin part to determine whether "creative" is a useful adjective.With their very attitude toward the writing they wish to study, theythereby threaten to demystify an entire domain, or at least to demystifythat crucial adjective, "creative."Directors of writing programs oftenand understandably, givenuniversity politicsput most of their energy into training graduatestudents to teach first-year writing., directors may tolerate the presenceof undergraduate creative writing courses, but training someone toteach the courses or reconceptualizing the role of creative writing israrely a priority.In such situations, departmental division can create all kinds ofdistaste or hatred, and in this atmosphere the writer-teachers may feelobliged to return hatred of critical and pedagogical theory in kind.Meanwhile, the composition constituencythose who teach plainvanilla first-year college writing and who don't write much becausethey are overworked, underpaid, and not encouragedmay look on"creative writing" and "literature" constituencies as two similar varietiesof privilege.There are, of course, many reasonable questions that each constituencymay ask of the others. Critical theorists can point out thatresistance to theory is itself a theory, as I have suggested here. Theycan also point out that an a priori dismissal of theory coincidentallysaves the dismisser from having to do a lot of reading. Creative writerscan suggest that the theories seem to neutralize each other, to bringforth a mouse, and that much theoretical writing is so dull, so heavy,so narrow in its conception of its audience as to beg not to be read.Dedicated composition teachers can rightly ask writer-teachers who18