First Draft of Rhetoric Paper

Writings in Creative Writing

It is tricky, to define academic and non-academic writings in Creative Writing field. In normal situations, journals and papers are the typical genres to be considered as academic writing. However, based on the interviewee—Jianan Qian, a Chinese writer who graduated from Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she thinks that comment letters they exchange in workshop definitely belong to academic writing in Creative Writing major. This blurry line between academic and non-academic writings is unique in Creative Writing. For such special instance, this paper will talk about two different types of academic writing and one non-academic writing, discussing the techniques, purposes and audiences in three of them.

Academic Writings in Normal: Journals

            Writing techniques include many aspects, such as structure, organization, language etc. Journals and papers are considered as academic writing because these passages must be written in a professional way: authors have to use objective languages, rightful citations and strong arguments. Though this kind of articles are very hard to find in Creative Writing field, there are still three relative journals found as samples to analyze. Unlike papers are mostly written for instructors or professors who have more authorities in the area that writers are studying, journals are usually published on magazines to report or to show recent discoveries to public readers who don’t really have expert knowledges. Also, because people who wrote these journals are writers, their writing styles are a little bit different from other areas’ journals.

The first rule of being objective is not writing in “first person”. In the journal “That’s My Boy”, Surkan and McGill (2018) had a line like this, “to illustrate these problems with the myth, we focus on recent books that reiterate it” (p.4). “We” and “I” are very rare in journal writings because sentences start in first person represent author’s personal ideas, sound more subjective than sentences without them. However, three sample journals are using a lot of first person through the whole articles. Journal “In the Group Home”, written by Bensel (2018), the author not only used the first person, but also had a whole paragraph narrating her own experience as example to explain how workshop works in Creative Writing class (p.2-3). In normal cases, academic writing is not allowed to using personal experience as sources or evidence, authors have to cite other scholarly passages to support their opinions. But according to three sample journals in Creative Writing, authors were continuing using first person, and provided personal experience as examples, their tones were also more casual and less academic, just like they were telling a story by using few formal phrases (the result of, in particular, for instance, etc). The reason why they were writing in this way is very clear: on one hand, they are writers who working on fictions all the time, not papers; on the other hand, their purpose is different from authors who write science journals.

            Science journals contain many knowledges that people don’t know before they read these articles, the purpose of these journals is to explain something complex and unknow in a simple way for their readers. Using strict and formal languages can help them looks more authoritative and convincing, so readers will believe the arguments they made in journals. Though, journals in Creative Writing have different purpose. When Meyntjens(2018) started to establish his point, he wrote “as I will demonstrate, Bon’s reception of Goldsmith’s work (his détournement) must be regarded in light of his turn to American literature and writing handbooks” (p.3). It is a very gentle point, because the purpose of this journal is to display author’s ideas. Situations are same in other two samples, authors wrote these passages to show how creative writing classes working in daily life, how they analyze literature pieces as a writer. The opinions in these journals are neutral, even readers won’t accept the ideas that authors are holding, it won’t cause any problems. Authors don’t need to establish arguments and to argue something, they only need to express their thoughts, to introduce something new to readers while it related with creative writing field, just like what they are doing all the time—writing stories for their audiences.

            Journals in Creative Writing are written for people who never study in this major before. All the people who are not in this major may have similar questions: What people are studying in Creative Writing? And how? Bensel (2018) defined Creative Writing class that “these programs empower participants through active involvement in workshops, outlets for self-expression, and acknowledgement within and beyond the workshop setting in service of larger social justice goals” (p.2). Other two samples also have definitions about Creative Writing program. Students who have studied this major don’t need such explanations, as a result, journals introducing how workshop works and what is the role of a mentor in creative writing class are written for people who don’t familiar with this field.

Academic Writing for Creative Writers: Comment Letters

            During the interview, Jianan strongly suggests that “academic writing for creative writers is the comment letters they receive from peers and directors”. The comments and letters they write are very often scholarly and contain special techniques. In the comment letters, writers need to address specific writing and literary problems, and so they need to adopt the right terms to make sure they are talking about the same issues. In Jianan’s comment letter (2018), “something similar with the top of page 11, Hunter’s warm-up activity. The second full paragraph, you have ‘the problem is hiking bores him. Unless at the beach, he doesn’t care for nature’” (p.1). There are citation and page number refer to original piece. Similar format appears in other two letters when writers provide their advice to their peers. When Ayana (2018) provided this suggestion to Jianan, “since you have written this piece in the third person and are not, therefore, locked into Su’s POV, I wonder if you couldn’t give us a bit more of her” (p.1), she brought a term in Creative Writing “POV”—the point of view. Comment letters are not just letters in normal concept, writers show their expert perspectives and offer professional advice in a normative format.

            The reason they take comment letters very seriously is because they exchange their ideas by this formal method. Writers discuss a piece during workshop time, and the comment letter is their academic report about the piece they read. Comment letters are very same with papers in science fields, writers show their opinions to people who are also experts in this area, expressing their thoughts and study outcomes. As for the letters written by mentors, Mary Ann Cain (2009) asserts that Creative Writing teachers often point to men’s writing when suggesting what literature their students should read (237). It means that mentors are giving a formal paper-like feedback to their students through their comment letters.

            Comment letters are having special writing rules and clear purpose because the audiences (receivers) are students who write pieces in Writer’s Workshop. Every writer who have finished a work wants feedback so eagerly. To help people who will read the letter to progress, comment letters only contain one or two strengths of one’s piece, weaknesses for the rest of contents. Comparing the journals, comment letters may have more terms and writing skills because of the audiences.

Non-academic Writing in General.

            Non-academic writing is more casual than academic writing, the definition is same with other areas. Emails and announcements might be the most common types of non-academic writing in any fields, even the notes for class and reading materials can be non-academic writing. No special techniques for them, writers write whatever they want when they write any of above writings. However, one typical non-academic writing type appears only in Creative Writing field: proses and poems. The techniques of writing prose and poems are exactly what people are learning and want to learn during their daily life. No patterns in writing creative pieces. Everyone has different habits in their own writings. Based on Jianan’s answer, she didn’t have routines or patterns when she wrote. Every time she started a new work, she wanted to try some new techniques, because except for reading comment letters, that’s another useful way to find progress.

            Purpose of doing non-academic writing can be very different. Asking questions to directors, left a notecard to remind others doing something, even the reading events holding in Prairie Light need to write announcements as advertisements. Yet, to write prose and poems are having very different feeling from writing a comment letters. As a writer, writing creative pieces when inspiration comes is a native impulse. No one can answer why, but they just want to write at some moments. Not for mandatory quests, like comment letter, any writers will agree that they prefer non-academic free writing. Doing their favorite action—writing without any purpose is the best thing writers can ever imagine.

            Audiences for non-academic writing in this field is not really worth to discuss. The answer just simply to be everyone. Writers write their works for every possible reader, including strangers and people in Writer’s Workshop.

Conclusion

            Journals, comment letters and non-academic writings are very different in their writing techniques. This is because different type of writings has different purposes and audiences. Journals in Creative Writing has a part of techniques in common with other kinds of journals but show personalities as journals in this special field. The consensus that writers have about true academic writing is comment letters they write every week. This unique writing occurs only in Creative Writing major due to its special teaching and learning methods. As for non-academic writing, hundreds of people have hundreds different kinds of habits. Because prose and poems are categorized in non-academic writing, perhaps Creative Writing is the only major that non-academic writing is more valuable than academic writing.

References:

Surkan, Neil and McGill, Robert (2018) “That’s My Boy: Challenging the Myth of Literary Mentorship as In Loco Patris,” Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 2.

Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol3/iss1/2

Bensel, Alyse (2018) “In the Group Home: Disenfranchised Youth and the Creative Writing Workshop as Intervention”, Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 3.

Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol3/iss1/3

Meyntjens, Gert-Jan (2018) “Transatlantic Détournement? An Institutional Perspective on François Bon’s Reception of Kenneth Goldsmith’s Uncreative Writing”, Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 1.

Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol3/iss1/1

Bensel, Alyse (2018) “In the Group Home: Disenfranchised Youth and the Creative Writing Workshop as Intervention”, Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 3.

Available at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/jcws/vol3/iss1/3

Jianan, Qian. (2018) “Critique on Instagram Boyfriend”, 1-2.

Ayana. (2018) “Critique on Matchmaker”, 1-2.

Cain, Mary Ann. (2009) “‘To Be Lived’: Theorizing Influence in Creative Writing.” College English 71.3: 229-41. JSTOR. Web. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25472321