papaknowsbest

When inside english announced that its March 1998 issue would focus on the creative writing process and, specifically, how that process might successfully be incorporated into the composition classroom, only one essay on the topic trickled in through the transom. Perhaps this dearth of sub- missions was characteristic of the bias with which the academy, particularly many composition specialists, view creative writing and the creative writing process.

Illustrating this bias, Bert Woodruff reported on the criticism he received from colleagues when, while following a program designed by James Moffett, he spent the first half of a freshman writing course focusing on creative autobiograph- ical writing rather than strict academic writing (3). This bias was fueled in part by the academy's division of academic and creative writing into two distinct realms -- "realms divided by a high and sturdy wall" (Moss 1).

Often, creative writers who serve as composi- tion instructors, and even some prolific non-fiction writers, are unfairly treated by strict academicians. One of those instructors, James O'Neill, explained how the lessons he teaches in his composition class are directly related to the actual lessons he has personally gleaned from "the practice of [his] craft" (2). Still, many administrators do not appre- ciate this creative writing approach to composition and may rigidly rely on ivory tower academic theories and published pedagogical reports, dis- counting the experience of these actual working writers.

In my own composition courses, I, like O'Neill, have shared lessons gleaned from my own experi- ence as a "creative writer." But I do not rely on my own personal experience alone. When intro- ducing to the realm of academic writing, I lead them first through the creative writing process. To achieve this objective, I rely in part on Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, Papa's post- humously published memoir of his early days in Paris.

Usually, at this point, at the merest mention of Hemingway as a potential mentor in the composi- tion classroom, feminist and multicultural instruc- tors will stiffen like the dorsal fin of a hooked blue marlin. Any objection, however, that Hemingway is simply "a dead white male" is sufficiently coun- tered by the suggestion that a diverse sampling of writers also be included in the course.

Feminist instructors, for instance, might intro- duce their students to the writings by Gertrude Stein, a prominent figure in A Moveable Feast. Similarly, multiculturalists might balance their courses by introducing the works of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, prominent figures from the Harlem Renaissance and transatlantic contemporaries of Papa and his lost generation.

Today's college students, often found cram- ming with the aid of a double-shot latte from Star- bucks, will find much in common with Hemingway's post-war Parisian cafe society. As A Moveable Feast opens, Papa is only twenty-one (not much older than most college students), and though married with an infant son, he finds himself surrounded by friends of all sexual orientations, some hooked on drugs, some abusing alcohol, others driven by artistic ambition.

After a brief biographical lecture on Heming- way's early life and his adventures during and after WWI, I introduce students to A Moveable Feast, specifically to passages in which Hemingway focuses on the lessons he gleaned while teaching himself to write. Consider, for example, the follow- ing passage from "Miss Stein Instructs," the second chapter of A Moveable Feast:

It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentences that you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting some- thing, I found that I could cut that scroll- work or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I know about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was a good and severe discipline.... It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it. (12-13)

After a student volunteer has read this pre- ceding passage aloud, I separate students into small focus groups and direct them to follow four simple instructions: 1) analyze the passage care- fully, 2) identify the elements of Hemingway's writing process, 3) discuss those elements, and 4) compare those elements to your own writing processes.

Lively discussions regularly erupt from each small group, especially on the topic of procrastina- tion and writer's block, with many students recog- nizing their own aversion to writing when Heming- way turns to the fireplace to fiddle with the orange peels. Students offer one another the own best suggestions for snapping out of writer's block; and I, if asked, offer my own favorite method: taking a quick shower.

Other writing process issues that students regularly identify in the above passage include: the need to write truthfully without attempting to sound "academic"; the role discipline plays when revising essays from draft to draft; the importance of edit- ing; knowing when to stop writing and what to do when not writing, such as reading; and finally, the benefit of positive affirmations and the fickle fate of luck.

Once the groups have discussed these issues, the class reassembles as a whole and continues the discussion on a larger scale. Individual students are invited to share their own personal experiences with these creative writing issues, and I -- taking the perspective of a fellow writer, rather than that of a writing instructor -- share my own experiences with my own writing process, both "creative" and "academic."

As the semester rolls on, as the students be- come gradually familiar with the "well-defined genres and conventions of academic writing" (Moss 1), they carry with them the lessons gleaned by viewing their own writing processes as if they, like Papa in Paris, were also "creative writers," though practicing their craft within the more rigid realm of the academic environment.

WORKS CITED

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New

York: Scribners, 1964.

Moss, Andrew. "Exploration, Discovery, and

Expression." inside english 25.3 (1998): 1+.

O'Neill, James. Letter to the Editor. inside

english 25.3 (1998): 2.

Woodruff, Bert. "How Come Those Papers Are So

Dull?" inside english 25.3 (1998): 3+.