Dear Crabby Writing Teacher:
Anyone who has ever been enrolled in an undergrad or graduate program in Creative Writing has encountered a teacher like you. Your vitae is impressive: You’ve written a slew of short stories and a couple have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. You also wrote a novel several years ago. The NY Times said it was “atmospheric and elegiac” but unfortunately it only sold 4,500 copies.
You can’t support yourself with your writing (who can?) so you’ve turned to academia to put groceries on your table. One small hitch: You don’t like to teach.
Your students and their clumsy, inelegant prose irritate you. (Never mind that you were just like them a couple of decades ago.) Their naiveté is grating. Who do they think they are trying to be writers? If you can barely make a go of it, these dilettantes certainly can’t. And, what’s worse, they are standing between you and your writing time.
Your dismissive attitude towards your students shows in your teaching. You can get nasty during workshop. Your comments on students’ manuscripts are terse, bordering on cruel, especially if you’re not having a good day. Your lectures are phoned in. You never change your teaching game. Not ever. What does it matter? It’s not like writing can be taught.
Or can it?
I suspect you came up with the belief that teaching most writers is a waste of time because it justifies your shabby behavior toward them.
The only writers you seem interested in are the “real deals.” They make your job worthwhile but unfortunately they don’t come around very often. Too bad you don’t know much about the role talent plays in success.
The Myth of the Real Deal
Some writer have more talent than others, but talent doesn’t take writers very far. Psychologist Angela Duckworth has found that grit— the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals—is a much more reliable indicator success than talent.
Also did you know talent can be a hindrance when it comes to achieving goals? If you fawned over a handful of wunderkinds, you were probably doing them a disservice. Another psychologist, Carol Dweck, found that students who were praised for their innate brain power, i.e. talent, didn’t think they had to work as hard as others. A better strategy is to applaud effort over ability.
Sometimes the Least Promising Students End Up Being Stars
To be honest, no teacher, not even you, knows who’s going to make it and who isn’t. I recommend you read an article in Poets and Writers called “The Teachable Talent: Why Creative Writing Can Be Taught.”
Gregory Spatz, the article’s author and a teacher in the Eastern Washington University MFA program, discusses one of his most difficult students, Shann Ray, a former star basketball player. Ray was almost not admitted to the program because his writing sample was so weak, but Spatz thought his many accomplishments suggested a record of hard work and discipline, so he took a gamble on him.
At first it seemed as if Spatz had made a mistake. The semester wore on, and Ray’s writing continued to be uninspiring, and he often questioned much of the criticism directed at his work. Halfway through the program Ray had made so little progress, Spatz was tempted to give up on him and predicted he would not graduate. Spatz was wrong. Not only did Ray finish the program, but shortly after he completed it, Graywolf Press published his short story collection American Masculine to great acclaim.
Your Students Deserve Better
The story of Shann Ray reminds me of what Brenda Ureland said in If You Want to Write, “Everyone is talented because everyone who is human has something to express… Everyone is original if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself.”
It’s part of your job to coax out the individuality in students. Not to stand in judgment of those you don’t deem worthy.
Will all your students be prize-winning authors? The answer is no. But you should treat them as if they have that potential. And yes that means every single one of them, even the ones you say put you to sleep.
Also You’re Missing Out
I feel sad for you. All those unhappy years teaching students. If only you would have tapped into that time in your life when you first discovered the joys of writing, maybe just maybe you could have infected your students with your passion. I’m talking about the kind of passion found in this quote by Enid Bagnold: “Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”
The best teachers don’t just pass on knowledge, they pass on a mindset for success. And here’s another little secret. Your students have as much to give you as you have to give them. Great teaching informs your writing. Every genuine and heartfelt gift you give your mentees will manifest itself in your prose.
It’s too late for Ryan Boudinot. But to the rest of you crabby writing teachers who think teaching writers is a burden, maybe it’s time for an attitude change. I promise it’ll be worth it.
Signed,
A Teacher Who Gives a Flip
