This essay was originally written in December 2021.
Seeking Emulsification: Introducing Legacies of CT into Creative Writing Classrooms
emulsifier / (noun) / a chemical agent introduced to encourage the suspension of one liquid into another when the two liquids would not typically mix. For example, while oil and water do not mix in standard conditions due to the hydrophobic nature of oil, when lecithin is introduced, it allows the oil to be mixed into the water in a stable state, meaning they will not separate.
Creative writing as a pedagogical field has traditionally been considered an expressivist endeavor. My experiences as a student of creative writing affirm this label—with one exception, my creative writing classes graded not based on the end-product that was produced, but instead on whether or not the students were producing content. Final projects were graded based on an end word-count rather than successful storytelling, or on essays explaining revisions made during the writing process. Rarely was I given a rubric explaining what my stories or novels had to achieve, or even what success looked like beyond the example texts we read from authors who had achieved success in either the literary or commercial world. The one exception to this was a poetry class I took during the final year of my undergrad, where we learned the form and function of various types of poetry and were expected to reproduce similar content. Here, and only here, were specific expectations the defining factor for our grade.
While I appreciate the process focus of my past writing classes and the space they gave me to practice what I love, as I turn my gaze from being a student to an instructor, I find that there are gaps within creative writing pedagogies. The scholarship on creative writing pedagogies is lacking in general—there is little research done on how creative writing should be taught at a university level. Shirley Lim observes that “while creative writing programs have burgeoned all over the United States, they have seldom received the same scrutiny of outsiders or been required to account for themselves to the same extent as programs like composition and American studies” (156); Ritter and Vanderslice concur, pointing to this gap in scholarship and blaming it in part on the fact that most creative writing pedagogies are lore-based, or based on “the accumulated body of traditions, practices, and beliefs…that influence how writing is done, learned and taught” rather than theory- or practice-based (North).
I theorize that this lack of scholarship comes in part from creative writing’s base in expressivism, which encourages a focus on the student’s own writing, the process by which writing is created, and the idea that writers shape meaning through their words rather than adhering to strict rules of discourse (Powell). While lore-based and expressivist pedagogies are not inherently ineffective, “their large basis of unexamined beliefs about disciplinary knowledge and teaching…risks reinforcing problematic and ahistorical writing standards, as well as subjectifying student experience” (Udelson). Furthermore, because creative writing is often a more commercialized endeavor than typical expressivist composition classrooms, a pure focus on writerly expression and self-directed meaning-making cannot entirely fulfill the needs of a creative writing pedagogy. As a result, creative writing workshops largely consist of what I experienced during my undergrad as a creative writer—presenting writing to a group of peers, listening to what they have to say, possibly editing, and submitting again on a self-directed course towards hitting a word-count goal for a good grade. And if I was lucky, a paragraph at the end of the semester explaining to the professor why I should get an A in the class.
While the focus on student writing and process that expressivist pedagogies encourage are useful in creative writing, they provide little forward momentum for those students who want to excel at commercial creative writing, who want to grow from apprentice to journeyman to master and eventually send their work out into the world where it can be positively received. In this paper, it is my hope to explore the possibility of introducing more rigorous elements into a creative writing pedagogy tailored more specifically to creative writers hoping to make a profession out of their passion. Specifically, I will begin by (1) examining what other efforts have been made by composition scholars to combine pedagogies, using Eli Goldblatt’s concept of legacies and the disruption of binaries proposed by proponents of critical expressivism. Then, (2) in hypothesizing how to bring increased rigor to a new hybrid pedagogy, I will explore what elements of current-traditionalism might be transplanted into creative writing classrooms and how we might emulsify those elements into a predominantly expressivist field through preexisting examples of hybrid spaces. Finally, (3) I will propose an implementation of this hybridized pedagogy and how its rigor might benefit students. Woven between these arguments and examinations, I will be using the concept of emulsification to explore how two apparently dissimilar composition theories like current-traditionalism and expressivism can blend into a single, effective pedagogy without one consuming the other.
As I delve into this question of the viability of current-traditional rigors in creative writing pedagogies, I will focus particularly on introducing these aspects to novel writing courses, as these are the courses that lean most commercial, as well as the courses I am the most familiar with and anticipate teaching. By the conclusion of this paper, I hope to show that it is possible to bring rigorous elements from current traditionalism into creative writing pedagogies as an effective way for teaching motivated writing that produces a successful product. As Freedman wrote in the early years of integrating creative writing courses into English departments, “writing can no more be taught than painting or any skill in any art, but it can be taught as much” (22, emphasis added). What follows seeks to prove Freedman’s hope.
I. THEORY: Legacies and Proof of Viability
An emulsifier does not completely combine two polar substances; rather, it allows one substance to suspend itself into another without separating out forcefully. Lecithin binds to oil and allows it to become suspended in water, mixed to the naked eye while remaining a distinct compound.
I would love to be able to examine this issue more fully from the perspective of creative writing pedagogy scholarship. Unfortunately, as stated above, such a desire is nearly impossible as “very little scholarship exists on the subject of creative writing pedagogy as a separate, academic field of study” (Ritter 104). Because of this lack, I come to this question of mixing pedagogies from a composition standpoint, where fortunately pioneers have already forged hypothetical (and some practical) unions between differing pedagogies.
My first notion that elements of a pedagogy could imbue other pedagogies came from Eli Goldblatt’s “Don’t Call it Expressivism: Legacies of a ‘Tacit Tradition.’” In this article, Goldblatt examines the supposed “death” of expressivism in current university writing courses and explores how elements of this defunct pedagogy can and should be revived. Specifically, he proposes four “legacies of expressivism” that might benefit more rigorous or professional pedagogies that range from accepting the reality of how a student’s unique experiences with culture and history form their unique language, to realizing the political and social power of community literacy projects when they are based in support and expression for students who do not usually receive support for their personal literacies (443). Goldblatt’s driving concern for recognizing these legacies is that “when we focus so much on professional and theoretical understandings of writing instruction…we can forget the importance of two impulses that compel writers: the desire to speak out of your most intimate experiences and to connect with communities in need” (442). As my research question addresses a similar dilemma in reverse—seeking to define a balance in creative writing courses between pure individual expression and writing that is effective, affective, and professionally successful—Goldblatt’s essay provides an essential model for how this might be accomplished. The use of “legacies” demonstrates that an entire pedagogy doesn’t need to be wholly incorporated into another, nor does there need to be an equal balance of elements; there are finite elements or beliefs that can be transposed or transplanted individually as they help uplift the pedagogy. Because Goldblatt has demonstrated that expressivism can be found in other pedagogies that at first seemed polarized to it, it follows logically that a traditionally expressivist field like creative writing can accept these legacies from other pedagogies that have long been viewed as oppositional.
Another example of a successful hybrid pedagogy that paves the way for my research is critical expressivism, which dismantles the binary between “personal/expressive vs. academic/critical” as it “theorizes a relationship between expressivism and social-constructivism” (Owens and Bryant). Owens points to the necessity of introducing more rigorous elements from other pedagogies into expressivism, arguing for a new space “to question the stories we would otherwise ‘just’ tell … a space where we can expect ourselves to keep asking: so why that story?” (75), and Elbow insists that while personal writing has many forms and can effectively infect academic writing, there can still be rigor applied to expressivism that should be taught and structured in non-expressivist ways (Elbow 29). While this essay does not seek to reconcile creative writing pedagogies with social-constructivist agendas, the theory behind critical expressivism forms a basis for how CT legacies can be brought into a field that is typically more process-focused. In short, a pedagogy can focus on the students’ writing and students’ goals without sacrificing some of the rigor of product-focused pedagogies. Bryant’s argument for writing pedagogies as cumulative curricula “composed of the many theories and practices that have been and are being developed in our scholarship” is applicable to any pedagogy that seeks to make itself better by borrowing from another.
II. SELECTION: Choosing Emulsifiable Aspects of Current-Traditionalism
Different emulsifiers produce different effects, even for the same two base substances—where lecithin allows for oil to become suspended in water, cholesterol allows water to become suspended in oil. Just as Goldblatt has suspended expressivism into other pedagogies, the natural world might indicate that a pedagogy like CT can be suspended in expressivism.
With confidence that others have found appropriate spaces to blend pedagogies, our next step is to understand what “legacies” current-traditionalism has to offer[1]. During CT’s rise in popularity in the late 1970s, Richard Young listed some of the pedagogy’s core elements as an “emphasis on the composed product rather than the composing process; the analysis of discourse into words, sentences, and paragraphs; the classification of discourse into description, narration, exposition, and argument; the strong concern with usage (syntax, spelling, punctuation) and with style (economy, clarity, emphasis); [and] the preoccupation with the informal essay and the research paper; and so on” (31). These features point towards the founding belief of current-traditionalism that “the external world [exists] independent of the mind and that direct knowledge of this world [is] attainable,” or in other words, an understanding of reality as “rational, regular, and certain” (Berlin and Inkster). Because CT maintains this view of reality as external and fixed rather than individual and interpretable, it is equipped to set rigorous standards for creating a final product that is successful in the discourse it is trying to achieve.
Young’s list is far from exhaustive, but it does provide a starting point from which we can begin to pull legacies and experiment with how they might fit into an effective, publishing-based pedagogy for novel writing or other creative writing courses. The legacies that I have selected as the most useful for my envisioned pedagogy are as follows:
- Emphasis on the composed product rather than the composing process.
The inclusion of this legacy is necessary for teaching commercial creative writing. While expressivist composition classes might focus on the development of the student and their writing process holistically, creative writing classes are often aimed at a more specific goal—the creation of a manuscript, a compilation of poems, a series of short stories. Never have I encountered a student who signed up for a novel-writing course because they want to discover more about themselves or enjoy the process of writing a novel; I speak from experience when I say that no sane person would put the amount of time and effort required to finish a novel because they want to know themselves better. It might be a happy by-product of a novel to know yourself at a more intimate level, but there are cheaper and easier ways to know oneself better. Newer novelists likely have a great many different reasons they want to finish a book; one because they want to tell a successful story, another because they want to share a story with others, and many because they hope to one day publish their work. George Campbell wrote that all discourse should be adapted to one of four ends: “to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will” (1). Current-traditionalists germinated these ends into their modes of discourse, translating them comparably to exposition, narration, description, and argumentation. As creative writers similarly seek to germinate these “ends” and seek to understand what each student is hoping to gain out of beginning a novel, we will be better able as instructors of creative writing to help them accomplish their goals.
- Focus on the external world as rational, regular, and certain.
An emphasis on creating a successful end-product necessarily leads to the idea that an idea of external success exists, and that it can be taught and repeated by students. This is perhaps the most controversial legacy of current-traditionalism that I envision adapting into my creative writing pedagogy. It is difficult to define what creates a successful novel—we can look at examples and try to comprehend what each author is doing that is working, but creative writers are often naturally averse to anything that seems formulaic. They are creatives, after all, and do not like to think that they are merely copying what has succeeded before in order to achieve a similar level of success. This aversion to formula does not mean that there are no formulas—we’ll take a look at one of those in the next section of this paper, when we evaluate some of the preexisting emulsifiers between creative writing and current-traditional pedagogies. One hesitation I have in including this legacy in creative writing is that even these formulas cannot guarantee regular success, and I cannot honestly say where there are defined rules-of-success in the world of novel writing. However, I believe that a set of rules constructed for the purpose of teaching beginning writers can be useful as a framework by which they can begin to understand how the structure of a novel works. In essence, I see a creative writing pedagogy that uses CT composition-like rules as training wheels to support a student until they have learned enough balance to navigate alone the creative world where things are more fluid.
- Analysis of discourse into words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Incorporating legacies into new pedagogy is less like transplantation and more a process of transposition. This element of CT—which breaks down the structure of discourse into finite sections that function on different levels to create an effective flow of argument—is most effective when transposed into the scale of a creative writing course. While a general focus on the efficacy of words, sentences, and paragraphs would still be useful for a novel writer, a transposed breakdown of a novel might more effectively evaluate the acts, chapters, and paragraphs that make up the discourse of a novel. If we are assuming solid external realities and an effective end-product, then examining the function of each section of a novel and refining our skills at each magnification will help students to slowly practice and build their abilities into the larger whole. Another useful transposition of this legacy would be to spend time examining the function and features of the beginning, middle, and end of a novel independently.
III. DISCOVERY: Pre-Existing Areas of Emulsification
Emulsifiers are naturally occurring—cholesterol is generated by all animal cells, and lecithin can be found abundantly in egg yolks and milk. Just as these two substances exist as part of natural processes, it is possible that pedagogical emulsifiers have also been naturally generated in the creative writing community and are simply not recognized as emulsifiers.
With these three legacies of CT identified, I believe it would be useful to identify a preexisting emulsifier that helps transpose these elements into a new creative writing pedagogy. The best example I’ve found is perhaps the craft book, a popular genre of resources for beginning novelists that detail various aspects of writing. Amazon is flooded with hundreds of craft books claiming to help novelists write the perfect novel, all with varying levels of validity behind them. Some are written by self-published authors who claim to have discovered the secret to success while still boasting only meager sales; others are written by acclaimed authors, like On Writing by Stephen King, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, or Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin. No matter the author, each of these craft books claims some form of current-traditionalist legacy in their pages as they offer up their solid rules and frameworks of creative writing to be copied and repeated by beginning novelists. Some offer proscriptive structures for the plotting of a novel, divvying the analysis of discourse into concepts like the three-act structure or the Hero’s Journey. Others, perhaps the least humble, define the creative writing world as stable, certain, and infinitely reproducible by the astute writer. All of them are aimed at creating a successful end-product, largely proscribing process rather than inviting the beginning novelist to develop their process as the main goal of writing.
Of course, the reality of what successful novel writing looks like varies drastically from craft book to craft book, with each author injecting their own procedures into the mix. But amidst these various opinions there is also a sort of consensus. Certain structural features pop up time and again, like the Hero’s Journey. This structure is among the most common tools used to teach new novel writers how to craft an effective longform narrative and outlines twelve (or so) points along the narrative that the main hero should hit in order to create a satisfying conclusion. The names of the points vary depending on the author—for example, the sixth point is referred to as “The Ordeal,” “Death and Rebirth,” “The Abyss,” or “The Crisis” by various authors—but the key meaning of each point is maintained. This creates a unified method of organization that has been determined effective by numerous professional writers; in essence, the Hero’s Journey argues in favor of a solid reality that an author can use to create a measurable, consistent, and desired effect in an audience. And while the name of the Hero’s Journey might make it sound solely applicable to quest epics in fantasy or science fiction, several craft novels have demonstrated that stories of all genres can be mapped onto it.
For example, Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel gives us a general Hero’s Journey with fifteen story points, then applies it to ten different genres that range from murder mysteries to coming of age stories to romantic comedies. The setting changes from story to story, the emotional journeys of the characters change, and the author’s purpose for the story changes, but the basic structure remains. Brody’s work is an effort to prove the reality and value of formulas within novel writing; she even addresses the reality of successful storytelling in the introduction to her craft book. “Many novelists worry that following a methodology…will cause their novel to end up ‘formulaic’ or ‘predictable.’ They worry that following a structure guide or template will detract from their art and limit their creative options. [But] the pattern I’ve…found in almost all novels is not a formula. It’s an underlying storytelling code. It’s the secret recipe that makes great stories work” (5). In declaring that her fifteen-point Hero’s Journey is a code, Brody is emulsifying CT expectations of solid frameworks into the expressivist world of creative writing. She does not eliminate the expressivist leanings of creative writers—she acknowledges the fear of giving into a formula and giving up personal freedom to explore creative writing and personal meaning-making. But she also allows a space for structured rules that will help beginning writers to create something of their own while still teaching successful storytelling which can be evaluated by instructors. In this way, craft novels become an excellent example of how writing instructors can emulsify CT elements into their pedagogies.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION: In a Hypothetical Classroom…
When lecithin forms an oil-in-water emulsion, the lecithin binds to the surface of the oil and allows it to remain within the water. While this does not change the composition or function of the oil, it does negate the hydrophobic nature of oil allowing the substances to form an emulsion.
Unfortunately, the use of craft books is not common in current creative writing courses where workshops are the central focus. And in the two novel workshop classes I’ve taken where a craft book was part of the curriculum, the lessons pulled from them lacked the sort of measurable structures that might provide a useful framework for beginning novelists or a meaningful grading rubric for an introductory novel writing course. So, what would a blended pedagogy that implements these legacies of CT and an effective use of emulsifying craft books look like? In an effort to demonstrate an effective use of CT-in-CW emulsification, I propose the following format for a beginning novelist classroom that balances legacies of current-traditionalism with the traditional orientations of expressivism. To structure this proposed pedagogy, I will use the three borrowed legacies of CT mentioned above.
- Emphasis on the composed product rather than the composing process.
In seeking to emphasize the evaluation of a composed product, each student would be required to write a complete story during the course of the class. For a single semester class, the students might be required to complete a novella, which are typically 20,000-40,000 words. This is the word count typically required in a novel-writing course, though usually the required word count is only part of a larger project that the instructor will never see. In writing a complete novella, students will be able to practice not only the beginning and middle of a story, but an ending as well. Imagine if all composition essays were graded only on their introduction and first few paragraphs—knowing the beginning, middle, and ending of a story will allow the instructor to grade the craft of the story as a finite, finished product. Instructors would also be to offer feedback and grade the implementation of the ends of the novella—how well the students carried a theme throughout the project, implemented the beats of a character’s journey, or conveyed a message in their words. In a two-semester class, the students could be expected to complete an entire 50,000-70,000 word novel. One limitation of including this legacy of product is the demands on instructor time to read through the students completed novellas/novels in order to offer feedback and rigorous grading; however, I hypothesize that if these course expectations are laid out, the course will invite fewer but more serious students who wish to enhance their long form writing craft and will allow instructors to give more time to individual students.
- Focus on the external world as rational, regular, and certain.
In working towards this end product, my constructed pedagogy would benefit from a reliance on the same sorts of standardized structures that compositionists employ. While the finite parts might be different—a fiction novelist will not define a research space or present a lit review in the same way an essayist will—I believe that beginning novelists will be helped by following a rigorous structure that helps to give form to their early projects. I see this being implemented in two ways: (1) the instructor assigns a specific narrative form that students must follow, such as the Hero’s Journey which can have many genres mapped onto it. The students will write their novella/novel according to this structure, and at the end of the semester the rubric used by the instructor looks specifically for how well the students stuck to the form. The second option is (2) to allow each student to pick a well-known narrative structure of their own choosing, which the instructor will then use as a rubric to grade the story. I think this option best demonstrates the emulsification of CT into a creative writing pedagogy—the student is able to articulate what they need for their own personal development, while still having elements of structured practice and learning that can be measured by an instructor. Having students choose their own forms also helps prevent Eurocentrism from dominating creative writing classrooms, an accusation sometimes made against teaching the Hero’s Journey.
- Analysis of discourse into words, sentences, and paragraphs.
So far, these suggestions focus on the semester-long project that a student will complete independently and during workshops. The implementation of this CT legacy—the focus on the distinct parts of composition and improving them to make an improved whole—comes largely in the classroom. In my proposed pedagogy, the instructor will structure their course around the teaching of various functional parts of a novella/novel. An instructor might follow this pattern: the first week of a novella course would focus on the overall story structure that the instructor has assigned or which the students have selected. Once the structure has been taught holistically, the instructor might use the second week to take a more in depth look at the function and form of the beginning of a novella. While the students are still writing their beginnings, a week might be dedicated to sentence structure, helping students to improve their prose and cohesion. Once the students move into the middle of their projects, the instructor would move along with them and offer a deeper dive into what the middle of the chosen structure should include. Here the instructor might also take a class period to discuss how each chapter or section includes a mini-narrative of its own, how tension can be built and released within a single scene like a fractal of the larger story. A focus on paragraph cohesion might follow, or a few lessons on diction or dialogue, with a goal to improve the overall craft of the novelists just as one might in a first year writing course. As the students reach their conclusions near the end of the semester, the instructor would then turn their teaching to a more detailed examination of endings. Beyond giving the students applicable instruction that moves with their writing, it also provides them with specific things to look for during workshops with peers.
V. CONCLUSION: Pedagogical Imperfection
emulsion / (noun) / a mixture of two or more substances in which one is distributed throughout the other.
This hybrid pedagogy is by no means perfect or even implementable. I myself have very limited experience (read: no experience) with teaching novel writing or the demands it makes on its instructors. However, as a student and a writer I have experienced a deficiency in the way that these kinds of workshops are presented. This isn’t to criticize those who currently teach creative writing; all pedagogies are in some way flawed. To focus on one important aspect of writing in a class is to ignore another, equally important aspect of writing. This is a truth that all instructors of writing must face. In light of that dilemma, my goal here is not to create the perfect novel writing pedagogy. Nor is it to say that my imperfect pedagogy is any better than those that are being taught in academe right now. My hope is merely that as creative writing moves more comfortably into the world academe and takes note from pioneers like Goldblatt and the critical expressivists, we will be able to hone our process of creating effective, successful writers. I believe that as we are unafraid to explore the “alchemical pairing of opposites” and invite the more rigorous elements of current-traditionalist and other pedagogies (Owens 70), then we will undoubtedly find emulsifying paths that allow us to improve our old expressivist pedagogies without impairing the traditional focus on our students’ writing.
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[1] I feel it important to note that while I am borrowing Goldblatt’s phraseology when I refer to the “legacies” of CT pedagogies, I am not assuming that CT pedagogies are defunct as Goldblatt assumes of expressivism.