Teaching Creative Writing

A friend gave me a link to Dave and Bill's Cocktail Hour blog, which led me to an article by Dave Gessner in The New York Times titled "Those Who Write, Teach" (you'll need nytimes.com password access for the article).

This interesting article does not offer much in the way of new information, but that information is cogently presented and without rancor. To paraphrase, Gessner contends that creative writers teaching creative writing must be affected somehow by the activity. The consequences could include reading too much apprentice work, writing for quantity over quality, less time to write, and less time for reading overall. Gessner does not state that the effects are necessarily positive or negative (though he is not unbiased) and does not  proceed down the path of assuming all creative writers teaching creative writing are the affected the same. Rather, his point is just there must be some affect, good or ill.

Not being a creative writing instructor (nor wanting to be--many years ago in considering graduate school, I was always interested in teaching literature), I think some more layers of paint can be added to Gessner's coverage. Let's face it, nearly every poet working in America cannot write poetry for a living. They must supplement their income by writing in paying fields (journalism, criticism, etc., the the "paying field" here is highly debatable...particularly the criticism), working a regular job (that is, bartending, corporation, etc.), working a creative writing academic job, working a non-creative writing academic job (that is, instead of teach creative writing student creative writing, teaching literature instead...or even something in chemistry, philosophy, etc.).

All of these have their consequences, nearly all related to less time for reading, to devoting to the craft, etc. And no one way is the correct way. Myself, not teaching creative writing helps me compartmentalize my corporate life from my writing life, something I have found essential. Some people comment to me that they don't understand how I read and write so much after spending eight or more hours a day reading and writing all day for my corporate job. My answer is that the type of reading and writing is so very different that, to me, they exist as essentially separate and unpolluting activities. Reading Tomas Transtromer is so radically different than reading Statement of Work PDFs that, well, they do not exist in the same "reading realm."