Memo 1

Writing has always been a huge part of my life. I’ve been writing weird little stories since I could remember. There is something strangely therapeutic about creating something and getting lost in it. I’ve often equated writing to being like a God, you create a world filled with characters and cities and anything you could ever want and then you let it breathe. As a writer you have complete control over what you make. Writing has power.

                I hated writing in school and mostly I think that was because I had no control over it. I’d get into class and the teacher would tell us specifically what to write and in what way. There was no creativity. The few times I got to write creatively I had a lot of fun and I actually worked hard on those assignments. I wondered then what purpose could creative writing have in the classroom? Surely engagement is important to breeding strong thoughtful writers. I have to believe that the first step to making a good writer is making a student who loves writing. Through engaging the student with creative writing could we not move them into the more academic side of writing? Or, forgetting ‘academic’ writing for a moment could we not use creative writing to help sharpen the tools of writing anyway? I often wonder what the point of teaching writing is if the methods we use don’t create writers. More often than not I hear people say the hate writing, that they’ll never do it once they get out of school. So my question is what are we really teaching students? Isn’t knowledge supposed to spring board the student into further inquiry? If, as a teacher, you’re teaching your student to hate writing than what is the difference between that and teaching a brick wall? The end process is the same: someone who won’t write.

                So my burning question: can we create lovers of writing through creative writing stems from my belief that putting the power of writing into the hands of students will make them love writing.