Creative Writing Teachers Have Been Called...

 Just a quick update here, I have now officially sent an email to the teachers my classmates have pointed me too, and am waiting for a response. I used a kind of questionnaire format. Here are the questions I asked them to answer for me:

 1)      Do you feel that Shakespeare has had a significant impact on how creative writing is generally approached in classrooms today? If so, how? 
 2)       Do you use Shakespeare (directly or indirectly) in your own teaching of creative writing? 
 3)      Which of Shakespeare’s qualities do you feel are worth imitating or aspiring to?
 4)      For each in the following list, please rate on a scale of 1-10 how valuable that trait is for us to learn in our creative writing endeavors, and then briefly explain why you rated it what you did.

1)      Having a large vocabulary

2)      Playing with words, or inventing new words or phrases

3)      Having “the common touch”, or writing in a way that is accessible to normal people

4)      Having knowledge of other great contemporary literature, orators, actors and “the popular”

5)      Living with passion in every aspect of one’s life

6)      Writing (trying consistently to express oneself in written word)

       5)      Do you think that the majority of creative writing classes could be benefited by incorporating Shakespeare into how they are taught? If so, do you feel the greatest benefit would come by incorporating Shakespeare directly (by actual mention and/or study of him and his works in the actual class) or indirectly (by shaping your teaching around your own personal knowledge of him and his works)? 

      6)      Do you have any other thoughts, ideas, or insights for me about the role of Shakespeare in shaping today’s creative writers? 

         

        Hopefully I'll be getting responses back on these soon!

Calling All Creative Writing Teachers!

     So, I already mentioned this in class today, but I was wondering if I could get some help from my classmates. As part of my research, I was hoping to have the chance to interview some creative writing teachers, and find out their opinions about using Shakespeare (or not) in their creative writing teaching, or even just whether they think he's had influence on it, even if they don't use him directly.

     So..... I need teachers to interview! If anyone knows a creative writing teacher who they think might be willing to chat with me, could you please post a comment with their name? If it's a BYU teacher, I can just look up their information in the directory. I also think it might add a neat dynamic to find a few teachers of maybe a high school level creative writing class, but I would need contact information on those.

      Thank you!!

Imitation: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

As I’ve been looking through information on teaching creative writing (philosophies, techniques, etc.), I’m finding that the range of approaches is just about as wide as the range of literature that exists in the world. So I’ve decided to focus just on those approaches that I feel can be learned from Shakespeare.

Since Shakespeare really said so little, it is difficult to pinpoint what his exact creative writing methods and philosophies were. With that being the case, however, it seems to me that the best way to learn creative writing from him is through imitation.

The first step of this is to identify which of Shakespeare’s attributes as a writer are worth emulating. Once I can identify the areas of strength, then I can build a more focused method of emulating those attributes.

I found an article online which, although it was pretty informal, I felt did a good job of this. The areas of Shakespeare’s expertise that this article points out are,

          1)   A large vocabulary

          2)      Playing with words, and inventing new words and phrases

          3)      The “common touch”

          4)      Knowledge of great literature, orators, actors and “the popular”

          5)      Living with passion

          6)      Writing!

I really liked this outline of basic strengths to emulate. The article goes on to outline ideas for cultivating these strengths, but I think I’d like to take each one and study it just a little more in depth, and come up with the ways I think would work best based on my research.

If anyone has a brilliant idea of any additional areas of strength that really should be added to this list, please let me know!!

*Just as a side note, I’d like to apologize for my delay in posting about my research. I once again find myself really struggling to find resources on the topic that interests me. (Thanks to those who have given me suggestions, by the way, I really appreciate the help!)

Shakespeare and Creative Writing: My Revised Plan

So... thus far, I have found myself really floundering with my direction on this research project. I was having trouble finding sources, and the little I did find left me with very little interest, or drive to really go anywhere with it.

As a result, I have decided to revise my focus a little bit, and make it more structured. My new idea is, rather than trying to scrape up Shakespeare’s own opinions on writing, I would like to study out how his work has been used specifically in the teaching of Creative Writing in various contexts.

I was looking at some of my peers’ blogs and found a post by Joanna Barker (which, interestingly enough, was inspired by another class member’s blog; yay for social learning!). She had decided to map out the rest of the semester with her study/research plan, much like we did with the first half of the semester’s reading plan. That had helped me a lot during those weeks, so the light bulb turned on and I decided to map out my plan for the rest of the semester. I’m hoping that this will both keep me on track as far as pace, and also give a lot better structure to my research.

Here is my plan to have done and blogged about by each class day:

• Fri. Mar. 11: Timeline of the teaching of Creative Writing, and how it relates to modern teaching of Creative Writing
• Mon. Mar. 14: Go through and note the use of Shakespeare throughout the timeline
• Wed. Mar. 16: Learn more in-depth about current teaching of Creative Writing, what methods are used, etc.
• Fri. Mar. 18: Study the use of Shakespeare in teaching writing skills/methods
• Mon. Mar. 21: Study the use of Shakespeare in teaching the creative process
• Wed. Mar. 23: Study the use of Shakespeare in teaching outcome goals of creative writing
• Fri. Mar. 24: Study the use of Shakespeare in teaching literary ideals, or what makes good writing
• Mon. Mar. 28: Sift through and decide which of those uses I agree with or think is valuable, and why
• Wed. Mar. 30: Arrange for a few interviews (over email or in person) with teachers of Creative Writing at BYU, and write my interview questions (this I will try to start in earlier weeks, but have finalized by this date)
• Fri. Apr. 1: Hopefully have said interviews completed, and compile results
• Mon. Apr 4: Analysis of my results, and how they match up or don’t match up with my previous research
• Wed. Apr 6: Design an outline of my own Creative Writing course, based around how I would use Shakespeare for each genre
• Fri. Apr. 8: Finish/refine my course outline ideas

The week of the 11^th to the 13^th I am leaving for the finalizing, refining, and finishing of my research project, with guidance from Dr. Burton.

*If any of you have any suggestions, thoughts, or ideas about this plan (what you think will work well, what I should possibly reconsider, etc.) I would love to hear them. Thank you!!

The Mystery of Shakespeare's Opinions

Well, I have begun my research, and so far learned one very profound truth; outside of his plays and poems, Shakespeare really didn’t say much. Or if he did, we don’t know about it.

I went to the library today and got a couple of books to look through that looked like they might help me with my topic, but it’s really looking like the best I’ll be able to do is to research what people think Shakespeare’s opinions were on writing, etc. Pretty much everything we know about Shakespeare’s opinions on writing are just based on what we can infer from his actual writing, specifically looking at passages where the topic of writing comes up. For example, several of his sonnets talk about poetry, and what it is.

The first book I’ve been able to look at is called “Shakespeare’s Ideas”, by David Bevington. It actually covers a pretty broad range of topics (some of which may be useful and interesting to others in the class). But one chapter in particular focuses on Shakespeare’s ideas on writing and acting. So far, this is the closest I’ve been able to find to my actual topic of interest.

I still haven’t had the chance to read the whole chapter thoroughly but here are some ideas I found intriguing when I skimmed through it:

   There is a quote on page 74 of the book that says, “Shakespeare’s utterances about his craft as writer, both implicit and explicit, take it for granted that poetry and drama alike serve as important guides to human conduct.” Interesting idea.

 The title of the chapter is “Hold the mirror up to nature”, which of course comes from Shakespeare’s own writing. I also find this idea of writing to imitate or portray nature, or the world we live in, very interesting.

That’s all I’ve been able to come up with so far, but I’m excited to keep digging. J

Research Ideas

I’ve had kind of a hard time deciding what to focus my research on. I wanted to do it on something that really interests me, but everything I could think of was not specific enough. I was looking through my blog posts, and realized that my favorite ones were the ones where I applied my own love of creative writing to my study of Shakespeare.

I’ve been studying some of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in my English 291 class, and I’ve noticed that a lot of writers around that time tended to voice their personal opinions about what makes good writing. As I was thinking about that, it made me really curious to see whether Shakespeare himself made any statements about that.

I’ve decided that I’d like to research Shakespeare’s opinions about creative writing. If I can’t find personal statements from Shakespeare himself, I’m hoping to find scholars’ conclusions to that end from studies of his works. Then I’d like to do a close reading of one of Shakespeare’s works, and analyze how I think those views are applied in it, and what I think that adds to its effectiveness in various ways.

Hopefully the final step here will be for me to do some kind of creative writing work myself in which I try to apply the literary ideas I’ve learned from Shakespeare. Now, this whole idea is subject to change, but for now, that’s what I have.

I spent some time looking through the bibliography of our textbook, and searching online a little bit for books I could look up at the library to begin my research. These are the ones I’ve found so far, and am planning to look up this week

1) Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 60, #4. Winter 2009 (his views on life and everything)

2) “Shakespeare’s Ideas”, David Bevington (1 chapter on his ideas on writing)

3) absoluteshakespeare.com (trivia about his education)

Hopefully these will give me a good start, and I’ll be finding more soon!

Personal Learning Progress Report

Learning Outcomes

I feel like I’ve done fairly well with meeting my goals, but there’s definitely room for improvement. I found myself kind of changing my original reading plan to give it more variety (for example, I didn’t end up sticking with the poetry/art gallery idea for every play because I wanted to experiment with other ideas). I met all my goals for what I would read (I finished all the plays), but I think I could have done better with my blogging about my experiences with them. I feel like the learning outcomes I’ve done a good job meeting are: Engaging Shakespeare Creatively (through poems, art, etc.), Sharing Shakespeare Meaningfully (in that I frequently discuss my experience with my peers—I could do better at capturing that in my blog), Gaining Shakespeare Literacy (in breadth and legacy particularly). I think I need to work a bit more on Analyzing Shakespeare Critically, as well as the performance and depth aspects of Shakespeare Literacy.

Reading and Research

I have read: Hamlet, Richard III, As You Like It, Othello, and the Tempest, and some of the sonnets. Other resources I’ve used have been online sources, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, Google searches, and the “No Fear Shakespeare” on Sparknotes. I also have used social resources, like when I asked my brother for his thoughts on Othello as an actor.

Personal Impact 

For me personally, my study of Shakespeare has been most engaging when I can discuss what I’m learning with friends, and when I can tie it in with my personal creative writing interests. (For example, my poetry post about Richard III made me feel much more connected with the text  and I really think that play will stick with me more deeply because I interacted with it.) I also am noticing that one of my favorite ways to read the text is to read it looking for ideas that can be universalized, or ways that the story taps in to the human experience in a deep way.

Personal Evaluation

I think I’ve done a really good job of improving my life-long learning skills, and tying the texts into my own thoughts and life in a powerful way. I think I could do better at researching and at tying in my experience to others in the class (linking, learning from others’ posts, tagging my posts with learning outcomes, etc.)

Peer Influence 

Jessica V: I find she tends to have really original ideas, and even posted an entire list of them, which I found really helpful and fun.

Martin M: Left a comment on my blog with a little bit deeper question than normal, which made me think and was fun to reply to.