Editor's Note by Martha Nichols
Shhhh! Teaching Is Selfish, Too
In a writing workshop I took in the early ‘90s, our instructor smiled at the hapless, all-American writer whose story she'd been savaging.
"Is English your native language?" she asked. By then, I'd already weathered a master's program in creative writing. I was familiar with such snarky remarks, delivered by both students and professors. I'd seen my fellow students reduced to tears and vowed I'd never run a classroom that way.
Years later, I now teach writing workshops for adult students in a journalism program. I still have no patience with harsh criticism when writers are trying to bare their souls. And yet, in putting together this issue of Talking Writing, I’ve realized that teaching isn’t just about being nice.
For some, it’s a full-time-plus job, with all the ups and downs that entails. I teach part-time by choice, but even so, it often drains me. When I’m doing it, I trade off time for family or writing, and I doubt I’m alone in my conflicting motives for teaching. I want to help aspiring writers. I like being in charge. I like getting paid. I love discussing my passion. Most of all, I teach for the same reasons I write: to connect with an audience.
This push-and-pull mirrors the questions we asked ourselves before launching Talking Writing as a magazine last September. That makes teaching writing a fitting theme for our one-year anniversary, and TW’s Sept/Oct 2011 issue includes an unusually rich mix of essays on the topic.
In “Can Good Writing Be Taught?,” Kate Geiselman wrestles with this most basic question in her community college courses. There’s no one best way to teach writing, and as Geiselman writes, many of the factors that can determine a student’s success—such as whether they like to read—are beyond a teacher’s control.
Michael Milburn vividly depicts several of his famous college instructors, including Robert Fitzgerald and Seamus Heaney, in “Great Writers and Bad Teaching.” Fitzgerald’s highest praise on a student poem was “not at all bad”—the kind of stingy evaluation that often deflates budding writers. But as Milburn notes, “bootcamp” writing instruction works for some students, even if dished out by a prima donna.
In “Why Creative Writers Need Tough Grades,” Kelcey Parker argues that judging fiction and short stories in her college classes isn’t just subjective. Teachers do a disservice to students by not imposing standards, because readers certainly will.
In fact, being a hard-ass is often part of the job. A recent student evaluation of my magazine writing course noted that “[t]he grading scale is based on how close the journalistic piece is to publication, which makes the class especially challenging.” But if I’m not offering feedback based on my professional experience, then how do I assess student writing? I love talk, yet it’s not enough to talk a lot in a class like mine.
Perhaps we all just need to be a bit more selfish. Selfish may seem like the wrong term here, but I’d like to reclaim it for teachers and writers, because the word is usually such a trigger for guilt. Some of us agonize about upholding grading standards that bruise tender egos. Others worry about ignoring students to grab time for our own work.
Self-interest or altruism? Personal ambition or community values? Many a great novel revolves around that opposition.
To be frank, I’d be a lousy teacher if my reasons were purely selfless. Having a strong writing voice means having a point of view. When I revel in teaching, it’s because my students are intellectually engaged with my ideas. If I’m doing it right, they’re also engaged with their own. It may start with me, but it doesn’t end with moi.
Embracing a certain kind of selfishness can be clarifying. Those who can’t, teach haunts us writer-teachers, yet the cliché fails to acknowledge that inspiring others is a creative act in itself—and that such creativity overflows. It works that way for fellow students in a class as well as for instructors. I know it sparks me, fueling my writing process. It feels bountiful, not self-denying.
And there’s pleasure when it goes well, selfish pleasure—the kind of moment of being you hug to your chest. It’s a form of creative collaboration. The gorgeous imagery of “In the Cancer Room,” for example, conveys workshop leader Autumn Stephens’s intense connection with students who are fellow cancer survivors and writers.
In reviewing a new biography of David Bowie—"Don’t Take Away My David Bowie"—I’ve even found myself allied with a world-class narcissist. Many of Bowie’s best songs came through collaboration with other musicians. Nile Rodgers, producer of Bowie’s 1983 Let’s Dance, describes the rock star in a teaching role as they began formulating the mood and style of that album:
We went to people's houses that he knew had certain things...it was like fact finders, treasure hunters, conquistadors looking for gold and we were going and looking at everything, in museums. 'Nile, look at this picture. Look at this!' So he was like the world's greatest cook showing you, This is what we want it to be.
The we in that passage captures the peculiar tension in teaching. It’s conventional wisdom that teachers learn (or with a pop artist like Bowie, steal) from their students. Although I’ve picked up a few things from my students over the years, what I’ve really learned is the emotional balancing act that leading a class involves.
The traditional writing workshop—whether it’s a short-term intensive in a nonacademic setting or the format for a semester-long class—can generate a truckload of negative energy. Writing workshops build camaraderie, but they’re also pressure cookers, and plenty of instructors argue for a different approach.
Yet, for all their problems, I like the combustible nature of writing workshops. It’s the occasional scariness of expressing ideas in public, under the gaze of peers, that can make leading a writing class so rewarding. Something is at stake, and it’s not just social.
Take the “Why I Write” essays we’ve compiled for this issue, a special feature we hope to repeat on a regular basis. Some are by former students of mine; one is by a member of Stephens’s workshop. There’s one by a young military journalist; another is by an airline pilot who reflects on the impact of September 11. But “student” or “young” are misleading labels for these writers. Each piece presents a unique perspective, made all the stronger by the reviewing, revising, and editing it’s undergone.
The many variations I’ve read of “Why I Write,” including those by George Orwell and Joan Didion, inspired me to start this magazine a year ago. No writer’s feelings about this subject are static. Any “Why I Write” essay, like my own piece here, is only a snapshot in time and can’t be polished into a perfect gem. It’s a story that’s never done. In that sense, all writers—and teachers—are forever students of their own lives.
Table of Contents for the Sept/Oct 2011 Issue
Publishing Information
- The Nile Rodgers quote is from David Bowie: Starman by Paul Trynka (Little, Brown, 2011, p. 382).
Art Information
- “Snuggle 2″; “Snuggle 1″; and “Snuggle 1, Tide 1, and All 1″ © Sophia Ainslie; Used with Permission
Martha Nichols is editor in chief of Talking Writing.
Martha received a master’s degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University in 1985, but her best—and hardest—experiences as a student were on the job at magazines, when senior editors pulled no punches in evaluating her writing.
Working at a magazine is intensely collaborative, too. It’s a continual lesson in how fostering individual creativity results in much more than a sum of the parts. At TW this past year, it's been a delight watching our community of contributors and readers grow. Thank you!
