Creative Writing

I am reading The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. Interesting book.

But one part in particular made me think of creative writing professors, so I thought I would pass it on–in case you haven’t heard it already.

For one experiment, we recruited seventy-two creative writers. When they arrived (individually) at the psychology laboratory, they all wrote a brief poem on the topic “Snow” (after all, it was Boston in the winter). We used these poems as a pre-measure of creativity, before we altered the writers’ motivational state. Then we randomly assigned one-third of the writers to the extrinsic motivation condition. We gave them a short “Reasons for Writing” questionnaire that asked them to rank-order seven reasons for being a writer; all of those items, according to previous research, were extrinsic, such as, “You have heard of cases where one best-selling novel or collection of poems has made the author financially secure.” The rank-ordering was irrelevant; the point was to have these writers spend a few minutes getting into an extrinsically motivated frame of mind. One-third of the writers filled out a “Reasons for Writing” questionnaire that had only intrinsic reasons, such as, “You enjoy the opportunity for self-expression.” The final third of writers (the control group) spent a few minutes reading an irrelevant story.

Then all of the writers wrote a second short poem on “Laughter.” After all seventy-two writers had participated, a different group of twelve writers independently judged the creativity levels of all poems (without knowing which had been produced by whom). The results were simple and clear. Although the pre-measure poems showed no differences, the set of poems produced by writers who had contemplated extrinsic reasons for writing were significantly lower in creativity than the others. In other words, intrinsic motivation was more conducive to creativity than extrinsic motivation. (Amabile and Kramer 945 of 4705)

The experiment is reported in T. M. Amabile’s “Motivation and Creativity.”

Just thought it was fascinating and so worth retyping!

I also sent it two colleagues I thought might appreciate it.

I am trying to practice the positive sense-making that leads (according to the authors) to a creative streak longer than the positive mood lasts. I actually re-visioned something that happened in class this afternoon to find a positive way to view it and it helped improve my day significantly.

Can we help our students be more creative on their exams in this way? I am going to have to think about it.

One of the profs at my previous school has her poetry classes work with an art studio/gallery. They choose an art work, write a poem about it, and the studio/gallery posts these next to the works. They are up on the gallery’s website. Go and read it. Admire the level of writing community college students can do.

One of my poems was published in a book collection from Diversion Press. The anthology is called People Poetry. The blog that will eventually be publishing excerpts of the interviews from all the poets in the collection has some other interesting posts.

What inspires you to write poetry?
I write poetry because I have a lot of things going on in my brain and it helps me to get them out. I also write because I want to transcribe the world I see around me.

What is a measure of success as a poet?
A poet is a success if they write. Many people refuse to write because they feel they cannot write perfectly. No one will ever write perfectly if they don’t write.
Obviously success can be measured in other ways, publications, readings, positions as poet laureate, etc, but the first success of a poet is to write poetry.

Who are some of your favorite poets?
James Weldon Johnson is one of my favorite poets. He writes in such a conversational and yet poetic way. My favorite of his poems is “The Creation.”
Langston Hughes is also one of my favorite poets. His “A Dream Deferred” is so rich with images and so surprising.
I also like Eugene Field’s “Jest Fore Christmas” about a boy who’s as “good as he can be” in order to fool Santa into bringing him toys. The folksy language reminds me of my grandparents.
I enjoy reading Beowulf and Judith, two Old English poems written over a thousand years ago.
Poems I enjoy include:
“Trees” by Sgt. Joyce Kilmer
“I’d Rather See a Sermon” by Edgar Guest
“Jenny Kissed Me” by Leigh Hunt
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 where he discusses how much he loves his wife, even though her hair is wires and her breath rank.
Galway Kinnell’s “After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps” –You can hear him read his poem at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqpoo6ChRQ.
“When I Consider” by John Milton
“Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop
“Wild Gratitude” by Ed Hirsch
“Father William” by Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson
“Ragged Flag” by Johnny Cash
“The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord Byron
“If” by Rudyard Kipling

What about this poem (the one published) was special to you or led you to write it?
The poem is “Time.”
I wrote this poem as a mother with two toddlers, busy all the time, but not getting anything done. It made me think about time and the way we as humans think and talk about time. So I wrote the poem as a way to illustrate the different views of time.

What makes a poem “good”?
For me a poem is good if I can read it and it resonates with my experience or if it is so different, yet believable, that I feel I have been transported. I don’t mind poems that are difficult to read, that are long, or that are very unusual, but the poem itself has to speak to some universal truth–big or tiny–that shows the humanness of us all.

What advice do you have for aspiring poets?
Write. Write. Write. I wrote poetry for ten years before anyone read something I had written and said it was good. But that was okay because I wasn’t necessarily writing for other people; I was writing for myself.
As time went on and more people liked my poetry, it felt nice, but I still write the poetry for me. And sometimes I send it off for publication so that other people can read it too.
If you want to write and get published, write all the time and take poetry workshops. They may hurt your feelings, but they will help your writing.
And live your life fully. Get out and do something different. Stretch your boundaries. You can write better if you have lived well.

I’ve been crazy busy with school and I now have lots of other things I need to be doing in terms of scholarship.

However, I couldn’t resist looking online and seeing if there was anything interesting out there.

There is.

Here are some of the CFPs that I may try to make room in my life for:

Supernaturally Grimm, Fairy Tales on Television, essay collection. 500 word abstract due by January 15, 2012.

Wormwood Chapbooks, calling for chapbooks manuscripts from poets. They prefer previously unpublished poems. It looks interesting.

Mobile Learning for Tertiary Education

-ality call for submissions

Sandstar Review seeks unpublished prose for second issue

Internationally Read Magazine Publishing Poetry, Flash Fiction, Short Stories, and Creative Non-Fiction

“[W]ords … are the gems you use to decorate the jewelry of your prose.” — Mike Nappa, “Reason No. 29,” 77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected.

I have been listening to A Whole New Mind. While I have only heard the theoretical chapters, for some reason, those have expanded in my head and I see all kinds of relevance and practical applications in my teaching and my own work.

One of the elements of the conceptual age is play.

I think that The Tempered Radical has a great idea for encouraging innovation and, in part, it involves play.

Christensen and company argue that the most innovative thinkers often force themselves to find metaphorical connections between their fields and seemingly unrelated objects.

We used to do this with our family while driving in the car. Fun times!

The authors of the book write:

“Start a collection of odd, interesting things (e.g., a slinky, model airplane, robot and so on) and put them in a curiosity box or bag…Then, you can pull out unique items randomly when confronted with a problem or opportunity…

When brainstorming for new ideas, odd, unusual things often trigger new associations. It may sound silly, but seemingly silly things can provoke the most random associations, literally forcing us out of our habitual thinking patterns.”

One of the teachers at my old college does this. She even gave me one of her curiousity box tokens. I don’t know if she used it quite like they suggest, but she would pull them out when she needed help thinking.

I think that this could be an interesting and engaging process. What if, for example, everyone had to pull three things out of their car or dorm room that were unique or odd? What would they bring? How would that relate to their writing assignments?

I am seriously considering engaging this aspect of the conceptual age in class. I think it might be a great way to jumpstart their thinking.

Tempered Radical also provides handouts! (Yay! I don’t have to make them up.)

Update: Tempered Radical wrote more on the topic.

A twenty-second exercise: How does a gryphon relate to teaching college English?
A mix of various parts. Often dismissed. Folkloric. Unsure of how to grow or feed it. Interesting mix makes for long-term captivation of thoughts and ideas. Design matters. All the disparate parts have to work together.

Update:
First, I explained the Conceptual Age idea, including a brief history of the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age. They were able to explain why we are seen as being in the information age.

Then we talked about what kind of jobs are being outsourced.

Then I presented the Conceptual Age elements of Daniel Pink (and Innovation, which I added because of Tempered Radical).

Finally, I took a box of clever toys (and not so clever ones) as well as a few simple things (pinecone, lock, empty glass Coke bottle, and a spatula) and passed one out to every student.

I did this twice. The first time, the students had three minutes to come up with some way in which their item was like a class they were in.

The second time they had to either say how the second item was like their major or their experience (in the last 2.5 weeks) of college life.

Got a great response on many things. The ones I remember:
pinwheel = exercise science, Need to keep moving. Need to work together.
ViewMaster = psychology, So many thoughts that I have to figure out how to see.
slappy hand = required intro to college class, which is not as the student expected
Silly String = scary but no reason, fun afterwards– about college experience