This started as a comment on the previous post, but it got a little more involved than a comment, perhaps, should. It seems I’m just really annoyed by the very idea that “creativity” is somehow an all-encompassing excuse for the writing that a writing teacher doesn’t like. Interestingly, most students don’t try to pull this bullshit in my classes. Perhaps it’s because I’m clearer about my expectations; perhaps it’s because I’m more specific in my critiques; perhaps it’s because I can pull off no-nonsense in a straightforward and still none-to-aggressive manner.

Whatever its cause, though, it pisses me off (maybe my annoyance is a hold-over from the fact that most of my disciplinary colleagues under the broad umbrella rubric of English Studies still view what I do as somehow inferior or second-class) that students seem to think, at times, that expository writing — composition — or (dare I even say it?) nonfiction writing (because, at this level particularly, there is precious little “academic” about the writing) is somehow inferior to what they see as “creative” writing (you know, what some English professors see as the “real work” of English programs).

I know, of course, that there’s such a thing as creative nonfiction — hell, I teach it on occasion. But “creative” nonfiction is still about the “rules” of exposition and, to a lesser extent, argumentation. It just also applies more of the flavor of narration and more of the logic (if you’ll permit me) and sensibility of verité, of staged reality. Creative nonfiction, that is, is both Heideggerian and Baudrillardian. There’s the sense of “being there,” in nonfiction, a pervasive and inescapable dasein — if it’s done right. But there’s also a sense in which there’s no there there unless and until the creative piece is composed. The essay precedes its subject — logically, if not temporally. The representation creates the represented. Without the writing (as both act and product), there is no event.

The same might be said for the writing that happens in a comp class — even in a developmental one. But I doubt many would want to say it. Composition cannot be said to be creative; it is, though, (omg, more theory) disciplinary in Foucault’s sense. Though many of my colleagues in rhetoric and composition studies (my field, more narrowly construed) may shudder to hear me say it, composition courses are not about teaching students how to write; instead, they’re about teaching students how to be writers. Composition — developmental, first-year, advanced — is really no more or less than basic training (okay, advanced comp may be more like technical school, to extend that metaphor).

By this I mean that we tend to teach our students what it means — in the narrowest possible sense! — to be a writer. At these levels, our students, their writing, and therefore our instruction are (must be?) at their most rule-bound. It’s not, in comp, about what writers can do, under the correct circumstances, but about what those writers must do in order to make themselves understood. And, of course, it’s about what they must not do (at least at first).

Like it or not, we, in composition, discipline the nascent writer. We show them how knowledge is made, how information is conveyed, and how understanding is built and shared in the written text. This is not an attempt to quash “creativity” — no matter how much my last post may have made it seem so. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Creativity is the freedom the student-writer gains through this disciplinary process. Once any writer grasps the things that are not to be done, and why, they are free to focus on subverting the very rules they have first learned. They are free to bend the rules until the rules break, and then break the rules some more. But discipline must precede subversion, for it is logically impossible to subvert that of which we are unaware. Certainly and granted, we can break a rule unknowingly; true subversion of a rule, of a regulation, of a (gack!) hegemonic practice, though, requires that we know what it is we would subvert, know why it is we would subvert it, and understand in depth both how it can be effectively called into question and what is gained from questioning, from subverting, from breaking, and from — well — creating.

I know this has basically turned into a “my theory dick is as big as anyone’s despite the fact that my English PhD is only in Rhet/Comp” style rant. That is not the (main) point, however. Because even though I can, yes, waggle it with the best of ‘em, the main point from my previous post remains: Creativity — the idea of creative writing — is not the goal of composition, and, moreover, cannot be that goal. Most times, the idea of “creativity,” when cited by a student in a composition class, while invoked as a God-term that all English teachers/instructors/professors everywhere should recognize and do unquestioning homage to because the creation of and the study of creative writing (fiction and poetry in particular) are the real business of English studies and screw this composition thing, is most often, in reality, nothing more (or, in fairness, less) than a mask for the student’s laziness (or, to point back at the instructor a bit, the student’s lack of motivation).

Lacking the motivation, intrinsic or extrinsic, to learn the stuff of composition, these students play the card they think will work: “My writing is more creative.” And honestly, that pisses me off.

But perhaps I should be asking myself and my colleagues one other question: How can we address the lack of motivation that seems to be at the root of this matter with these students?