A series of posts on what creative writing pedagogy has to offer vocational teaching in any discipline.
In On Being Stuck: Tapping Into the Creative Power of Writer’s Block, Laraine Herring writes, “We all have methods for getting in our own way. It’s human nature.” Her point is true for everyone—not just for creative writers. It’s especially true for students on their vocational journeys. As I mentioned in the first post in my series, the skills required for vocational discernment—courage, openness, and trust—are the same skills required for making art. And the same barriers to making good art—fear, self-doubt, and self-criticism—can also block or challenge students as they explore and discern their vocations. That’s why I think creative writing pedagogy offers helpful frameworks for all instructors when it comes to teaching vocation.
The first key framework is this: as a discipline, creative writing pedagogy emphasizes process over product, with a major emphasis on play and experiment that can and should lead to failure. No reading better exemplifies this mentality than Ann Lamott’s fabulous essay “Shitty First Drafts” from Bird by Bird, her book about writing. In this essay, Lamott explains that all writers start out with “shitty first drafts,” which are necessary steps in creating beautiful final drafts. “For me and most of the other writers I know,” she states, “writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” Lamott encourages writers to “trust the process” and embrace a childlike mentality as they write the first draft—to allow themselves to be messy and “romp all over the place.” This is the only way, she asserts, to arrive at your most surprising and original ideas. The shitty first draft is the best tool for getting out of your own way, especially for perfectionists. “Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism,” Lamott writes elsewhere in Bird by Bird, “while messes are the artist’s true friend.”
Likewise, Herring advises an attitude of surrender, in which the writing guides the writer and not the other way around. Instead of trying to prescribe or control the piece, the writer must let go of expectations and trust their gut, moment by moment. She suggests that writers focus on the act of writing instead of on the end result and remember that “your work is somehow helping you, even if you can’t yet see how.”
This philosophy of messiness, self-trust, and gut instinct allows writers to take more risks, which in turn results in better writing. When a writer “plays it safe” and only writes about easy topics or uses the same old expected language, the result is flat, often clichéd writing that feels neither honest nor compelling. When a writer makes bolder, riskier choices, they may fail but they might also do something amazing. And either way, they’ve learned something about themselves in the process. The worst poems I’ve ever written were the ones that taught me the most about writing.
As teachers of vocation, we can encourage a similar attitude: Value the journey, not the destination. Don’t get overly fixated on any one result. Allow yourself room to be messy. Trust the process. Romp more! Get out of your own way! And take more risks.
Of course, more risk-taking means a greater possibility of failure. That’s where the next major lesson of creative writing comes in: embracing, rather than avoiding, failure. In my creative writing courses, I give students extra credit for every rejection letter they bring me. Rejections from any source are acceptable—from journals, presses, graduate programs, even potential dates. And I show them my own rejections as they come in via email on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. My goal is to help my students see the joys and necessity of failure. I don’t want them to merely “accept” or survive failure. I want them to embrace it. I want them to believe in their core that good art is created not despite failure, but because of it. I want to teach them that embracing failure will help them take bigger risks. And bigger risks lead to bigger rewards.
My goal is to help my students see the joys and necessity of failure. I don’t want them to merely “accept” or survive failure. I want them to embrace it. I want them to believe in their core that good art is created not despite failure, but because of it. I want to teach them that embracing failure will help them take bigger risks. And bigger risks lead to bigger rewards.
What would such a mentality look like in teaching or advising for vocation? Perhaps it would mean asking students to reflect on the failures and setbacks of their lives—to lament and reflect on the deep sadness or injustice they experience, as Deanna Thompson recommends—instead of only on the joys and successes. In doing so, we could help students see failure as something to value and seek meaning from. It’s often because of their failures—and what they learned about themselves and the world from them—that they have gotten to be where they are now. Perhaps it would mean asking students to fail on purpose, or rewarding daring efforts and risk-taking even—or especially—when it results in failure. Perhaps it would mean asking students to try something with no idea of what the “result” would be, just to see what might happen. Experiment is, after all, the methodology not just of artists, but of scientists and social scientists, too. Why not employ it outside the classroom, with one’s own life?
The third and final framework from creative writing pedagogy is the prioritization of revision. When we talk about revision in the writing classroom, we mean something more than just cleaning up commas (that’s actually editing) or scouring for typos (that’s actually proofreading). Revision means a radical re-envisioning of the piece at hand—an attempt to see the work from a new perspective and re-imagine what it might become through drastic deleting, adding, re-organizing, or even just scrapping and starting anew. And when it comes to vocational conversations, I can’t imagine a more empowering mentality than this one—that it’s okay, sometimes, to start all over again. That we can be bold in our choices and re-orientations. That we can always revise and remake ourselves at any time. What liberation! An interesting conversation prompt for vocational discernment in any course might be to ask students to identify moments in their lives when they’ve “revised” their sense of self or identity.
Together, these three frameworks—a revision mindset, along with one of process over product and an embrace of failure—provide a way for students to replace doubt with courage, fear with curiosity, frustration with patience, and anxiety with trust. As students navigate discerning their vocations, they often look to us to soothe their imposter syndrome by praising or reassuring them. And while I am happy to do that, I also know that my reassurance that they truly have what it takes to be a writer, a doctor, a lawyer—you name it—is only a Band-Aid on a bigger problem. The true antidote to imposter syndrome cannot come from outside oneself. It must come from within.
The only thing that will ultimately help students shed their self-doubt and become who they are meant to become is a deep self-trust that only they can offer themselves. And the easiest way to cultivate that in them is to challenge them to take risks, to fail sometimes, to see that they survived the failures, and to succeed sometimes. To see that the risk—and the courage to take it—is what yielded those rewards, in both life and writing.
Alyse Knorr is an associate professor of English at Regis University. She is the author of six poetry collections, two video game history books, and four poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, POETRY Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. Her lyrics have been performed at Carnegie Hall and her poetry is permanently installed on a wall of the New York City Public Library’s East Harlem branch. She is a teacher of students aged 8 to 80, and received her MFA from George Mason University. For more posts by Alyse, click here.