Re: if you only had 75 minutes

[WILL HOCHMAN <hochman@uscolo.edu>]

Liz, I agree that creative non-fiction is a better term than say,
"expository writing" but outside of folks like you, I think most of our
compsition colleagues need help teaching creativity while they are usually
pressured to concentrate on skills and academic literacy...I try and teach
my students that creativity is a way to enhance academic work but it
involves risks and in order to make those risks work, keeping a close ear
to their audience's reading ground is necessary...I like to suggest that
"bringing a fy essay to life" often involves "owning" assignments" and to
use creative ownership in most writing programs, communication with
instructor/readers is essential since we teachers often need to understand
the variety of creative ways our assignments can be completed and can't
possibly anticipate some of the most creative responses to our
challenges...it's exciting to participate in this thread for me since I
think the next shift in fy comp should involve using creativity to
understand that teaching rhetorical patterns and sticking to them is a way
to kill more writing than create it! will

On Sat, 1 Nov 1997, elizabeth a ahl wrote:

> I guess that for me, one of the ways I look at composition is as 
> creative nonfiction.  That melts most of the composition/creative 
> writing barrier away for me and allows me to make useful (for my 
> students and myself) connections between my writing and my teaching.
> 
> Comp AS creative nonfiction.  
> 
> :)
> Liz Ahl
> 
>