Creative Writing

I am at school for four classes a day, typically. Two of my hours are taken up with more Senior Portfolio stuff... prepping students, reading portfolios, revising and editing until my brain is frazzed and my hair is frizzed. The other two hours this quarter are where I live and breathe... creative writing.

I love composition. I think that I could teach a basic composition course for the rest of my life and be happy. Or literature... literary analysis and composition could certainly keep me entertained forever. I love the structure of writing and the hard and fast rules of grammar. I love playing with sentences to denote what I'm saying and connote what I want it to feel like. I love tweaking words and finding syllables and creating pieces that move and flow and breathe to make a point and completely develop an argument simultaneously. I love the LOOK of writing, that fresh sheet of paper filled with words that are mine, that are new, that I'm sharing. I love the thought that the words I use, the language common to millions of people throughout the world today and throughout history, these words... perhaps they have never been arranged in such a way as today, as in my mind, as on my paper. It's exhilarating.

As the astute among you may have found in my previous paragraph, I also love writing creatively. I've not written fiction in a very long time, and poetry is something that fell to the wayside after high school. Without short stories or novels or poems, what then do I infuse creativity into? Yep, you got it... all of those academic papers that are supposed to be dry and factual, those essays that are supposed to be argumentative and purposeful, and those analyses that should contain evidence and objective research findings. I can write like that... I just don't like it very much. I miss the flair, the color, the feeling that my typical writing has. I write like a speechwriter, oftentimes reading my own words aloud. I temper my rhythm and strive for a beat in the words, utilizing techniques like alliteration and the rule of three and repetition. I think about how the words blend together into each sentence, and the sentences into paragraphs, and the paragraphs into a piece that fills your mind like a three course meal fills your body. Can't all of this be considered creative writing as well?

Unfortunately, most of my students don't really appreciate my particular brand of nerd. And they certainly don't deserve a "fine arts" high school credit for writing some particularly moving compositions or essays about books we've read. Speechwriting, I CAN get away with... maybe. For now, we'll start with something most of these students understand better than I do... poetry.

It's amazing to watch my kids compose a poem. Some of them just HAVE it, flowing like you wouldn't believe, a combination of natural talent and years spent listening to rap tracks- both studio produced and freestyle. That fairly new and horrendously annoying (if only for being so catchy) Maroon 5 song "Moves Like Jagger" describes my students perfectly, only that they have the "Words like L. Hughes" and the "Flow like Tupac." It's incredible to watch and beautiful to witness... I'm so glad I stumbled upon this deep well of experience they have.