Can you teach creative writing?

Last week, Lily Hoang made a post at HTMLGIANT built from a class in which she asked her students the following questions:

Can you teach creative writing? How? How would you teach creative writing that is different from your MFA? How would you “innovate” or “renovate”? What have you “learned” from your MFA? What has been the biggest surprise? Disappointment?

That post contains responses from a number of students. This one contains a litany of responses from Jeff Pickell.

Here's a taste:

Shitty syntax begets shitty phrases. Shitty phrases beget shitty sentences. Shitty sentences beget shitty paragraphs. Shitty paragraphs beget shitty sections. Shittiness begets shittiness begets shittiness.

The MFA enrolls in a creative writing program. He does not enroll in a written creations program. Asked what he studies, the MFA replies “creative writing” or simply “writing.” He doesn’t reply “creative.” This is because the MFA doesn’t have a creative deficiency. He has a writing deficiency. He should know this, too. A lot of MFA’s—the shitty MFA’s—don’t. The shitty MFA is a strange creature. More on him later.

Many contend writing can’t be taught. This is absolutely false, as any MFA with a journalism background knows.

The shittier the story is, the harder it is to revise.

The first-year MFA submits a story twice a semester. A week later, an outfit of equally inexperienced writers discusses it for an hour and issues vague, contradictory, and often moronic recommendations. But to leave it at that amounts to cynicism. The shrewd novice does exist, though he is elusive; one must scribble down his sound insights before the room’s ambient banality swallows them. For his part, the teacher moderates, trying his best to confine the discourse to the germane. At his most heroic, he squashes the more asinine notions, though his comments never have sharp teeth. He caters his observations to writer of the hour. Some students actually prefer sharp criticism.

And, a bit later down the line (They're numbered. These are numbers 51-55):

The shitty MFA spends two weeks brainstorming and jotting notes…about the next tattoo he’s going to get.

The shitty MFA complains about the typos riddling an otherwise strong submission. A few weeks later he turns in his own piece, a true monument to diligent copy-editing. Despite this careful attention he somehow overlooked how shitty the story was.

The shitty MFA announces that he’s not big into process.

The shitty MFA thinks two revisions, three revisions tops and he’ll be dealing with finished product.

Can it be taught? Can it be learned? Discussion of whether creative writing is teachable often proposes a fundamental disconnect between the earnest teacher and the earnest student. There is no such chasm. The simple truth is that good students succeed and bad students fail. Can creative writing be taught to bad students? Can eighth grade geometry be taught to bad students? Can carpentry be taught to bad students? Can anything be taught to bad students? The shitty MFA is a bad student, and there are a lot of shitty MFA’s out there. But there are good students. And there are hero MFA’s.

Read the other 42 or so after the jump.