Critiquing and Employability

Contemplating the future?

In the post before last I wrote about critiquing and the importance of it. Candy Gourlay quite rightly pointed out the importance of finding the right critiquing group that you can trust. As we also mentioned SCBWIs is great at facilitating the setting up of such groups. But there are some situations where you are not given the choice who critiques your work. Some of you may be aware that I am a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Winchester and therefore on a daily basis I am giving feedback to students on work they may well have just written, if it was a task set in class. They also have to listen to their peers pass comment on their work as well as pass comment on others' work. This is not necessarily written it is often oral feedback given in front of the whole class and they are expected to take it on board and act upon it. It always makes me think of these lines from W B Yeats' poem 'He wishes for the cloths of Heaven'

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 

Students are spreading their dreams under our feet from the moment they walk in through the doors of the university. They (nearly) all have dreams of being writers of some sort and it is up to us to provide them with the opportunities to hone their craft, providing them with the tools to write in the best possible way they can.When giving feedback our aim is also to 'feed-forward' by giving them a critique that they can apply to future works. I have to say I enjoy watching the development of our undergrads. They tentatively give vague feedback in those first few weeks of the first year and then by the third year they have become confident and are capable of giving robust, constructive and detailed feedback.

This is an important skill to learn in today's world. This was highlighted when I contacted several of my previous clients (I was a businesswoman before I entered the academic world) to discuss the employability of graduates. I asked them about the graduates they employed (in the main not CW graduates). Most of them came back saying graduates won't listen to criticism and they certainly won't act on it. Well our students have to do both on a daily basis. It seems to me  a perfect transferable skill we are providing them with. The ability to critique effectively seems to enter so many elements of our world. We do like to prepare our students for the 'real world' and not just for a 'writerly' one!

I do have a confession though, am feeling slightly melancholy. It is my birthday next week, not a big one, but the one before a big one. Age doesn't normally worry me but I have been thinking a lot about what I haven't done with my life recently. This week has been a great week as I have been surrounded by some wonderful and very close friends. All 3 of whom are very important to me and a lot of talking and laughing went on but I became so conscious of how 2 dimensional my life has been. If I am truly honest I haven't lived. The question is, is it too late? I look in the mirror and what stares back is a face that has been beaten into submission by age and ravaged by long term illness. It is not who I think I am or who I want to be. One of these close friends mentioned they were at a cross-roads, I think I am too. Let's hope we both take the right route next and the journey is a good one so that next time I hit the year before a big one I am not regretting what I haven't done.

I wanted to play you a song I heard yesterday by Clint Black called 'Breathing Air' unfortunately I can't find a clip for it so instead you can have this, which is just as applicable:

Creativity 2

Today is a crimson day. Rage or passion....same thing at times?

I love Rothko's work for the colours he uses and the simplicity. As with his painting it can often be said of your writing that less is more.

Tomorrow I am doing a session with third year students on where they think creativity is based - in the work or in the person type of thing? It should be interesting as they are a good and very vocal group.

Creativity and criticality are something I am passionate about and I hope to write an article with my DoS - in the not too distant future - based on a model we have created where creativity is embedded with a critical methodological approach. (Very loose description). This works alongside/through the idea of the gyre that I have already spoken about in previous posts. The creative feeds off the critical which in turn feeds off the creative, a continuous process and like ontological and epistemological stances feeding off each other. Pedagogically, for me anyway, I see this concept as a way of getting students to understand the idea of creativity with an academic slant - with my other hat on I would suggest it is a prime example of research informed teaching. This also allows me to justify to those doubters who have trouble with the validity of a creative writing PhD. I can talk ontological and epistemological stances till the moon turns crimson.

There is a problem with trying to fit creativity neatly into a box and that is creativity isn't neat, predictable or obvious. It comes in many formats - music, poetry, sculpture, prose or in fact anything you make using your hands. But being a former business woman I would suggest that there is a lot of creativity in enterprise (and I am not talking accounting here), to be successful in business you need to have the vision, the understanding of something that can be as intangible as a business plan, for example. They are created of words and numbers all put together in a certain order in exactly the same way as the novelist writes their novel or the poet conjures up their poem. It is all couched in creativity just some aren't as willing as others to see the fact. The ones that scoff at it are normally the ones who criticise doing a creative writing degree suggesting it is a soft subject. What they don't take into consideration are the transferable skills that any CW student will be able to add to their CV after completing their degree. Admittedly there is the obvious one - they will be able to write - but also they will be used to working to tight deadlines (both time and word counts), they can analyse, research, summarise, edit, manage their time, learn to think both creatively and critically and use both to great effect, work as a team and on their own, manage projects and most importantly have confidence in their worth. Any employer should be very pleased to employ a student of creative writing as they will have gained an adaptable, innovative, enthusiastic and conscientious member of staff.

The moon has turned crimson, time to stop. This is Bert Jansch singing Crimson Moon.