Challenges of creative writing83
stories, poems and creative nonfiction. Typing another writer’s published works is like reading it aloud it is a surefire test of its qualities or lack of them. As
John
Ruskin said, All books are divisible into two classes the books of the hour, and the books of all time The wonderland worlds of literary reception and perception are important to understand. There are fogs and false lights.
A poem or story written in a workshop, and sent to a distinguished literary journal, is more likely to be accepted, however
good or clumsy it might be, if it bears the name of a well-known practitioner. Thus it is, thus it has always been. The magazine will sell more copies with a famous name than a nobody from nowhere.
One of the ways to lift quality within a creative writing course is to lift the level of expectation in reception. Writing a poem, story or investigative article,
and knowing it is being written to be marked as part of a course, is not an
intenseinducement for writing out of your skin. However, if you attach
publication to such a course, the level of expectation increases. If you, in fact, were to offer anew, young writer a contract with a major publishing house, it is possible that they would find themselves writing
up to that higher level out of the sheer desire to impress, or a fear to fail at that one shot at fame. Therefore, the creation of publishing opportunities around such
courses should be encouraged, so long as they do not subsequently develop into closed shops, whose output is limited solely to creative writing students and their teachers.
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