Publication Day: Imaginative Teaching Through Creative Writing

Here it is! You can find it here online.

You ever hear the story about the book that started as some loose thoughts penned on a coffee shop or bar napkin because someone said, “Yeah, we should do this…”? Somewhat of a common origin tale in writing circles. A metaphor of sorts as well.

And, as publication day has arrived for my co-editors and me, it actually happened. Today, Imaginative Teaching Through Creative Writing is available. In the fall of 2018, the book was literally a conversation at a BBQ joint in North Carolina and a couple of napkins full of maybes. 

The primary topic of that discussion—other than whether or not the brisket was the best thing on the menu—was the following question: Why isn’t there a book that connects solid, accessible creative writing theory with the best practices already happening in standards-driven secondary language arts classrooms?

Before grad school and teaching at the college level, Chris, Amy, and I all taught at the secondary level. And, in some ways, we’ve remained connected to those experiences even as we’ve pursued our creative and post-secondary work. 

So, we sketched those napkin notes, reconvened a little later for a fire-side continuation of the conversation, and then left the conference we were at with a rough plan. Then we wrote a call for chapter proposals, reached out to some folks in Creative Writing studies circles who had useful pieces of the theory puzzle they could bring to the book, and started the long process of pulling a proposal together (twice, actually). 

And now, it’s here, and it is fantastic. Part collection of excellent, tested models for teaching creative writing in ways that better explore educational standards than many currently preferred approaches. Part foundational theory that aims to broaden the perception of creative writing as a pedagogical tool and offer a variety of ways to establish its necessity in secondary cultures that privilege functional-literacy. And all written by people committed to establishing a truth we all hold as unappreciated: creative writing should be central to the language arts classroom experience, not merely an add-on or “break” from more serious subjects.      

Imaginative Teaching came together more seamlessly than we had any right expecting. Much of that is due to the work of my co-editors who were an absolute joy to work with, even as we shoehorned the majority of the work into pandemic schedules turned upside down and morning Zoom meetings half editorial in nature and half group therapy. This process was by no means easy, but I appreciate the way we shared the burdens and also the process. 

I’m also happy to be working with Bloomsbury Academic again, particularly with our commissioning editor Lucy Brown. This is my third collection with them, and I have felt supported and thoroughly understood each time. Also, working with the chapters of this book has felt particularly fulfilling (including getting to publish an essay from one of my former students as well as one from the most talented educator I know personally). 

If I’m being honest, Imaginative Teaching completes a thought I had almost 20 years ago when I came up with a lesson one Sunday night I called Novel in a Week and then, on that following Monday, taught my ninth-grade students (more on that in the book and in a blog post to come). I wondered then—as I do now—why so many English classes teach creative writing as an object rather than an action. Something to read and respond to rather than write and release. 

Fortunately, others have wondered the same thing and doing something about it. It’s truly my hope that this book will encourage more teachers to engage the work of creative writing with their students and support their efforts along the way.   

Imaginative Teaching, considerable planning

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

This the eighth installment of a series reflecting on a sabbatical that ended one year ago. It will run each Wednesday through the summer. Note: Just over two months ago, my co-editors and I submitted the full manuscript of the book described below. It will be out in the spring of 2021.

My sabbatical began, not with writing the fiction that would define the time away, but with two academic projects. For specifics on the first, check out next Wednesday’s post. The larger of the two, however, stretched across the entire time I was away and is still in progress as I write this.

But that is excellent news as I am under contract and co-editing my third collection for Bloomsbury Academic, a new and exciting take on teaching creative writing through and beyond all of the perceived limitations to doing so at the secondary level.

The book is called Imaginative Teaching and puts the ideas of creative writing theorists and secondary teachers in conversation over a long form for, really, the first time. To say I’m excited would be an understatement given I’ve taught at both levels and truly believe in the power of creative writing in inspiring the most important forms of learning we need to do as humans.

To say I was not excited by the back and forth of the proposal process and how often I was balancing it and my attempts to write my novel in the time I’d been given is also very, very true. The outcome—a contract and firm publication schedule—is, of course, what I’d hoped for.

But the amount of revisions and response in the process of working our way from proposal to contract made for some tricky maneuvers on the narrow surface of the time-management balance beam.

Given that this is not my first time through the process, in general and with Bloomsbury, this was not new or surprising. But against the backdrop of my “wide open” sabbatical calendar, it felt so much more restrictive than it had in the past, something so counterintuitive it’s hard to type it without feeling like I’m whining.

But, just as excitement or love can expand to consume the attention of the person experiencing them, so too it is with work regardless of the busyness surrounding it.

And somehow, I feel like that’s an important lesson. There is no such thing as free time when that freedom is contingent on seeing it as such. 

Maybe free time, like meaning, is more a by-product of our choices along the way and less an item we can place on the calendar and access when we arrive at the prescribed time.