by:
  Michael Donnelly,
  Rebecca Ingalls,
  Tracy Ann Morse,
  Joanna Castner, and
  Anne Meade
  Stockdell-Giesler

  Skill and Creativity

In addition to reading difficulties, I believe some students' writing falls into the early patchwriting category because they misunderstand the nature of skill and creativity, and these are problems a policing tool could not hope to address. An example will illustrate: I oftentimes read Stephen King's On Writing (2000) with my first-year writing students. King discusses many writing concepts, among them various ways a writer might come up with story ideas and whether or not run-of-the-mill writers can become great writers. These particular passages open the way for an interesting discussion about the nature of skill and creativity. In one of the passages, for example, King writes:

…I don't believe writers can be made, either by circumstances or by self-will (although I did believe those things once). The equipment comes with the original package. Yet it is by no means unusual equipment; I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened. If I didn't believe that, writing a book like this would be a waste of time (2000, p. 4).

I usually open the discussion by asking students if they believe writers, or other kinds of skilled people, such as painters or basketball players, must be born, or if they can be made, and I ask, at the same time, if they believe the question can be answered in a black and white way, or if there are perhaps ratios for success, such as so much talent, plus so much drive, and then a certain measure of education. Many students believe skilled people are born as such and that no amount of hard work or education will improve their skills in a substantive way. So, many students seem to agree with King that although they might be able to improve their writing to some limited degree, they will never be bestselling authors unless they were born to be.

After discussing these issues, I like to bring in the term creativity and have students come up with their own definitions of it and then compare/contrast them with this quote from King:

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they come up (2000, p. 25).

The debate here is often whether or not creativity is a skill that can be learned. This debate is especially interesting because while King seems to argue here that this particular creative technique is something that just happens automatically, the illustrating story afterwards can be read as showing that King discovered this technique and then became adept at using it to develop story ideas. Again, many students believe that people must be born creative, that creativity is not something that can be learned or developed, and it certainly cannot be analyzed and broken down into techniques that can be used to think in new ways.

• Introduction: A Writing Program Director's Dilemma
• Flying, Finally
• The Role of the WPA
• The Problems with PDS
• May the Conversation Continue...
• Dissimulation in the Writing Classroom
• The Devaluing of Growth?
• A Lack of Ethics
• An Ethos of Academic Integrity
• Students Consenting to Turnitin.com: What Are We Asking When We Ask Them to Sign Away Their Work?
• The Concept of Intellectual Property
• Roots of Consent
• Why "Consent" May Not Be Sufficient
• Turnitin.com: A Teaching Tool
• Responsibility for Writing
• A Focus on Revision
• Turnitin: Oversimplified Answer to a Complex Problem
• Skill and Creativity
• Self-Fulfilling Prophesies
• A Stimulus to Creativity
• Engagement and Success
• Conclusion
• References
• print version