Anyone can learn to write with creativity in USU’s new club
Just about everyone who attended an English class in the U.S. public school system recalls the writing prompt; the beginnings of a sentence that lead to a larger story.
The Creative Writing Club is a group that caters to students who love writing things like fiction, poetry and narrative essays. The club was started in March by friends Rebecca Thorpe, a junior in landscape architecture, and Lisa Montgomery, a sophomore in English.
“I love the creative writing classes,” Montgomery said. “The teachers are great. I love the program.”
But she wanted more. In-class writing just wasn’t enough.
Since Thorpe isn’t an English major, she wasn’t taking any writing classes but still enjoyed writing, and did it on her own time outside of schoolwork. She and Montgomery began swapping stories, critiquing each others work and giving feedback to enhance their work.
This sparked the idea that it would be more beneficial to do the same thing with a number of other people as well, and the Creative Writing Club was born.
“We just wanted to meet other writers that share our love for writing. So we just said ‘let’s make a club,'” Montgomery said.
The club had a rocky start. Due to its creation so late in the school year hardly anyone joined. Not many people knew about it, despite the fliers that the members posted around campus. The two founders begged their friends to come out to the meetings.
“It was really small last year, since we started at the very end of the school year,” Thorpe said. “We’ve got more people this year, but we’re still trying to grow – trying to get more people other than just friends that we bribed to come.”
This year, they began promoting the club only a couple of weeks after the semester started, posting fliers on the doors and bulletin boards of the Ray B. West Building. After four weeks, the club has more than half a dozen members that meet each Thursday at 7 p.m. in Business 116.
The meetings start with a spur-of-the-moment writing prompt.
“Someone usually comes up with one thirty seconds before,” Thorpe said. “One of my favorites was to describe something in an unusual way.”
Each member individually takes some time to expand from the prompt, then they move into a short discussion-type lesson, usually lead by Montgomery or Thorpe. The topics range from pointers on how to develop elements of a story, to ways of getting pieces out to the public.
“It’s more of a 10-minute presentation. We research all the information ourselves from readings, and we encourage everyone to come up with other information,” Montgomery said.
After the discussion, the group critiques each other’s work. Individual pieces are read aloud to everyone else in the group. Reading aloud points out mistakes that the writer may have missed, and all the other members get to hear the story at the same time.
The audience gives feedback after the reading is through. Feedback is a major part of the critiquing cycle. It consists of opinions on what would enhance the story, whether by removing certain elements, or adding others.
“You get better by hearing what other people have to say about your work, they catch stuff that you don’t,” Thorpe said.
The group is not exclusive only to English majors. Anyone with a love of writing is encouraged to join. The Creative Writing Cub’s main goal is to enhance authors’ technique and give them a place to gather constructive feedback.
“Writing is important for everything; everyone uses it,” Thorpe said. “And creative writing is an emotional outlet.”
This club is for all those students who managed to make a novel out of half a sentence during the dreaded daily oral language exercises in grade school, take “once upon a time…,” put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard, and let the creative juices flow.
– shanelle.b@aggiemail.usu.edu