In the conversation surrounding writing centers and writing center practices, rarely is creative writing included. In addition, or perhaps because of this, creative writers are not coming to the writing center. This paper seeks to discover why that is, and to that end I will analyze how writing center pedagogy and general academic attitudes towards creative writing have created this unbalanced environment, as well as discuss quantitative and qualitative data from students and tutors involved with the discipline. The writing center is a valuable resource for all writers, and all writers deserve to have their work analyzed, even those work with poetry or prose. The University of Pittsburgh writing center website home page includes the following statement: “We offer one-on-one consultations on creative and academic writing assignments, digital projects, and professional writing” (my bold). If writing centers such as this one offer tutoring for creative writers, but cannot fulfill that promise, where does that leave the students?

            In this paper, I draw from my experience as a creative writer. I am a undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh studying writing with a focus in fiction, and any references I make to my own writing experience take place there. My university writing center is not indicative of all universities or all writing centers, but I believe that the personal narratives I include give some weight to my research in how they align with the studies and other sources I cite, especially when some of those sources are personal narratives themselves.

            Traditionally, the term creative writing has mainly been used in reference to fiction and poetry, but while these are important there are also multiple forms that tend to fall under the umbrella of non-fiction which have creative elements, such as literary nonfiction, journalism  and memoir. It could even be said that there are decisions academic writers make, like word choice or argument order, that constitute creative decision making. In her graduate thesis Tutor Attitudes Toward Tutoring Creative Writers in the Writing Center, Leah Cassorla conducted a survey of 115 writing center employees, of which a majority defined creative writing via process, citing “imaginative” or “artistic” qualities, or by genre, namely fiction and poetry (Cassorla 22-27). There are other categories within her data that are compelling, such as “lack of facts” and “not academic” but the importance of the two I chose to draw from is that they define creativeness as a something, rather than a lack of something, and as the purpose of this paper is to uplift creative writing I think the prior is more helpful. Thus, by a combination of Cassorla’s survey results and my own deliberation I will henceforth define creative writing as any work which makes craft decisions based on conveying emotion as a primary focus. This isn’t to say there is an absence of emotion in creative work, just that its purpose as a primary function in creative pieces fundamentally change how they are perceived and tutored.

            This different in perception has led to what Hans Ostrom describes as an “Othering” of creative writing in academic spaces. “In disciplinary terms,” he states, “creative writing is viewed, ironically, as not-Literature” (Ostrom ed. Bruce et al., 148). He goes on to evaluate that the processes of composition: rhetoric, style, tone, etc., are considered standard, but that it is when they are lumped together to form prose that they become non-objective. One example of this, Ostrom notes, is when a student and tutor disagree on what type of work is being produced. He writes to tutors, “you might say ‘I read this as a nostalgia poem,’ to which the author might say ‘Oh no, I think of it as a poem that carefully observes a place- that was what my teacher wanted’” (152). However, he adds that this type of discourse is often very productive, and leads to good revision. Ostrom holds that this feeling is often compounded by others, such as that creative writing is too simple for the writing center to involve itself with or “too personal, so that responding to someone’s poem or story is associated with responding to the person him or herself” (148). In his experience, these feelings can place creative writing outside of academic rigor. Creative writing’s emotional presence certainly makes it more personal than more academic forms, but that doesn’t mean that students in fiction or poetry classes have no resources to work with.

            Ever since the creation of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1937, creative writing programs at the university level have always had a strong culture of peer and faculty tutoring (University of Iowa, 2023). The nature of these programs are that students are able to read, share and critique each other’s works and it’s a style of tutelage that has become more prevalent as time has gone on. In my experience at the University of Pittsburgh, all of my fiction classes have involved some amount of workshopping, from class or group workshopping to 1-on-1 peer editing to professor-given draft deadlines. While analyzing creative writing workshop pedagogy is outside the scope of this paper, I believe it's important to mention that, for me and my peers, a lot of the skills that are fostered within writing centers are also taught previously through these classes. This is likely a contributor to the lack of creative writers in the writing center, that student have readily available access to somewhat similar resources.

            However, there are many differences between workshops and writing centers that make the writing center a valuable option for those seeking assistance with fiction or poetry. To start, most workshops are peer focused, as professors are often too busy to give considerable feedback to every student; going to the writing center gives one access to professionally trained tutors along with that individual attention that professors can’t give. The writing center also allows for more flexibility, allowing students to have their needs met at a time that aligns with their schedule. Finally, students who may be wary of sharing a highly personal piece in a classroom setting might find solace in a private writing center room. In this way it’s helpful that it's easy to book the same tutor multiple times, because it allows for the building of a relationship where that security is gained in a more directed way. That all being said, proving that the writing center is helpful doesn’t change the fact that not a lot of creative writing is brought to the center. At Trinity college, as undergraduate tutor Alex Denoto states, “out of all the appointments made at the writing center over the course of three years [2012-2015], 0.53% of them had to do with creative writing” (Denoto 4). This is a disparagingly low number, but one that lead me to look into setbacks that the creative writers who are going to the writing center are facing.

            When presenting on my progress in this research in class, I polled my 13 classmates and asked if they’d brought creative writing to the writing center before. 2 answered in the affirmative, but both felt that their tutors were unfamiliar with creative writing vocabulary. Another student, Pamela Baker, remarks in her essay Crossing Genre Lines about a different problem with a personal piece. “I left the consultation in a panic-” she says in the opening page. “My peer, a poet, didn’t see the main connection I was attempting to make... The essay was due in two days and suddenly I needed to reorganize the entire thing.” She made an outline for her revisions, then went to meet with her professor. Her professor, however, disagreed with the tutor. “It turned out that she thought the essay was the best I had written [without the proposed revisions], needed no structural changes,” they said, adding “that I should seek my feedback from other writers of creative nonfiction and not those who only write fiction or poetry.” Creative writing is far from objective, and everyone can respond emotion of a piece in a different ways. This is not to say that no tutors are familiar with or enjoy working with creative writing, many have MFAs or are published authors, and even undergraduate tutors are happy to work with poetry or prose. Mara Wagnon, undergraduate tutor for the University of Austin writing center, says it plainly in her article about the lack of creative writing at her writing center: “Bring me your darlings. I promise I won’t murder them” (2). Rather, the non-objectiveness of creative writing creates difficulties in the tutoring process, especially in a area as objective as academia.

            In the same way that creative writers have found difficulties in the writing center, tutors from undergraduates to faculty have found difficulties in responding to creative writers. Ostrom recalls a scenario where him and his colleagues were reading fiction from candidates for a tenure-track professorship: “They hear or read a poem or a story, and then they say what they think about it. ‘That was funny,’ they say, or they say, ‘I don’t get it.’” (Ostrom ed. Bruce et al., 147). This harkens back to his idea of Othering, where creative writing is seen as nonobjective. Perhaps Ostrom’s colleagues truly had nothing to say about the candidates’ fiction, but it is more likely that the culture surrounding creative writing I’ve described left them worried that any judgement they made wouldn’t be evaluative, or that commenting on composition wouldn’t be constructive. Havva Zorluel Ozer, professor of English at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, conducted a survey in 2020 asking their university’s writing center tutors about their concerns tutoring creative writers, inquiring due to the limited data documenting tutors’ work with them in the field. Of the 32 participants, a third cited unfamiliarity with the genre, a quarter talked about vulnerability, and the same amount emphasized the importance of specific tutors for creative writers. Furthermore, of the last category a little less than half thought that the writing center shouldn’t concern itself with creative writing at all, unless it was in large demand (5-6). I see it as a paradox: creative writing students aren’t going to the writing center because of a lack of concern for their needs on the side of the tutors, and tutors aren’t working towards the comfortability of creative writers because they aren’t coming to the center. The key to understanding this idea lies in the rules of the writing center itself; Stephen North tells us in The Idea of a Writing Center that “the kind of writing does not substantially change the approach” (12) but my research suggests that tutoring creative writing brings as substantial of a change that can be accrued. In fact, it shows how writing center pedagogy is skewed against creative writing, a fact most evident in the tutelage of grammar.

            When beginning my engagement with writing center studies, the first idea I took in was that writing centers are not fix-it-shops, that higher-order concerns always come first. And while I agree with this, grammar itself is an important vessel through which other aspects of a piece are channeled through, especially in creative works: “After all,” Wittenberg Writing Center advisor Samantha Reynolds writes, “knowledge of grammar, syntax and the ‘unimportant’ mechanics of writing are what give effective communicators power over language” (The Dangling Modifier vol. 25). The power of creative writing comes from the influence that every word has over the emotion of a piece. An incorrect tense can ruin a paragraph with perfect flow, an objectively run-on sentence might be necessary to convey a character’s frame of mind, or a town’s regional dialect could be conveyed through odd word order. Grammar in creative writing should not be something to “fix,” nor should it be something to ignore because it doesn’t impact readability, it should have equal consideration to other elements of craft. Of course, in a 25 minute session a tutor might not have the time to scrutinize a piece in detail, but the option to work with grammar shouldn’t be cast aside, especially in pieces that utilize odd tone or syntax. Cassorla writes in her conclusion that “in essence, North’s principles have been accepted wholesale and canonized, despite his suggestion that they be studied” (45) and defines creative writing in the writing center as a place where this testing is needed, and I agree.

            While there is no discrete answer to the question of “how do we get creative writers to the writing center?” one idea that much of my research agrees upon is that tutors need more training on how to respond to creative writing, a plan Ozer refers to as “incorporating genre awareness pedagogy” (1). They note that in their study tutors were concerned above all else with the unfamiliarity of creative writing conventions, and thought that if they were taught genre awareness in their training, they could improve their understanding of craft and be able to impart that knowledge to their tutees. Ozer recognizes the difficulty in providing such training, but comes to the conclusion that training tutors in skills like improvisation and risk-taking could achieve the same affect. To this end they reference The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors: “by incorporating practice tutorials and improvisational exercises into training, we can... provide a foundation on which to build their own techniques and philosophies of tutoring” (65) (6-7). In this way, Ozer rightly defines fiction or poetry as just one of many unfamiliar situations that can show up in the writing center.

            Peer tutor Alex Denoto holds a similar position, noting that “tutors need more knowledge on creative writing and how they can help creative writers” (6), but took an opposite approach to Ozer’s broad net by creating their own handouts specifically covering how to tutor creative writing. These include information on structuring appointments, do and do nots, and open questions to ask at the beginning of a session (6). I reached out to Denoto but was unfortunately not able to get access to his work, which would’ve been especially interesting to compare with Tutoring Creative Writers, which concludes with Ostrom giving a list of tips for tutoring creative writers. Some are more general writing guidelines, but even these are beneficial in how they pertain to creative writing versus other forms. One of these is to compliment the tutee on their work at the beginning of a session, which is well-known advice, but Ostrom digs deeper. Addressing the reader he asks, “what part of the short story really drew you in, made you want to read on? Why?” (153). I like this advice specifically because, in creative writing, it is often the part that was most compelling to write that will be most interesting to read.

            Finally, while Cassorla doesn’t draw any specific conclusions about how training could be helpful, her survey provides a host of responses as to what training tutors already have in regards to creative writing, and what training they think they need. One interesting result from this survey was that, of the 71 tutors who responded to the related question, less than 5 had specific training on tutoring creative writing; most cite being in workshops or tutoring itself as their training. Similarly, a majority of the responses did not believe that further creative writing training was necessary: two responses Cassorla displayed in her paper reasoned that “tutors wouldn’t know what to read for” (37) and “if [they aren’t interested] they shouldn’t have to tutor creative writers” (38). Perhaps Trinity College is an outlier, but these responses are still indicative of the sense of Othering creative writing faces in academia. Cassorla counters this, then, with a quote from a “comment and question” with Laura Butler, a WCENTER member, that illustrates a detail seen in Ostrom’s paper, as his tenfold guide includes multiple tips that work the same for tutoring any genre. “I wonder if including examples from beginning creative writers might increase tutors’ comfort level... they’ll ask lots of the same questions as they do when working with students from other disciplines” (par. 4). This quote illustrates how, as much as creative writing is Othered, there are similarities between it and other genres that can be used to begin the conversation of how to tutor creative writers (35-39). In summary, all three of these studies find different, yet equally valid approaches to increasing tutors’ familiarity with creative writing.

            One idea that my research has illustrated is that every writing center is different. While it’s globally important to foster creative writers and to recognize creative writing as a valid form, a something rather than a lack of something, a STEM-focused institution and a school with a prominent poetry degree will have to go about it in different ways. That’s why I believe the next step in my research is to narrow my field of vision to the University of Pittsburgh writing center, to find out how our tutors feel about tutoring creative writing specifically. By employing the findings of the studies used in this paper, namely Ozer’s wide approach and Denoto and Ostrom’s precise ones, I want to create a better environment for creative writers with guidelines that can be loosely applied to other writing centers, as effective pedagogy that asks tutors to open their minds to more writing will increase inclusivity and improve the tutor and student experience overall.

Sources

“About the Workshop.” About the Workshop | Iowa Writers’ Workshop | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | The University of Iowa, writersworkshop.uiowa.edu/about. Accessed 17 Nov. 2023.

          The Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop was the first, and is arguably the strongest, creative writing graduate program in the United States. It is a two year program with focuses in fiction and poetry, and its graduates have won numerous literary awards, including seventeen Pulitzer Prizes. The “About” page of their website describes its history and philosophy, and in my paper I use that information to show how creative writing programs have always had a strong culture of peer and faculty tutoring, one of the possible reasons why creative writing might not view the writing center as a valuable resource.

Baker, Pamela. “Crossing Genre Lines.” The Dangling Modifier, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007.

          Pamela Baker’s Crossing Genre Lines details her experience bringing a personal essay to the writing center, and having a tutor whose suggestions didn’t align with that of her professor. She uses her experience as an example of why its difficult to tutor creative writing, and why tutors need to “show, not tell” when working with personal pieces. In my paper, I contrast Baker’s experience with Mara Wagnon’s viewpoint on tutoring creative writing in her paper Bring Me Your Darlings, in order to show how creative writing brings unique challenges to the writing center and the tutoring process.

Cassorla, Leah F. “Tutor Attitudes Toward Tutoring Creative Writers in the Writing Center.” University of South Florida, Digital Commons, 2004.

          In her graduate thesis Tutor Attitudes Toward Creative Writers in the Writing Center, Leah F. Cassorla questions the relationship between tutors and creative writing. She conducts a survey of 115 writing tutors, asking them to define creative writing, their comfort level with tutoring creative writing, and their training with creative writing. She analyzes these responses, and concludes that while attitudes towards creative writing could increase tutor and tutee comfortability with creative writing in the writing center, there are a variety of trainings or changes that could accomplish it. My paper concerns itself primarily with Cassorla’s “define creative writing” data from her survey; I use this data to provide my own definition of creative writing for the sake of my paper. Additionally, I touch on her conclusion, and her response to Stehpen North’s The Idea of a Writing Center.

Denoto, Alex. Creative Writing in the Writing Center, Trinity College, 2019, commons.trincoll.edu/115vernon/files/2019/02/Creative-Writing-in-the-Writing-Center-by-Alex-DeNoto-2015.pdf.

          Alex Denoto’s Creative Writing in the Writing Center looks at various problems that contribute to the lack of creative writing in the writing center. He takes a tutor-focused approach, concluding that the best solution is to collect and create more resources that assist with creative writing and simplify creative writing principles. In my paper, I cite his data on the amount of creative writing coming to his writing center, as well as provide his creative writing handouts as a possible next step.

Dvorak, Kevin, and Shanti, Bruce. Creative Approaches to Writing Center Work. Hampton, 2009.

          Editing together by Kevin Dvorak and Bruce Shanti, Creative Approaches to Writing Center Work is a book of essays on creative implements and creative writing as they relate to tutoring and the writing center. It centers on the premise that creativity has the potential to increase productivity and enjoyment in the writing center, and explores several avenues towards that end. Specifically, my paper references Hans Ostrom’s Tutoring Creative Writers, which offers an explanation for why creative writing is often looked down upon by academic communities. He also provides a list of ten tips for tutoring creative writing, ranging from genre construction to working with emotion in a piece. I use Ostrom’s work for his definition of Othering as a way to describe creative writing’s relationship to academic writing, which is an important concept as to why creative writing can be shunned at the university level.

McDonald, Zoe. “Writing Gets Personal: Listening at the Intersections of Creative Writing and Writing Tutoring.” University of Vermont, ScholarWorks, 2018.

          In her graduate thesis Writing Gets Personal, Zoe McDonald investigates how working with creative writing affects the traditional tutoring experience. She interviews five writing tutors with backgrounds in creative writing, and combines her experience with theirs in order to define the perceived division between creative and academic writing. I used her interview questions as a guideline for conducting my own interviews, and drew from her conclusion to gain a more specific direction in my writing.

Murphy, Christina, and Sherwood, Steve. The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors.            Bedford/St. Martins, 2003.

            The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, a tutoring guidebook and anthology of tutoring essays, focuses on tutoring students of various cultural backgrounds, working with technology, and other modern challenges and aids to the writing process. While the sourcebook does not talk about creative writing, it is useful to my research in that the philosophies it discusses are applicable to all types of writing, including creative writing. In my paper, I use it to outline some techniques tutors unfamiliar with creative writing can use to increase their familiarity with the subject.

North, Stephen M. “The idea of a writing center.” College English, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, p. 433, https://doi.org/10.2307/377047.

          Stephen North’s The Idea of a Writing Center discusses the difficulties of having the writing center seen as a “fix-it-shop,” and redefines the act of tutoring and its goals. It admonishes people who think that the center is only there to edit your grammar, and is a foundational text in that it sets the institution as creating better writers, rather than betting writing. My paper critiques this viewpoint through the lens of a creative writer: North writes that part of the reason that writing centers work is that the type of writing brought to the center is irrelevant, but that is not true in my case. In this way, I use The Idea of a Writing Center to show how writing center pedagogy is skewed towards academics, and therefore away from creative writing.

Ozer, Haava Zorluel. “Tutoring Creative Writers in the Writing Center.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, 2020.

          Haava Zorluel Ozer’s Tutoring Creative Writers in the Writing Center surveys thirty two tutors with the goal of analyzing confidence levels in tutoring creative writing. She finds that many tutors feel the subject unfamiliar, and in her conclusion pushes for genre awareness training for tutors. To Ozer, the lack of creative writing in the writing center is indicative not of prejudices against the genre but of the inability of tutors to react and proceed calmly in unfamiliar scenarios. I use her research for this conclusion, as one of the multiple ways to move forward with assisting creative writers in the writing center.

Reynolds, Samantha. “Sometimes You Need A Fix-It Shop.” The Dangling Modifier, vol. 25, no. 2, 14 Aug. 2014.

          Samantha Reynold’s Sometimes You Need A Fix-It Shop explains just that; the writing center often pushes that it does not exist to proofread, but sometimes that is simply what a struggling student needs. Reynolds goes into detail on the importance of grammar and how writing center and university priorities are often vastly different. I use her ideas in my paper when I touch on grammar’s unique functions within creative writing, and when I respond to Stephen North’s The Idea of a Writing Center.

Wagnon, Mara. “Bring Me Your Darlings: Creative Writing in the Writing Center.” Praxis, vol. 16, no. 1, 4 June 2019.

          Mara Wagnon’s Bring Me Your Darlings details her experience with the lack of creative writing at the writing center, and explores why that lack might exist. It’s a conversational piece with a unique voice, speaking from consultants to creative writers, detailing how tutors are equipped to work with creative writing and love to do so. My paper contrasts Bring Me Your Darlings with Pamela Baker’s Crossing Genre Lines in order to show how creative writing brings unique challenges to the writing center and the tutoring process.

“Writing Center.” The Writing Center | University of Pittsburgh, www.writingcenter.pitt.edu/. Accessed 17 Nov. 2023.

          The University of Pittsburgh Writing Center is the center that I tutor at, and the subject of my survey and interviews. Its webpage details what the writing center does, how to schedule an appointment, and the various events the center holds. In my paper, I use the site as an emotional draw, contrast the language it uses on creative writing with the actual experience of a creative writer at the center, as a tutor and a tutee.