As a brand new lecturer in creative writing, I vowed never to become a teacher who no longer writes. But then I began to understand the dynamic that’s responsible for declining creative production in novelists who join teaching faculties, And sure enough, mine began to decline.
First, I should say that as long as I can remember I’ve had to deal with what is now called ADHD. Concentration and follow-through have always been a challenge for me. The fact that I’ve finished 4 books, the fact that I’ve kept this blog going for a year and a half now–in my world, these are Olympian personal victories, though for most folks, business as usual.
That said, here’s the productivity-killer coiled inside teaching:
If you do it right, if you enter into your students’ creative worlds and take on, along with them, the challenges they are facing, you are using – and fatiguing – the same imaginative “muscles” you need to keep toned and fresh for you own work.
So what is the answer? Well, as Gertrude Stein said to Alice B. Toklas (really) from her deathbed, “what is the question?”
Here is my answer:
To teach or not to teach, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the exhaustion of shared energy and the displacement of focus toward others’ fortunes, or take arms against a withering of one’s own creative life and by regathering its mission and refocussing its power, end the creative draught.
If you were paying attention, you saw that (in addition to bastardizing Hamlet) this answer doesn’t answer the question, but, like Miss Stein’s deathbed wisecrack, only turns it back as another question. The truth is, as with so many paradoxes involving life and work, the answer will vary individual-to-individual.
Some writers of promise will disappear into academia like a stone in a pond, leaving only ripples of their lost potential. Others – like T.C. Boyle, Wallace Stegner, or Saul Bellow – will serve admirably in teaching positions, even direct creative writing programs, and still “get one out” every few years.
What about you? Do you teach and write? If so, how do you balance the two?
Do you wish you could have more time to write but feel smothered by the demands of a fulltime teaching position?
Do get by with temporary or part-time work, yet long for the security of that elusive perfect teaching job with great salary and minimal demands?
Suppose you got one that wasn’t quite as “perfect” as you wished – as an assistant professorhip at the bottom of the academic pyramid, underpaid and overworked? How do you picture your imaginative life once you are teaching 3 or 4 creative writing courses per semester?
Let’s broaden the inquiry beyond teaching: what do you do to put food on your table? Drive a cab? Tend bar? Are you a musician (once my hope for a meal ticket) like Graham Parker or Kinky Friedman? An actor, like Ethan Hawke or Thomas Tryon? An insurance executive, like Wallace Stevens? Do you practice law, like Scott Thurow or John Grisham.
Have you be lucky enough to have drawn a get-out-of-jail care? A trust fund? A rich husband or wife?
Do you have a writing job – PR, ad copy, newsletters?
Do you actually publish in a genre that’s commercial enough to support you?
Women especially, do you have small children? How do you manage that more-than-fulltime occupation?
Fiction writing and living life seem always to have been the opposite ends of a see saw. The challenge is somehow to achieve a balance that honors both ends. Do you feel you’ve finessed this challenge – or been beaten down by it? I’m truly interested in this question so please leave your perspective in a comment.
Here is my answer:
To teach or not to teach, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the exhaustion of shared energy and the displacement of focus toward others’ fortunes, or take arms against a withering of one’s own creative life and by regathering its mission and refocussing its power, end the creative draught.
If you were paying attention, you saw that (in addition to bastardizing Hamlet) this answer doesn’t answer the question, but, like Miss Stein’s deathbed wisecrack, only turns it back as another question. The truth is, as with so many paradoxes involving life and work, the answer will vary individual-to-individual.
Some writers of promise will disappear into academia like a stone in a pond, leaving only ripples of their lost potential. Others – like T.C. Boyle, Wallace Stegner, or Saul Bellow – will serve admirably in teaching positions, even direct creative writing programs, and still “get one out” every few years.
What about you? Do you teach and write? If so, how do you balance the two?
Do you wish you could have more time to write but feel smothered by the demands of a fulltime teaching position?
Do get by with temporary or part-time work, yet long for the security of that elusive perfect teaching job with great salary and minimal demands?
Suppose you got one that wasn’t quite as “perfect” as you wished – as an assistant professorhip at the bottom of the academic pyramid, underpaid and overworked? How do you picture your imaginative life once you are teaching 3 or 4 creative writing courses per semester?
Let’s broaden the inquiry beyond teaching: what do you do to put food on your table? Drive a cab? Tend bar? Are you a musician (once my hope for a meal ticket) like Graham Parker or Kinky Friedman? An actor, like Ethan Hawke or Thomas Tryon? An insurance executive, like Wallace Stevens? Do you practice law, like Scott Thurow or John Grisham.
Have you be lucky enough to have drawn a get-out-of-jail care? A trust fund? A rich husband or wife?
Do you have a writing job – PR, ad copy, newsletters?
Do you actually publish in a genre that’s commercial enough to support you?
Women especially, do you have small children? How do you manage that more-than-fulltime occupation?
Fiction writing and living life seem always to have been the opposite ends of a see saw. The challenge is somehow to achieve a balance that honors both ends. Do you feel you’ve finessed this challenge – or been beaten down by it? I’m truly interested in this question so please leave your perspective in a comment.
Here is my answer:
To teach or not to teach, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the exhaustion of shared energy and the displacement of focus toward others’ fortunes, or take arms against a withering of one’s own creative life and by regathering its mission and refocussing its power, end the creative draught.
If you were paying attention, you saw that (in addition to bastardizing Hamlet) this answer doesn’t answer the question, but, like Miss Stein’s deathbed wisecrack, only turns it back as another question. The truth is, as with so many paradoxes involving life and work, the answer will vary individual-to-individual.
Some writers of promise will disappear into academia like a stone in a pond, leaving only ripples of their lost potential. Others – like T.C. Boyle, Wallace Stegner, or Saul Bellow – will serve admirably in teaching positions, even direct creative writing programs, and still “get one out” every few years.
What about you? Do you teach and write? If so, how do you balance the two?
Do you wish you could have more time to write but feel smothered by the demands of a fulltime teaching position?
Do get by with temporary or part-time work, yet long for the security of that elusive perfect teaching job with great salary and minimal demands?
Suppose you got one that wasn’t quite as “perfect” as you wished – as an assistant professorhip at the bottom of the academic pyramid, underpaid and overworked? How do you picture your imaginative life once you are teaching 3 or 4 creative writing courses per semester?
Let’s broaden the inquiry beyond teaching: what do you do to put food on your table? Drive a cab? Tend bar? Are you a musician (once my hope for a meal ticket) like Graham Parker or Kinky Friedman? An actor, like Ethan Hawke or Thomas Tryon? An insurance executive, like Wallace Stevens? Do you practice law, like Scott Thurow or John Grisham.
Have you be lucky enough to have drawn a get-out-of-jail care? A trust fund? A rich husband or wife?
Do you have a writing job – PR, ad copy, newsletters?
Do you actually publish in a genre that’s commercial enough to support you?
Women especially, do you have small children? How do you manage that more-than-fulltime occupation?
Fiction writing and living life seem always to have been the opposite ends of a see saw. The challenge is somehow to achieve a balance that honors both ends. Do you feel you’ve finessed this challenge – or been beaten down by it? I’m truly interested in this question so please leave your perspective in a comment.
Here is my answer:
To teach or not to teach, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the exhaustion of shared energy and the displacement of focus toward others’ fortunes, or take arms against a withering of one’s own creative life and by regathering its mission and refocussing its power, end the creative draught.
If you were paying attention, you saw that (in addition to bastardizing Hamlet) this answer doesn’t answer the question, but, like Miss Stein’s deathbed wisecrack, only turns it back as another question. The truth is, as with so many paradoxes involving life and work, the answer will vary individual-to-individual.
Some writers of promise will disappear into academia like a stone in a pond, leaving only ripples of their lost potential. Others – like T.C. Boyle, Wallace Stegner, or Saul Bellow – will serve admirably in teaching positions, even direct creative writing programs, and still “get one out” every few years.
What about you? Do you teach and write? If so, how do you balance the two?
Do you wish you could have more time to write but feel smothered by the demands of a fulltime teaching position?
Do get by with temporary or part-time work, yet long for the security of that elusive perfect teaching job with great salary and minimal demands?
Suppose you got one that wasn’t quite as “perfect” as you wished – as an assistant professorhip at the bottom of the academic pyramid, underpaid and overworked? How do you picture your imaginative life once you are teaching 3 or 4 creative writing courses per semester?
Let’s broaden the inquiry beyond teaching: what do you do to put food on your table? Drive a cab? Tend bar? Are you a musician (once my hope for a meal ticket) like Graham Parker or Kinky Friedman? An actor, like Ethan Hawke or Thomas Tryon? An insurance executive, like Wallace Stevens? Do you practice law, like Scott Thurow or John Grisham.
Have you be lucky enough to have drawn a get-out-of-jail care? A trust fund? A rich husband or wife?
Do you have a writing job – PR, ad copy, newsletters?
Do you actually publish in a genre that’s commercial enough to support you?
Women especially, do you have small children? How do you manage that more-than-fulltime occupation?
Fiction writing and living life seem always to have been the opposite ends of a see saw. The challenge is somehow to achieve a balance that honors both ends. Do you feel you’ve finessed this challenge – or been beaten down by it? I’m truly interested in this question so please leave your perspective in a comment.
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