Blog Post 8 Tatiana

I preferred the Goede article and enjoyed reading his approach to tutoring his student. I related to his caution about not overtaking Lorraine's story, even saying, "Or don't [regarding his advice] It's your piece." I've felt this way tutoring my creative writing student, and in many ways, tutoring the creative writing student is more work than the student who only brings me academic rhetoric and psychology papers. It's easy to tell my academic student that her thesis needs to be more specific, her arguments clearer etc. Like the Fan article research shows, academic papers are simpler to diagnosis: 16% of the errors are in word meaning, 29% in word form, etc. Tutoring creative work is so much more subjective, and the issues often aren't neat or easily classified. When I work with my creative student, I try not to judge his work based on my personal tastes, and I try to provide positive feedback, emphasizing what's working rather than what's not. When I provide criticism, I try to keep it broad and universal (ie. "Similes typically work best when they're clear and concise, and not used too often, so maybe cut back on some of these.")  

I'm also interested in the way Goede writes about Lorraine--I can't help but think the girl lacks personality based on the way Goede quotes her saying "[creative] just isn't my personality!" and she also thinks creative writing is lesser, which I (an MFA student) felt compelled to defend while reading the article. Overall, I was impressed how Goede brings Lorraine around to creative writing in the end. One thing I thought Goede could've emphasized to Lorraine was that incorporating creative writing would make her work more accessible to a larger audience since, like she mentioned, "anyone, even high school drop outs can read creative work!"

Comments

  1. Jose Di PaolaOctober 28, 2020 at 10:45 AM

    The characterization of Lorraine you had is very negative; do you think that was a result of how Goede wrote her? Is it okay for a case study to portray the student in an unflattering way?

    I also agree how good it is that Goedde held back and emphasized that Lorraine had control over her work. I feel like it's easy for students to just defer to us as perceived authorities.

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